City Futures Blog

News and research in housing and urban policy, from Australia’s leading urban policy research centre.

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Entries Tagged as 'Wellbeing'

Affordable housing lessons from Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore: 3 keys to getting the policy mix right

September 19th, 2019 · No Comments · Affordability, Guest appearance, Housing, International, Transport, Wellbeing

Image: Bill Roque/Shutterstock By Youqing Fan, Western Sydney University; Bingqin Li, UNSW, and Chyi Lin Lee, UNSW. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Affordable housing is a critical problem for Australia’s biggest housing markets. Five Australian cities are in the top 25 with “severely unaffordable” housing […]

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Healthy built environments – considerations for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

August 21st, 2019 · No Comments · Indigenous, Wellbeing

By Professor Susan Thompson, City Futures Research Centre. Originally published in New Planner – the journal of the New South Wales planning profession – published by the Planning Institute of Australia.  For over 60,000 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples enjoyed a remarkably harmonious relationship with the natural environment that provided all their physical and spiritual needs, keeping them […]

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Private renters are doing it tough in outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne

July 31st, 2019 · No Comments · Affordability, Economy, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Private rental, Sydney, Tenancy, Wellbeing

In low-rent outer suburbs, almost one in six households could not afford to keep their house cool and went without meals. ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock By Alan Morris, University of Technology Sydney; Hal Pawson, UNSW; Kath Hulse, Swinburne University of Technology, and Violet Xia, University of Technology Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons […]

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Living with diversity in high-density apartment settings

June 28th, 2019 · No Comments · Cities, Housing, International, Migration, Private rental, Strata, Wellbeing

by Edgar Liu, Hazel Easthope and Christina Ho (UTS). This article is republished from the Meridian180 forum summary page. Read the original article—and Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean versions—here. Read our original lead post and discussion questions here.   Recent migration surges and rapid urbanisation have increased human diversity in population-dense locations, particularly in urban […]

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Chilly house? Mouldy rooms? Here’s how to improve low-income renters’ access to decent housing

June 5th, 2019 · No Comments · Affordability, Construction, Housing, Housing conditions, Law, Tenancy, Wellbeing

Too many Australians struggle to get their housing maintained and problems fixed. Trevor Charles Graham/Shutterstock By Edgar Liu, Chris Martin and Hazel Easthope, City Futures Research Centre. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. People’s quality of life, their health and their comfort can suffer when living in […]

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Equity and health: supporting everyone to be healthy and well

May 6th, 2019 · No Comments · Cities, Government, Housing, Public space, Sustainability, Transport, Wellbeing

By Susan Thompson, Professor of Planning, City Futures Research Centre. What’s good health got to do with equity? Good health depends on both our individual physical characteristics and how we live our lives.  Genetics, age, ethnicity and gender are things we cannot simply decide to change.  Our lifestyle is different – we can choose to […]

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Stay cool with revised house construction codes

February 15th, 2019 · No Comments · Climate change, Construction, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing conditions, Sustainability, Sydney, Wellbeing

By Professor Mat Santamouris, Built Environment, UNSW Sydney. This article was first published by the Sydney Morning Herald. For many Australian households, summer’s debilitating heatwaves will be felt well into autumn as the steep costs of airconditioning show up on household power bills. We shouldn’t have to live like this. Much of the punitive cost […]

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Lifting the energy efficiency standards of low-cost rentals

September 19th, 2018 · No Comments · Climate change, Government, Housing, Housing conditions, Sustainability, Wellbeing

By Edgar Liu, City Futures Research Centre. The Australian Senate’s Environment and Communications References Committee recently published the Final Report of its Inquiry on current and future impacts of climate change on housing, buildings and infrastructure. This came about after extensive community consultation on the back of parliamentary flip-flopping regarding if and how Australia will […]

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A dashboard for the GreenWay

September 3rd, 2018 · No Comments · Bikes, Data, Public space, Sydney, Transport, Wellbeing

By Alessandra Buxton, Ori Gudes, Chris Pettit and Vandana Mann, City Futures Research Centre. Cycling around Sydney CBD and the surrounding suburbs has been dubbed a dangerous and difficult experience by Sydneysiders. Both Sydney and NSW are at the bottom of their classes in terms of cycling participation rates, with participation declining since 2015 in both greater […]

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Why is it so hard to engage communities in healthy city making?

June 14th, 2018 · No Comments · Cities, Wellbeing

By Susan Thompson, City Futures Research Centre. This article originally appeared in New Planner – the journal of the New South Wales planning profession – published by the Planning Institute of Australia. For more information, please visit: www.planning.org.au/news/new-planner-nsw. Why is it hard to get people from all walks of life and across the age spectrum genuinely involved in planning?  Is there […]

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