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 'Data'

Grappling with housing disruption: how should planners respond to Airbnb?

May 1st, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Cities, Data, Economy, Government, Housing, Sydney

By Laura Crommelin. This article originally appeared in New Planner – the journal of the New South Wales planning profession – published by the Planning Institute of Australia.  The explosive growth of digital short-term letting platform Airbnb poses plenty of challenges for planners, with the impact being felt across both urban and regional areas. But what exactly is the […]

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How does a city get to be ‘smart’? This is how Tel Aviv did it

April 20th, 2018 · No Comments · Data, Government, Guest appearance, Smart cities

Image: Alexandra Lande/Shutterstock By Christine Steinmetz, Senior Lecturer in Built Environment, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Smart cities, digital cities, virtual cities, connected cities. Are these just trendy buzzwords? Perhaps. But these types of cities are supported by infrastructure that is more than bricks and mortar. These cities […]

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Geodesign and the difficulty of working (planning) together

February 8th, 2018 · No Comments · Cities, Data

By Carmela Ticzon, City Futures Research Centre. Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) recognises that places and spaces are complex and multilayered. Cities are systems composed of interlinking environmental, social, and economic dimensions, and the interdependencies of their subsystems make it impossible to make changes in one without causing flow-on effects on the others. It makes sense, […]

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They know where you go: dockless bike sharing looms as the next disruptor – if key concerns are fixed

December 7th, 2017 · No Comments · Bikes, Cities, Data, Transport

By Christopher Pettit, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Dr Simone Z. Leao created the Bicycling Dashboard shown in this article. Beyond the benefits of dockless bike sharing for people’s mobility and health, these services are producing an ever more useful byproduct: journey data. Mapped through global positioning system […]

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Wayfinding at night: a review of research and best practice

November 8th, 2017 · No Comments · Cities, Data, Public space, Sydney, Transport

By Aida Afrooz, City Futures Research Centre. Finding your way through a city, especially at night, can be daunting. Across the world many governments have sought to facilitate ‘wayfinding’, by making cities more legible and pedestrian friendly. To inform its understanding of wayfinding, the City of Sydney recently engaged a team of researchers from City […]

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Mounting housing stress underscores need for expert council to guide wayward policymaking

September 27th, 2017 · No Comments · Affordability, Construction, Data, Demographics, Government, Housing, Housing supply

By Hal Pawson, UNSW and Oliver Frankel, University of Technology Sydney. Originally published on The Conversation. A recent policy pledge by Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has given fresh heart to campaigners for the restoration of the former National Housing Supply Council (NHSC). The Abbott government axed the council in 2013. With housing stress intensifying across […]

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The Conscious City

August 15th, 2017 · No Comments · Cities, Data, Wellbeing

Image credit: Emily Mitchell By Greg Paine and Susan Thompson, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. The city is a complex place.  It is hard to unpack all of the components that make up the enormity of the city phenomenon.  To help make sense of it all, characterising the city in particular ways can assist. […]

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Harnessing Big Data in Challenging Urban Contexts

August 9th, 2017 · No Comments · Cities, Data, Guest appearance, Law, Migration, Sustainability, Transport

Harnessing big data in an urban context is the “grand challenge.” Image: AIG By Laura Bruce, Built Environment, UNSW Sydney. On July 21st 2017 academics and public sector representatives met to discuss the challenge of harnessing big data in the urban context in order to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The event was hosted […]

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With better data access, urban planners could help ease our weight problems

July 11th, 2017 · No Comments · Cities, Data, Demographics, Wellbeing

Increasing access to health data and more readily available analytical tools offer some opportunities to tackle the ever-growing rates of obesity. AAP/Dave Hunt By Alison Taylor, UNSW; Christopher Pettit, UNSW; Ori Gudes, UNSW, and Susan Thompson, UNSW A recent episode of ABC TV’s Ask the Doctor pointed to poor urban planning as a major culprit […]

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