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National Affairs
Jackhammer nation
Sarah Barns
12 March 2021
Australia has invested heavily in a construction-fuelled recovery, but at what cost?
Essays & Reportage
What would it really take to supercharge social housing?
Peter Mares
29 September 2020
With governments unwilling to fix taxes or borrow, perhaps even Ronald Reagan has something to teach us
Essays & Reportage
The end of the city? No, not quite
Sarah Barns
16 September 2020
All of a sudden, proximity to the city may no longer be a critical driver of innovation and job creation
Books & Arts
What difference can a healthy building make?
Sarah Barns
13 July 2020
Covid-19 has supercharged concerns about how workplaces — and work patterns — are undermining good health
Books & Arts
When the market is the policy, housing fails
Peter Mares
25 May 2020
Books
| Three housing researchers plot the way out of Australia’s affordability crisis
Essays & Reportage
Making space
Sarah Barns
30 March 2020
What does the coronavirus mean for Australian cities?
Essays & Reportage
Capital of the west
Robert Milliken
6 February 2020
Migration is helping make drought-stricken Dubbo a dynamic regional city
Essays & Reportage
You, me, data and the city
Sarah Barns
18 December 2019
Is the data-rich city taking on a life of its own? And can Hugh Stretton’s
Ideas for Australian Cities
help us navigate its hazards?
Essays & Reportage
“Density has to be likeable”
Leanne Hodyl
1 November 2019
High-rise housing has many benefits and quite a few shortcomings. The challenge is to shift the balance towards likeability
National Affairs
The problem with HILDA
Henry Sherrell
2 August 2019
There’s a risk that Australia’s leading social survey could become stuck in time
Essays & Reportage
A city in search of its centre
Tom Greenwell
31 July 2019
The purists are lamenting while the boosters (and bashers) cheer, but Canberra’s transformation may be more inspired than either camp acknowledges
Podcasts
Time to rethink the Great Australian Dream
Peter Clarke, Wendy Stone and Peter Mares
30 April 2019
Election 2019
| The central goals of housing policy have been lost in debates about tax breaks for landlords
Books & Arts
The making of an Australian suburb
Chris Cunneen
22 March 2019
Books
| Sydney’s Paddington was shaped by topography and “builders of modest means”
Essays & Reportage
Australia’s great urban experiment
Diana Bagnall
14 March 2019
When is an airport not just an airport? Western Sydneysiders are in the process of finding out
Books & Arts
Why houses cost too much
Brendan Coates
11 February 2019
Books
| A blind spot among economists has helped price housing out of reach
National Affairs
Migration by numbers
Peter Mares
5 November 2018
What is going on inside Australia’s immigration program? New government figures tell only part of the story
Books & Arts
Going back to where we came from
Susan Lever
5 October 2018
Do Sydney’s theatre audiences yearn for the city of old?
International
Bolivia’s Neo-Andean visionary
Antonio Castillo
12 September 2018
Fuelled by new arrivals in the Bolivian capital, Indigenous architecture is on the rise in El Alto
Essays & Reportage
Looking for trouble
Margaret Simons
18 May 2018
Four months after the summer troubles, a reporter heads to Melbourne’s western fringe in search of “African gangs”
National Affairs
Is something rotten in the City of Melbourne?
James Murphy
28 March 2018
By the time a new lord mayor is elected in May, quite a few electors will have voted twice
Books & Arts
How Melbourne became cool again
Alan Davies
27 March 2018
Books
| How did the Victorian capital regain the “intensive urbanity” that made it Australia’s leading city in the 1890s?
National Affairs
The conventional wisdom is wrong: building more housing does help low-income earners
Brendan Coates & Trent Wiltshire
22 February 2018
Flawed research has fuelled a mistaken view of the best way to assist less well-off households
Correspondents
China’s big-city dreamers
Duncan Hewitt
30 January 2018
Urban life is still a fragile aspiration for millions of rural migrants
National Affairs
In search of a national housing strategy
Peter Mares
6 December 2017
Canada is showing the way, but the funds need to start flowing — and that means biting the bullet on tax
National Affairs
Housing taxes: getting from here to there
Peter Mares
4 December 2017
A shift to a property tax will make the housing market fairer and more efficient, and researchers have come up with a practical way to do it
National Affairs
Does public housing have a community-run future?
Peter Mares
30 November 2017
Projects in Australia and Britain are showing how social housing can be more nimble and responsive
Essays & Reportage
Cities for cars, tollways for investors
Peter Spearritt
30 November 2017
Although Australia’s major capitals are changing fast, cars are still calling many of the shots
Essays & Reportage
Can cities and towns make us healthier?
Melissa Sweet
3 August 2017
With state and federal governments overwhelmingly focused on big-ticket medical spending, can local initiatives fill the gaps?
National Affairs
One census, three stories
Tim Colebatch
5 July 2017
Dig a little deeper, and the figures tell us unexpected things about more than one Australia
National Affairs
Dealing cities in
Peter Mares
3 July 2017
Malcolm Turnbull’s efforts to bring the federal government back into urban policy will be put to the test in Western Sydney
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