Apartments and Housing Affordability
Below is a schematic of current apartment development in a small area of Melbourne just north of the City Centre, next to the Victorian Markets. These are pretty tall; one already under construction is 88 stories. And here is a blog post from our Melbourne friends OhYesMelbourne on another City Centre adjacent development site; Docklands.…
62 Comments Queen St Light Rail
On the day that the Sydney Morning Herald runs an intelligent editorial showing a grown-up attitude to the disruption that comes with important infrastructure builds…
The Herald remains a strong supporter of the light rail project to run through the inner city and eastern suburbs, and urges the Baird government to prosecute the case forcefully for the line.…
Sunday reading 18 January 2015
Every week we read more than we can write about on the blog. To avoid letting good commentary and research fall by the wayside, we’re going to publish weekly excerpts from what we’ve been reading.
Urban kchoze, “Prince Charles’ 10 Principles of of urbanism: typical example of what’s wrong with urbanists/architects“:
In a way, the true descendants of traditional cities aren’t the mummified European cities of Paris and London where all is done to maintain buildings and neighborhoods as they were in the early 20th century, but Japanese cities.…
Reflections on Melbourne and Sydney
2014 was an auspicious year. Whether by cosmic alignment or fickle chance, Easter Monday and Anzac Day fell in the same week, and I was able to shoot off to Melbourne and Sydney for ten days with only three days off from work.…
Learning from Melbourne about selling PT changes
We all know that public transport in Auckland leaves a lot be be desired. The majority of existing and forecast trips happen on the bus and train network. Yet we have a bus network whose routes resemble spaghetti that has been thrown against a map and a train system being run using clapped out, 50 year old, noisy and smelly diesel trains.…
Have your say on where and how Auckland sprawls
As I blogged about a few weeks ago, the Council is considering different options for Auckland’s future “Rural Urban Boundary” in the south – as this area was highlighted in the Auckland Plan as being suitable for significant urban development. Digging through the Council’s website, I have found that they’re now seeking public feedback on the different options.…
Dumb Ways to Die
This has been going around the net for a few days now but still worth posting here in case anyone hasn’t seen it. It is a campaign launched by Melbourne Metro to warn of the dangers of trains. This follows another interesting advertising campaign from Australia where Queensland Rail were promoting rail etiquette.…
How to improve housing affordability?
The Q & A show on TVNZ yesterday morning looked at the vexed issue of housing affordability. Guests Bernard Hickey and Murray Sherwin agreed wholeheartedly that something needs to be done. That’s no surprise really – you have to be living under a rock to not know that housing affordability is a significant problem for Auckland.…
New cycle superhighways for Auckland?
A short while ago I asked for an update on the Auckland Harbour Bridge shared cycleway and walkway from the good folks running the Getacross campaign, Kirsten Shouler sent me the following summary of the project and it’s current status:
Since May 2011, NZTA and the AHB Pathway Trust have committed significant resources to identify and finalise the optimal design for a walking and cycling Pathway on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.…
Auckland’s PT: expensive and poorly used
An Auckland Council report on various aspects of our transport system makes a number of comparisons of Auckland’s public transport system with various cities in Australia, Canada and the USA – as well as Wellington. The cities used to compare Auckland against, including their population and what different technologies their PT system includes, is shown in the table below: These are a good range of cities to compare Auckland’s performance against, in my opinion.…
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