Cities

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GUEST OBSERVER
Cities are complex systems. One visible artery of the city is traffic – the cluster of moving people and flowing goods – and mobility is critical for a city’s life.
We should be concerned about voices pointing to disrupting forces on mobility, such as a Global Summit on Disrupting Mobility recently hosted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The challenges of mobility in the city are well known; roads at capacity, urban growth, peak oil, air quality and climate change are among the prominent ones.
These challenges are already on the verge of disruption if we simply prioritise roads and cars. Melbourne and Sydney roads are at capacity – or beyond – in commuting hours already. There is just no space to cater for the transport demands of population growth of the predicted 50-100%.
We need change, and we need it urgently. But twisting a complex system somewhere, even with the best intentions, may have unintended consequences elsewhere. An evolution might be a better approach than just allowing technology to disrupt.
<h2>Beyond the driverless car</h2>
Much of the hype on disrupting mobility is caused by the emergence of driverless vehicles. But these alone would not reduce the number of vehicles on the road – quite the contrary.
The core of the problem is private car ownership and its inefficient use. Cars are often empty and stationary, and underutilised even on the road. Disrupting mobility is not just about driverless cars, it is multi-faceted.
Alternative means and systems are required to enable choice and comfortable access. This would mean better integration of various means such as fast mass transport, last mile transport and active forms of transport.
The design and integration of these modes require proper designs, regulations and policies, automation and control for safety, smart use of land and space for urban planning, supporting infrastructure, energy-efficient technologies and connecting IT platforms.
One key to reducing private car ownership is a shared transport economy. Shared vehicles, shared trips and shared parking spaces will improve efficiency.
Added to this is the smart integration of different travel modes. This is being attempted with train and bus connections, including multi-modal ticketing. But it should go far beyond these limited efforts – the current exploration of a single smart card for all forms of mobility is an example of this.
Even after the advent of the driverless car, a critical part of the mix will be mass transit. Last mile transport may become a niche for the driverless car. This could take the form of on-demand shuttle buses in areas surrounding a station, and improved bicycle parking and access.
In the US, Lyft has found that transit access makes up a large number of user requests and has recently entered partnerships with transit companies. At this stage, the transit company trip planner includes a link to the Lyft website so that passengers can plan their entire journey.
<h2>The changing bus</h2>
In areas of low travel demand, demand-responsive services are replacing fixed bus services with low patronage. The route and/or time is not fixed and is determined by passengers’ needs. These provide a more affordable service for operators and, depending on the service, more flexibility for passengers.
The Telebus service, operating in Melbourne’s outer east, allows passengers to be picked up or dropped off from their homes, saving a walk to the bus stop.
Flexible commuter buses are also gaining traction in the US. Bridj, in Boston, uses traffic data and historical information about passengers to determine weekly routes and timetables. For some patrons, the service offers a more convenient and reliable trip than using public transport.
However, other entrants in this area, such as Melbourne’s SuitJet and San Francisco’s Leap bus, did not succeed.
<h2>Cities require connections</h2>
Another area of innovation is on-demand delivery of food and other goods. Australian company Swift is attracting attention in the US for its on-demand services, after starting out as a liquor delivery service. Food delivery services are also popular. These services could replace a car trip, which could involve cruising for a parking space, or a walking trip.
However, a vision of door-to-door vehicular travel will have effects on behaviour. Would anyone walk or cycle? Would these activities become simply exercise modes?
Cities are about people. Such a behavioural change would affect the atmosphere of the city by removing incentives for planning for walkability.
Effective transportation is about connecting people and places. Building a connected and integrated system of transportation modes – incorporating “traditional” and “disruptive” modes – is crucial for mobility and livability for future cities.
Stephan Winter is professor of Spatial Information, University of Melbourne, and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephan-winter-13767" target="_blank">here</a>.
Nicole Ronald is lecturer in Computer Science and Software Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/nicole-ronald-206182" target="_blank">here.</a>
Ronny Kutadinata is Research Fellow, School of Engineering, University of Melbourne and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ronny-kutadinata-206188" target="_blank">here</a>. 
All are authors for The Conversation.
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jchancellor-FAypfDUnLy

The challenges disrupting our old ways of getting around Australian cities

Shelter, the future and the problems in between: Briohny Doyle

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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/79997/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">
GUEST OBSERVER
Concerns about the privatisation of public housing estates should not blind us to the benefits of the transfer of public housing to the not-for-profit community housing sector.
The Victorian government’s recently released housing strategy allows for the transfer of the state’s public housing stock to the community housing sector. In a recent Conversation article, Kate Shaw raises an important question – “Why should the state wriggle out of public housing?” – and condemns the transfer of public housing to private developers for redevelopment.
However, if one is really interested in providing more housing for people on low to moderate incomes, the community sector is the way to go – not public housing.
Criticism of community housing provision – in part because of its role in the UK’s liberal market reforms to public housing – neglects the reality. Community housing has underpinned the growth and viability of what many would see as some of the fairest and best-performing social housing systems in the world — those of Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Management and/or ownership of land (including state land) by not-for-profit community groups ensures affordability in perpetuity. It is not lost to the private sector. And it can provide the same security as public housing, but with more innovative management practices, such as co-operatives and housing trusts.
<h2>Not-for-profits serve a range of needs</h2>
Importantly, in the Australian context, the not-for-profit sector offers a range of housing options pitched at different household needs. These include rental housing for households on low and moderate incomes and affordable home ownership.
One reason for this flexibility is that, unlike government instrumentalities, Australian community sector providers can borrow against their assets. In the appropriate financial environment (as exists in the aforementioned social democratic countries), they can then grow their asset base to meet a broad range of housing needs.
And it does appear we are slowly moving toward such a financial environment. In its budget in May, the federal government announced the creation of a National Housing and Finance Corporation (NHFC) to offer community housing agencies access to lower-cost loans. While cheaper loans are not the full financial answer (there is still a substantial yield gap between rents and loan costs), the government has established an expert panel to look at this and report back later this year.
On top of these developments, the recent Productivity Commission draft report on human services, including social housing, recommends growth of the sector including an increase in Commonwealth rent assistance. This is vital for community housing viability.
International trends aligned with the direction of policy reform in Australia suggest the not-for-profit community sector is the future for social housing growth. And this could be done in a way that addresses Shaw’s other concern — the privatisation of public land.
On this, I agree with her. Losing valuable, well-located land to the private sector creates an enormous opportunity cost; once sold it will never be available for future use.
And all we might get out of it is a 10% increase (a few thousand units) in social housing stock. But merely to keep social housing stock at the current 3.5% of all housing (the lowest in Australia) we need at least an additional 31,000 in Victoria by 2031.
<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/images/2017/07/05/expert%206%20july.jpg" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/c_scale,w_580,q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/po.images/2017/07/05/expert%206%20july.jpg" width="700" height="655">
<h2>Making up for decades of neglect</h2>
We do have to acknowledge that decades of underinvestment in Victoria’s public housing has left a legacy of housing estates that have gone well beyond repair and maintenance. And, given their low density, these estates are not achieving their potential in terms of either number or quality of dwellings.
In this context, the fact that the state government has set aside $185 million for its Public Housing Renewal Program is to be welcomed.
Some argue that the less-than-ideal result of a public-private partnership renewal of the old Carlton estate demonstrates that mixing public and private housing is problematic.
But what if it was a mix of public and community-managed rental and ownership housing instead?
The community sector can act in the same role as a private developer (with the state not expecting as big a financial reward), renewing the site with a mix of affordable properties for sale.
Unlike conventional private ownership, these would be covenant-protected to ensure, as with equivalent models in the US, that home ownership remains affordable. While privately owned, the properties remain within the affordable housing stock. A community housing association manages their sale and resale.
Also, the rental housing could be a mix of public and community housing. The focus would be on both high-need deep-subsidy households and moderate-income low-subsidy households. Such transformed estates would be genuinely integrated mixed communities, rather than an uneasy balance of high-need public housing at one end and high-end private housing at the other.
Across Australia, many community housing organisations have demonstrated their ability to deliver successful public housing renewal projects with a mix of households and tenure types. They have done so in an integrated and cohesive way, with privately owned units underpinning the financial viability of the projects.
Transfer of stock to the community sector is an important and valuable process of substantial community benefit, both in its own right and as part of a considered process of estate renewal.
Shaw is right. We need much more social housing, and relying on the private sector to drive the process will have an enormous opportunity cost. This will very likely constrain the capacity for future growth and affordability.
But the leaves in the tea cup suggest that the bulk of future growth should be in the not-for-profit sector. The sector can grasp the opportunities offered by policy reform in a way the public sector cannot, and provide sustained affordability and security.
Terry Burke is a Professor of Housing Studies at Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology and author for The Conversation. He can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/terry-burke-1268" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Community sector offers a solid platform for fair social housing: Terry Burke

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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/76793/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">GUEST OBSERVER
The bond aggregator by itself cannot create a housing development pipeline. It needs co-investment from government to make it feasible.
Following Treasurer Scott Morrison’s outburst in April over the meagre supply outcomes delivered by state housing agencies, cool Treasury heads have prevailed in the budget.
The Commonwealth has not withdrawn its support. Rather, it will negotiate clear targets under a new national agreement, and aim to ring-fence capital investment to improve social housing outcomes. This will now complement the government’s new strategy of issuing bonds to finance affordable rental housing.
Morrison has already set up a taskforce to fine-tune a new bond aggregator, which the budget proposes to roll into a larger National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHIFC). Establishment funding of A$9.8 million and a $1 billion loan facility will get things moving.
This is safe policy territory and sound strategy. The social housing sector and all major parties have supported housing bonds and a special-purpose intermediary since the 2015 report of the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability. It demonstrates the explicit, long-term government commitment required to shore up investor confidence.
If the taskforce gets the design right, the intermediary will provide lower-cost, longer-term financing for affordable rental housing. This will mean public investment goes further and is recycled to build more affordable homes for those who need them.
Yet investment-ready social housing still has several requirements for success. These include good transparent planning, equity, revolving loans, and adequate revenue from rents and rent assistance. Appropriate national regulation is vital, which is also flagged in the budget.
However, without conditional public co-investment and good regulation, the government will miss its own targets and under-invest in this much-needed social infrastructure.
<h2>No silver bullet – feasibility depends on subsidy</h2>
The bond aggregator by itself cannot create a development pipeline. It needs co-investment from government to make it feasible.
Community housing providers can only afford the amount of debt that modest rents and rent assistance can support. Modelling for a 2016 feasibility study found that about 45% of the cost of dwelling construction can be raised when operated as social rental housing, even with the lower rate and longer term of finance the aggregator can provide.
Thus deeply affordable social housing will always require public subsidies. This takes the form of grants, soft loans, or land allocated via public land corporations or planning requirements.
<h2>Policy orphan finally gets Treasury’s attention</h2>
Writing for The Conversation, Chris Martin and Hal Pawson summed up past performance:
It should be no surprise that Australia’s social housing has been largely static for 20 years. Everything we know about the system tells us it is not funded to even cover the costs of its ongoing operation, let alone growth to meet the needs of an expanding population. Aside from a one-off boost under the 2009 federal economic stimulus plan, social housing has been on a starvation ration for decades.
National governments in Austria, the UK, France and the US have made up for shortfalls in social housing funding with good regulation and by attracting private finance since the 1990s. They have done so by establishing a market for special-purpose bonds, government guarantees, special intermediaries, tax credits and supporting circuits of investment in affordable and social rental housing.
These measures often favour not-for-profit housing providers, but can also revitalise public housing agencies.
Meanwhile, Australian social housing policy turned inward. Governments frittered away their skeletal public housing stocks, narrowly targeted the rest and diverted much-needed capital to reduce operating deficits.
This ultimately bankrupted state housing agencies, which were all but given their marching orders by Morrison in April and earlier by his assistant minister, Michael Sukkar, in February. They ran into strong opposition from community and public housing providers (and the for-profit private sector) – which are eager to play a more active role in social housing supply.
Recently, though, Treasury’s “debt and deficit” doctrine has been making way for a new vision of productive public investment to boost both economic and social development. Investment in social housing should be an integral part of urban plans. It needs to be part and parcel of every infrastructure strategy, Smart City Plan, or City Deal. Bringing housing and infrastructure together under the new NHFIC could help, within an overarching plan with strategic housing targets.
Co-operative leadership and national funding remain essential. Morrison and Sukkar seem to appreciate that a coherent and efficient approach to setting standards and creating funding certainty will induce financial institutions to invest in social housing.
<h2>Wanted: dedication to social housing growth</h2>
Investment not only reduces public housing waiting lists most directly, it ensures fairer allocation of housing opportunities. At the same time it provides a shock-absorber for the economy, especially as it transitions from the resources boom, to build more productive and resilient cities.
Social housing creates jobs for the construction industry and uses local commodities, with many social and economic spin-offs.
Well-designed social housing, such as revitalised public and green community housing mixed with a range of housing types, provides a tangible infrastructure asset and a vital community service. It’s especially important for tenants who are elderly, have disabilities, or were formerly homeless.
Emergency services, health care and homelessness shelters, among others, bear the much higher costs of neglecting these households. This ultimately harms both the budget bottom line and our social fabric.
Morrison has directed the Affordable Housing Implementation Taskforce to report on the bond aggregator in July. The taskforce comprises three senior (former) public servants. They are advised, as usual, by one of the big four accounting firms.
It must be hoped their work contributes towards a broader vision for social housing growth. It should draw on international best practice as well as AHURI’s advice on an Affordable Housing Finance Corporation. Government policy needs to embrace the notion that social housing is not only good investment but essential social infrastructure.
Julie Lawson is a Honorary Associate Professor, RMIT University and author for The Conversation. She can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/julie-lawson-108364" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Bond aggregator helps build a more virtuous circle of housing investment: Julie Lawson

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GUEST OBSERVER
Cities and mine sites are complex spaces, which frequently change at a fine scale. This makes them hard to monitor. It is now possible, though, to adapt digital aerial photography to monitor changes as small as 10-20cm in both land use and vegetation in three dimensions.
Interested? Wondering whether that’s feasible? Here’s how you can do it cost-effectively.
Monitoring changes in land cover including vegetation has been routine since digital satellite imagery became available in the 1970s and 1980s. However, satellite images have traditionally been too coarse to monitor complex environments such as cities and mine sites, so aerial data is often acquired. In addition to needing sub-metre resolution, city buildings, mine pits and spoil dumps present challenges for automatically tracking change.
Analogue (film) imagery has been used for aerial monitoring long after digital photographers replaced film in hand-held cameras. This is partly because changing large programs with multiple users is risky.
About ten years ago the authors started working with Landgate, the Western Australian government agency responsible for photographing Greater Perth. Our aim was to see if the advantages of satellite monitoring could be incorporated into Landgate’s annual aerial photograph capture to detect changes in land use and vegetation condition at the sub-metre level.
<h2>How is it done?</h2>
As well as recording red, green and blue bands of light, a near infra-red band was included because vegetation health is best measured at this wavelength. The elevation of the ground, buildings and trees is estimated each time, with a similar resolution as the pixel size making the imagery three-dimensional. Being digital, it is easy to count pixels to quantify changes.
Digital data allows changes over time to be measured with much greater accuracy and efficiency than when comparing film images.
It requires, though, that the images be captured using a standard approach. Standardised images ensure that a change in digital reflectance represents a real change and not a change in the atmosphere, sun angle, camera type or a shadow. Each image also needs to be very accurately aligned.
Reflectance targets were placed on the ground to ensure images were standardised during the acquisition as well as between years.
After trials in 2006 and 2007, summer images were chosen. This was because these met most of the requirements of the consortium of 13 government agencies and non-government organisations that guided the transition from analogue to digital.
Summer is a time when un-irrigated plants are most stressed. This enables monitoring of soil water deficits, groundwater-dependent vegetation and an assessment of irrigation efficiency at the individual-sprinkler scale. There is also less cloud and the impact of recent rainfall is less evident, given that the capture can take several weeks. To limit shadows, capture times were restricted to two hours each side of solar noon.
The area covered by the digital aerial photography each summer (see figure at right) extends beyond that needed to update street directories. It includes groundwater catchments, pine plantations and peri-urban horticulture. This coverage also enabled us to monitor disease impacts on native trees of interest to the consortium.
Technical details can be found in an article in the International Journal of Digital Earth and on the Urban Monitor websit<a href="https://urbanmonitor-beta.landgate.wa.gov.au/project.php">e</a>. The website includes a beta test site of vegetation products maintained by Landgate.
<h2>Many uses, and counting…</h2>
The method has been applied to:
1) Monitoring tree canopy cover in the Greater Perth region for state and local government planners to assess habitat loss and an increase in the urban heat island.
<a href="/images/2016/01/28/image04.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="/images/2016/01/28/image04.png" alt="">
2) Identifying tall trees (even those in low-elevation areas) of importance to roosting birds such as the endangered Carnaby Cockatoos for the Perth Peel Regional<a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/resource/urban-monitor-enabling-effective-monitoring-and-management-urban-and-coastal-environments"> </a>Sustainability Plan. In the image below, tree heights are shown in increasingly “hot” colours, displayed with a sun-shaded elevation model in grey for unvegetated areas. 
<a href="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9746-1tx05wv.jpg" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9746-1tx05wv.jpg" alt="">
 
3) Tree and bush decline in native vegetation in urban areas. The image below shows vegetation losses in red, growth in green and no change in yellow. Non-vegetated areas are uncoloured.
<a href="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9725-zngwfw.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9725-zngwfw.png" alt="">
4) Estimating the effect of urbanisation on urban water balances, especially runoff and recharge. Being three-dimensional, the images can identify where water will flow in new urban catchments.
5) The identification of blocks of land that have been built upon for urban infill planning (shown as red blocks in the image below).
<a href="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9769-1wfyfg4.jpg" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9769-1wfyfg4.jpg" alt="">
6) Drying of groundwater-fed wetlands in the Perth Peel region.
7) The impact of mine or coal seam gas developments on vegetation and runoff. The example below shows predicted flow paths and accumulations of water in a rural landscape after development of coal seam gas sites.
<a href="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9763-1cfenec.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="/images/2016/01/28/image-20160121-9763-1cfenec.png" alt="">
 
The scale of the imagery is especially suited to local government and mining companies reporting to regulators, as it can help separate mine impacts from climate, fire, grazing or other disturbances.
Readers will probably identify further uses for the method – something that we have experienced whenever we give talks on its application.
In the Greater Perth region, digital acquisition using monitoring standards has replaced analogue capture, so it is routine with limited additional costs for acquisition. Not all datasets have been fully processed but they are archived for later reference as funds and needs arise. The data are expected to become increasingly valuable over time because they cannot be acquired retrospectively.
In time it is anticipated that Urban Monitor products similar to Land Monitor will be made available on the Landgate website. Land Monitor has used interpreted satellite imagery to provide change products to West Australian natural resource management agencies for more than 15 years for an annual cost of about $80,000.
This shows that good monitoring need not be expensive if thoughtful acquisition methods are used and products are developed to meet multiple user needs.
 
Don McFarlane is research scientist; Groundwater Hydrology Team Leader, CSIRO and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/don-mcfarlane-2324" target="_blank">here</a>.
Peter Caccetta is research scientist, CSIRO, and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-caccetta-221621" target="_blank">here</a>. 
Both are authors for The Conversation.
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The planner's new best friend

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Crawling along in low gear, Melbourne drivers often comfort themselves with the thought that at least they’re not in Sydney, where “everyone knows” traffic delays are longer and even more frustrating. Sorry, Melburnians, but you’re kidding yourselves.
New analysis for a forthcoming report by the Grattan Institute debunks several myths about traffic congestion in Australia’s biggest cities – including the conventional wisdom that Sydney-siders are doing it tougher.
Sydney may have <a href="">340,000 more people</a> and an enormous harbour constricting movements from one part of the city to another, but Melbourne is pretty much on a par when it comes to congestion.
<h2>Twin pictures of congestion</h2>
Chart 1 shows the delay that an average CBD commuter endures in Sydney and Melbourne, compared to how long it would take to do the trip in the early hours of the morning when the only constraints are traffic lights and speed limits.
<a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/175777/area14mp/file-20170627-21898-1mga1nj.PNG"><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/175777/width754/file-20170627-21898-1mga1nj.PNG" alt=""></a> Data for more than 300 routes travelling to and from the CBD were collected 25 times each day over about 12 weeks between March and June 2017. Grattan analysis of Google Maps data, Author provided
In the morning peak, an average Melbourne CBD commuting trip takes close to 70% longer than it would in the middle of the night. The 11-kilometre trip from Brighton takes an extra 13 minutes, and the 30km trip from Caroline Springs an extra 20 minutes. The 9km from Coburg take an extra 14 minutes, while the 17km from Doncaster take an extra 20 minutes.
It’s similar in Sydney. The average morning commute to the CBD takes 50-60% longer than it would in the middle of the night. The 40km trip from Liverpool takes an extra 32 minutes, while a trip of similar length from Blacktown typically takes an extra 20. Driving the 17km from Manly takes an extra 21 minutes, while the 7km trip from the airport takes an extra 12.
It doesn’t take quite as long to get home from the city. In the afternoon peak, an average trip takes up to 60% longer than it would in the middle of the night. But it’s harder to avoid the delay: peak “hour” is much longer in the evening than in the morning. Any time from 3.30pm to 6pm you can expect your trip to take at least 40% longer.
We found these patterns by analysing Google Maps estimates of travel times for more than 300 routes across Sydney and Melbourne. The data include 25 travel-time estimates every day for several months. This includes commutes to the CBD and other employment centres, important freight routes, shorter trips within the inner, middle and outer rings, and cross-city trips.
<h2>So which drivers have the worst run?</h2>
Here’s a finding that might surprise drivers who have to crawl over the West Gate Bridge to get to and from work: the worst place to commute to Melbourne’s CBD is not from the rapidly growing western suburbs, but from the northeastern suburbs. That probably won’t surprise you if your commute includes the Eastern Freeway.
Chart 2 shows the typical delay for commuters coming to Melbourne’s CBD from the southeast, northeast, north, south and west. The northeast is the stand-out worst performer, as those who live in Doncaster, Heidelberg and beyond know all too well. Interestingly, people commuting from the west face much more modest delays.
<a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/175779/area14mp/file-20170627-29117-4py4yq.PNG"><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/175779/width754/file-20170627-29117-4py4yq.PNG" alt=""></a> Grattan analysis of Google Maps data, Author provided
Sydney does not have a single region where residents can so clearly expect bad city commutes. That doesn’t mean there’s no congestion. And neither does it mean that it’s just people going to the CBD who are caught up in the commuting tangle. It’s also all the freight vehicles, tradespeople, students going to school or uni, people going to appointments in business hours, and others going elsewhere but still caught up in the snarl of traffic.
Chart 3 shows a selection of trips that don’t include the Sydney CBD but do have delays, with the size of delay depending on the direction of the trip.
<a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/176325/area14mp/file-20170630-26970-1r9bzya.PNG"><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/176325/width754/file-20170630-26970-1r9bzya.PNG" alt=""></a>
In Sydney, the delay depends more on the direction of the trip, than what side of the city commuters are driving from. Grattan analysis of Google Maps data, Author provided
The how-long-does-it-take-you-to-get-to-work story involves more than roads. One-quarter of Sydney commuters and 18% of Melbourne commuters <a href="https://bitre.gov.au/publications/2014/files/is_059.pdf" target="_blank">use public transport</a>, and these figures are much <a href="https://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/01/21/why-do-commuters-drive-to-work-instead-of-taking-transit/" target="_blank">higher for commuters to the CBD</a>. Nonetheless, around <a href="https://bitre.gov.au/publications/2016/files/BITRE_yearbook_2016_statistics_full_report.pdf" target="_blank">eight of every ten kilometres of travel</a> by Sydney and Melbourne residents is by car.
What happens on our roads affects the daily lives of most city dwellers, as well as the social and economic rhythms of the city. The Grattan Institute will publish a fuller analysis of congestion in coming months, to help governments make the best use of our transport networks – and reduce your time on the road.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/marion-terrill-169480" target="_blank">Marion Terrill</a>, Transport Program Director, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/grattan-institute-1168" target="_blank">Grattan Institute</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/stuck-in-traffic-busting-melbourne-versus-sydney-myths-and-identifying-the-worst-commutes-79343" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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Busting Melbourne versus Sydney myths and identifying the worst commutes

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GUEST OBSERVER
The resignation of Australia’s first minister for cities and the built environment after just 99 days is a setback for federal leadership in these areas. Yet enough momentum and goodwill have been generated to keep the flag flying. The greatest hope is that an urban consciousness in national public policy will be lodged permanently.
Even before state planning ministers assemble within months to hammer out the ground rules for federal engagement, the mutual understanding will be that the states are Australia’s primary urban governments.
In August 1945, a conference of Commonwealth and state ministers in Canberra confirmed that arrangement. The states rejected a generous proposal for a central planning bureau to provide advice, training and information resources plus cover half the costs of employing technical experts to assist local authorities.
Prime Minister Ben Chifley’s summation sealed the fate of the bold reconstruction initiative hatched by Nugget Coombs: the matter ought to be left to the states.
<h2>How cities became ‘orphans of public policy’</h2>
Regardless, the federal government has retained a periodic interest in cities, with mixed outcomes. Historically, most initiatives have been linked to Labor.
Gough Whitlam’s Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD, 1972-75) injected valuable locational and equity perspectives into policy. However, a big-spending command, control and co-ordinate mission proved problematic.
Bob Hawke delivered AMCORD and Green Street as best-practice guidelines for residential development. This helped change the culture of the development industry. But the Hawke government’s main legacy, driven by Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, was Building Better Cities, centred on strategic housing, environmental and infrastructure projects.
Paul Keating gave us the Urban Design Task Force (1994) and the Australian Urban and Regional Development Review (1995) of federal programs for infrastructure, planning and transport.
By the time of the Rudd-Gillard governments, an actual National Urban Policy emerged to guide public intervention and private investment. Its quartet of themes remain widely accepted: productivity, sustainability, liveability and governance.
The Coalition’s contributions have been more muted.
The enduring love affair was between Robert Menzies and Canberra. The capital received extraordinary largesse to become an exemplar of modernist architecture, design and planning. Most everywhere else was ignored.
Late in his term, William McMahon instituted a National Urban and Regional Development Authority, which lingered as a commission for new cities alongside DURD.
The Fraser government wound down Labor’s perceived excesses but still found a rationale for inquiries into the Commonwealth and the urban environment (1978) and a pioneering study on urban environmental indicators (1983). John Howard offered various charters and best practice initiatives, notably the Development Assessment Forum (1998).
Cities have been called “orphans of public policy”, so the decisive and acclaimed entry of the Turnbull government into the fray is remarkable. Malcolm Turnbull has the credibility, nous and drive to supplant Tony Abbott as the first infrastructure prime minister. In a sense, Abbott ignored cities – except to champion motorways – at his peril.
<h2>Turnbull invigorates urban agenda</h2>
Turnbull’s transformative move has been to declare officially what has been long known: cities are “crucibles” of innovation and enterprise.
Productive cities are smart, innovative, prosperous and great places to live. Less productive cities are accordingly less liveable, sustainable and connected.
While a new cities minister will lay claim to one ear of Turnbull, wife Lucy will command the other. A former lord mayor and “city expert” adviser to the COAG Reform Council, she chairs both the Committee for Sydney and the NSW government’s new Greater Sydney Commission.
The problems of Australian cities are well documented: density (the drawbacks of low joined by the challenges of high), transport (needing greater mass transit connectivity and walkability while reducing dependence on cars), housing (affordability and variety), inequality (divided by income, health and mobility), the spatial mismatch between jobs and homes, fractured metropolitan governance, open space, environment, heritage, design.
Australia’s “broken cities”, to quote the Grattan Institute report City Limits, are "caught between the three tiers of Australian government, hardly registering on the agenda of many politicians".
<h2>What to do next?</h2>
The solutions are wickedly challenging. In December, the then-minister, Jamie Briggs, distilled the state of play in his keynote address to the State of Australian Cities conference. The Commonwealth was not set to take over from the states, create new bureaucracies or become a “planning approver”. Rather, there would be better co-ordination between federal agencies and across all tiers of government.
Briggs flagged collaboration with the private sector, researchers, and the wider community. He spoke of the need to secure “better outcomes” and “measure our performance”. The gaze was on the long run and locking in agreed planning and co-ordination of projects.
Smarter, more flexible and adaptable financial arrangements will come into play. The buzzwords “value uplift” and “value capture” pinpointed the need to extend federal intervention beyond cash handouts. This is code for differential tax increment financing to tap into revenues generated by rising property prices from infrastructure improvements.
Labor’s National Urban Policy framework will need to be revisited. The way forward is through intergovernmental agreements that link specified outcomes to robust and streamlined planning systems. These will need to connect up issues of housing, employment, environment and infrastructure.
This agenda has been taking shape for some time. Bellwethers include:
<ul>
<li>Productivity Commission inquiries into planning, zoning and development assessments (2011) and public infrastructure (2014), and the Harper review of competition policy (2015), all highlighting the need to reform land-use planning;</li>
<li>Tomorrow’s Cities Today (2014) by Consult Australia;</li>
<li>the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC) report, Investing in Cities (2015), aimed at “maximising the benefits created by the world’s most urbanised nation”; and</li>
<li>COAG’s review of metropolitan planning strategies to ensure matching and orderly infrastructure provision (2011).</li>
</ul>
Several seers lit the ideological torches for the new infrastructural urbanism. Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City is a paean to proximity, density and light-handed regulation. In The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida broadcast the competitive advantage of attracting human capital. Enrico Moretti’s The New Geography of Jobs (2012) demonstrated the multiplier effects of urban “brain hubs”.
In the UK, the Cameron government’s City Deals policy highlights an attractive model of bespoke multi-target programs for competing cities. It is aimed squarely at economic growth underpinned by enhanced tax revenue from development.
While the cities component of the new portfolio is crystallising publicly, what of the built environment? In exploring a model that works for the Coalition another exemplar is the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (1999-2011). Although emasculated in a purge of quangos, it was widely respected as an adviser and advocate for quality design and valuation of the public realm.
Run leanly and through a similar mix of design reviews, publications, research forums and an adviser network, an Australian adaptation could assume a timely leadership position. It would be a vehicle for many voices to be heard, not just the property and development sector. Turnbull tacitly recognised the value of this when he announced that his summer reading included Marcus Westbury’s primer for DIY urbanism, Creating Cities.
Quite a few federal activities might be connected under this umbrella. These include State of Australian Cities reporting; the National Australian Built Environment Ratings System (NABERS); various environmental policies including management of national and Commonwealth heritage lists; leased federal airports, which have become development hotspots; the National Capital Authority; the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN).
Given the importance of evidence-driven policy, it is unfortunate that urban-related research is under-supported by the Australian Research Council. It barely registers in its research priorities.
Urban policy is complex because it potentially links up and intrudes into many arenas of government. The cities ministry and the new interdepartmental taskforce sit within the Environment Department overseen by Greg Hunt. As shadow minister for cities, Anthony Albanese has warned of “convoluted administrative arrangements”, with five ministers sharing responsibilities for cities and infrastructure policy.
Former professor of public administration Martin Painter identified the “impossibility of urban policy” because of insoluble administrative problems flowing from taking too comprehensive a position. His advice was “the simpler the better”.
Briggs' successor will likely continue down the same path with a discussion paper, a national forum with the prime minister speaking, and that meeting of planning ministers to talk through approaches and decisions. There are now huge expectations that a new urban age has dawned in Australia.
 
Robert Freestone is professor of planning, Faculty of Built Environment, UNSW Australia and author for The Conversation. He can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/robert-freestone-168551" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Hopes of a new age for urban policy survive minister Jamie Briggs' fall

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GUEST OBSERVER
When Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister last September and announced there was to be a minister for cities and the built environment, many were pleasantly surprised. 
The Coalition’s 2013 election platform made the briefest mention of cities and proposed only a program of investment in urban roads and national highways to ease congestion. It seemed then that the traditional antipathy towards urban policy from the conservative side of politics was set to remain.
So, Turnbull’s innovation agenda, which included this new focus on cities, was welcomed in many quarters. Perhaps now we would see concerted policy attention given to the places where most of us live, work, study and play.
Over the next few months, the new cities minister, Jamie Briggs, undertook extensive consultation and discussion around Australia. But this process had not produced a clear statement of government policy by the time he was obliged to offer his resignation, just after Christmas.
One of Briggs’ last major speeches was to the State of Australian Cities conference in December. He described his ambition for greater co-ordination among federal agencies and between levels of government and greater collaboration between government, the private sector and urban researchers.
However, apart from Briggs’ passing references to trying to capture some of the value uplift associated with public investment in infrastructure, we were none the wiser about the substance of an embryonic national urban policy.
A new broom?
Briggs’ successor is Angus Taylor, who enjoys the slightly different title of assistant minister for cities and digital transformation, sitting within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet rather than in Greg Hunt’s Environment Department.
With Taylor having been in the job for less than a month, we have not yet heard much detail of his views on cities and urban policy. But he has said:
I’m the assistant minister for cities, not the assistant minister for inner cities, or even capital cities …
And to fulfil his “deep belief that consultation and proper public debate gets to wise outcomes”, what advice might we offer to the new assistant minister? Here are some suggestions to be going on with.
Dear assistant minister,
Congratulations on your appointment. Many who recognise the importance of cities to how well we live are pleased that the prime minister continues to show a commitment to building policy in this field. We trust that you will be able to lead this process and overcome the policy neglect that has been evident for some time.
You have rightly pointed out that Australian cities are many and varied and although we do not have a clear definition of what constitutes a city, we should not be preoccupied with what happens within the inner areas of some of our capital cities.
No doubt you will be aware that previous federal urban policy initiatives have tended to focus on what happens within our cities and this is important. But too often it has been at the expense of any serious attention to the overall pattern of settlements across the country and to relations between cities.
Now would be a good time to rectify this and develop a truly national policy on settlements and cities.
We expect that Australia’s population will double by 2075 if current assumptions about fertility, life expectancy and migration hold. While the validity of these assumptions will always provoke public debate, it is unlikely that the population will not continue to grow.
It is incumbent on the federal government to think about where this growing (and ageing) population will live and work; you have a critical role in stimulating this thinking.
You might take the view that the market is best placed to anticipate where people want to live and provide accordingly. But those decisions have consequences, especially for the provision of infrastructure such as roads, public transport, schools and hospitals.
And you have already indicated that the distribution of economic activity – and especially access to local jobs – is one of the biggest challenges facing Australia’s cities, large and small.
A national spatial plan is needed
Local councils and state and territory governments already prepare spatial plans for their areas. These aim to anticipate where growth might occur and what its wider impacts might be. These plans and strategies enjoy varied success, but few would argue that we should abandon spatial planning.
There are no obvious reasons, therefore, why the federal government should not also develop a spatially-aware national policy for settlements. This does not mean that you, minister, should be responsible for approving state or local government plans, or for signing off on development approvals – unless they were of national significance. But it might mean that you are able to build a national perspective within government on where growth should be encouraged or discouraged and where government investment in critical infrastructure might be targeted.
The government already has a plan for northern Australia. You have the opportunity to help it develop a settlement and investment plan for all of Australia.
This will not be an easy task. Many believe the federal government has no role to play in the planning and governance of our cities. This overlooks the fact that your colleagues in government make decisions every day that have spatial implications and urban impacts.
The new policy commitment to cities that you embody provides an important opportunity to make these processes more explicit and to plan accordingly. I wish you all the very best in this difficult task.
 
Paul Burton is professor of Urban Management and Planning &amp; Director, Urban Research Program, Griffith University and author for The Conversation.
He can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/paul-burton-5155" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Memo to the cities minister: what needs to be done

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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/68984/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">
GUEST OBSERVERS
Cities are the epicentres of human activity. They cover less than 2 percent of the earth’s land surface but generate about 70 percent of GDP and house more than half the human population. The importance of cities is only going to increase in coming decades as another 2.5 billion people move to urban centres. 
This intense production and consumption requires huge quantities of natural resources. Cities account for more than 60 percent of global energy use, 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 70 percent of global waste. Current practices are depleting the Earth’s finite resources, changing its climate and damaging its natural ecosystems. With our planetary life support system in the red, we need to put cities on a serious resource diet.
<h2>Resources efficiency in the New Urban Agenda</h2>
The New Urban Agenda adopted at the Habitat III conference outlines a vision for sustainable urban development. These global guidelines, along with the related UN Sustainable Development Goals, recognise the need to use resources more efficiently. 
Habitat III included a number of sessions on resource efficiency and associated tools and initiatives. Organisations such as UNEP, UN-Habitat and the European Commission and its research centres typically led these events. The New Urban Agenda includes many references to efficiency and reduced consumption in cities. 
We must now act urgently to translate words into actions. This will ease pressure on ecosystems and produce a range of co-benefits, including health, wellbeing and resilience. 
<h2>How do we create more resource-efficient cities?</h2>
Cities use resources directly, such as burning fossil fuels for electricity and transport. However, indirect uses, such as water for growing food crops, are much wider-reaching. 
It can be overwhelming to consider the resources used for all goods, processes and infrastructure in cities. Yet it is possible to measure this using a systems approach. Instead of considering components in isolation, the entire city is considered as an open system, connected to others. 
This perspective ensures a much broader understanding of complex relationships between scales, resource flows, the built environment, socio-economic factors and ecological outcomes.
There are tools that embrace a systems perspective. For example, the urban metabolism approach considers cities as ecosystems, across which flows of resources (such as energy or water) are measured. Life cycle assessment measures resource use through the entire production, consumption and degradation process of a good or service.
These approaches have been successfully applied at various scales such as cities, neighbourhoods and buildings. This reveals that we are using more resources than shown by traditional assessment techniques (see this example on building energy efficiency regulations). 
But measurement without action has no impact on the ground. How can these tools be used to transform our cities?
Many initiatives are targeting urban resource efficiency. The circular economy paradigm is a good example, where materials are reused, upcycled and recycled. It demonstrates that waste is a human concept and not an inherent property of cities. Waste does not exist in natural systems. 
A range of projects by UNEP, the European Commission and other organisations support local resource efficiency initiatives and encourage local governments to implement related regulations. Blogging, data visualisation and disseminating research all help promote the adoption of resource efficiency concepts. In addition to the pioneering work of groups such as metabolism of cities, the uptake of open data is helping with this.
<h2>Learning from those who already live on less</h2>
Informal settlements provide interesting lessons in resource efficiency. Construction materials in these settlements are typically not very durable. However, because they are in short supply, they are constantly reused or repurposed, almost never discarded. 
Other residents often reuse replaced materials, such as metal sheets, or store them for later use. This practice avoids additional resource use to produce new materials.
Although informal slum areas are often the focus of “upgrading” and improvement, lessons learnt in these settings can enhance material flow management and reduce waste elsewhere in cities.
<h2>Co-benefits of resource efficiency</h2>
More resource-efficient cities tend to result in better health outcomes. For instance, encouraging walking, cycling and public transport instead of car use can reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and improve population health through increased physical activity. 
Food systems that promote consumption of fresh, local produce can benefit both the environment and nutrition. Energy-efficient housing reduces energy and water use and can improve occupants’ health at the same time.
Resource efficiency can also contribute to urban resilience. Nature-based solutions use relatively few non-renewable materials to increase resilience to environmental change and natural disasters. For example, a park can be designed to be flooded during storms or a tsunami, reduce the urban heat island effect, support urban ecosystems and provide areas for community activities, recreation and urban agriculture.
Efficiency can also ensure that redundancy – a core principle of resilience – is built into urban systems. This means resources can be repurposed in the event of an unanticipated shock or stress. For example, during the recent blackout in South Australia, a household with solar battery storage was able to maintain power for 12 hours “off grid”. 
<h2>Working together for better solutions</h2>
Although these steps move cities in the right direction, more action from governments, the private sector and civil society is needed to transform our growing urban footprints.
Focusing solely on resource efficiency may neglect opportunities to generate co-benefits across sectors and will not provide robust solutions. We need to look at the entire city as a system and work together, across all disciplines, with effective and strong governance structures that support integrated policy definition and long-term implementation. If we don’t, we might simply shift a problem from one area to another, increase resource demand elsewhere, or create social divisions and tensions. 
Strong leadership, political stability, effective institutions and awareness-raising among citizens are vital factors for success. Urban resource efficiency is critical, but it should be considered along all other pressing issues highlighted in the New Urban Agenda.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/andre-stephan-14991" target="_blank">André Stephan </a>is postdoctoral research fellow, University of Melbourne.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/alexei-trundle-11956" target="_blank">Alexei Trundle</a> is PhD candidate, Australian-German Climate &amp; Energy College, University of Melbourne.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dave-kendal-180942" rel="author">Dave Kendal</a> is researcher, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (ARCUE), University of Melbourne.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/hayley-henderson-288490" target="_blank">Hayley Henderson</a> is PhD candidate in Urban Planning, University of Melbourne
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/hesam-kamalipour-288498" rel="author">Hesam Kamalipour</a> is PhD candidate and Research Assistant in Urban Design, University of Melbourne
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/melanie-lowe-288493" target="_blank">Melanie Lowe</a> is research fellow, McCaughey VicHealth Community Wellbeing Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne.
All are authors for The Conversation.
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Our cities need to go on a resource diet

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<h4> </h4>
Marion Terrill, Grattan Institute
Every decade or two, Australia focuses on cities. Leading into the election, the government talked of smart cities, innovative cities, productive cities. But somehow there’s been no trade-off of costs and benefits – just more expensive infrastructure promised in the cities and in the regionstoo.
What’s missing is an explanation of how to support productivity in cities – to help regional people as much as city dwellers themselves. Will it be different this time?
Australia’s prosperity depends on managing cities well. Contrary to our myths about rugged outback pioneers, Australia is highly urbanised, with the biggest share of population in its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, of any developed nation.
This is a good thing for our prosperity.
Cities have more productivity growth than towns, and bigger cities more than smaller ones.
When a city doubles in size, wages, output and innovation per capita more than double. All the benefits of human interaction play out in a more productive and dynamic economy.
But as cities grow, the negative impacts of interaction grow too. These include more pollution and more congestion per person. Governments need to make sure the positive impacts of cities outweigh the negatives.
<h2>Well-connected cities work best</h2>
Cities work best when they actually operate as cities – with all the choice of jobs and employers and goods and services that are available as long as the city is not simply a series of disconnected villages.
The trend to greater urbanisation is set to continue. Even during the mining boom, most economic activity occurred in Australian capital cities, as the chart below shows.
<img src="https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/130319/width754/image-20160713-17976-s9uyng.png" alt="">
Not only are most existing jobs in the cities, so too are most new jobs. More than one-quarter of all jobs are located within five kilometres of the CBDs of the major capital cities. Around 40% are within ten kilometres.
At the same time, people who live in growing cities face real pressures. While job growth is strongest in the CBD, most housing growth occurs on the outer fringes.
This mismatch between where the people are and where the jobs are makes us all less prosperous if people decide it’s too hard to commute to work, or commute to a job that best suits their skills, and instead settle for something that they’re less suited to, or work less, or don’t work at all.
<h2>Better use of the infrastructure dollar</h2>
Governments try periodically to make cities easier to get around, generally by announcing major new transport infrastructure. The growth in the big capital cities has led many people to feel that the transport infrastructure we have is no longer up to the job, and will only struggle more over time.
So the government made plenty of transport infrastructure promises in the election campaign – A$5.4 billion worth.
Yet, of this, only $800 million was for projects that Infrastructure Australia had fully assessed as nationally significant and worth doing. One-quarter was for projects that sit nowhere on Infrastructure Australia’s list – because they’re not nationally significant, because they’re not worth doing, or because nobody has even asked Infrastructure Australia whether they justify public money.
With the federal budget under pressure, a more disciplined approach to investment is vital. The Commonwealth should defer funding for any project until Infrastructure Australia has assessed it as nationally significant and worth doing.
In other words, a large number of campaign promises to fund specific projects should be deferred. If these promises are allowed to override disciplined project assessment – as they have over the last decade – then vested local interests override the public interest.
To institutionalise this approach, the National Land Transport Act and the Federal Financial Relations Act should be amended so that the minister may commit public money only after an independent evaluation of the project and the business case (by Infrastructure Australia, for example) has been tabled in parliament.
<h2>A cost-effective alternative to building roads</h2>
Before building more roads, which will only fill up soon with more cars, there is unexplored potential to improve the use of what already exists.
The existing road network could work much harder for us. Within cities, every driver who sets out onto a congested road imposes costs on all the other drivers through his or her contribution to overall congestion.
Over and above the financial costs of buying a car and filling up with fuel, congestion represents a further cost to our time and convenience. This cost is real, and it’s larger than it needs to be. 
Governments could consider changing this from a time cost to a money cost. In other words, instead of sitting in traffic jams, people could pay to drive on freer-flowing roads. The choices we would face would be: pay to use key roads at peak hour; take our trip at another time; take a different route; or avoid the trip altogether. Some people will take one option; others will take another.
A small change in the number of cars on a stretch of road can make a big change to congestion on that road. The NRMA estimates that when traffic volume drops by 5%, speeds increase by 50%.
The federal government could encourage states to take two small preliminary steps. First, it could require states to include an in-principle application of road pricing on any new urban transport proposal seeking Commonwealth funding. Second, it could provide policy support and funding to any state willing to trial congestion pricing in its capital cities.
With these small and reversible steps, city dwellers and governments could start to find out whether the benefits of congestion charging are worth it. We may find, as the designer of the highly successful Stockholm congestion charge said:
If you do it right, people will actually embrace the change, and if you do it right, people will actually even like it.
To read more from <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-cities-work-better-heres-what-the-government-needs-to-do-61668?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2014%202016%20-%205230&amp;utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2014%202016%20-%205230+CID_c1ac821b0ce0ec6179282c4295468077&amp;utm_source=campaign_monitor&amp;utm_term=How%20to%20make%20cities%20work%20better%20%20heres%20what%20the%20government%20needs%20to%20do" target="_blank">The Conversation, click here.</a>
 
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