The Melbourne Newsroom

On the 175th birthday of the city of Melbourne, Professor Miles Lewis says the city needs to overcome a long history of 'planning anarchy' to continue to grow.  

"Planners have lost their vision of what planning needs to be.  When town planning was introduced here after World War 2 it was seen to be a rather socialist activity, where you distributed the goods across the community in the best possible way.  Now it's seen to be a task of facilitating development, which it shouldn't be."

The football World Cup in South Africa this year will have economic draw backs, not benefits, for its host country says Professor Richard Tomlinson.

"Facts are negotiable when it comes to the World Cup as it relies on the source of the facts and the context that they're put in.  However, its estimated that South Africa has spent about $4.6 billion on the event."  

Students from the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne are converting old shipping containers into new community centres for the Gudorrka Community and Knuckey’s Lagoon Community in the Northern Territory.  

Australia must do - and more importantly, be seen to do - its bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by transport, says Professor Nicholas Low, Director of the University of Melbourne-based Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT).

Speaking ahead of an international conference organised by GAMUT on "Sustainable Transport in the Asia-Indo-Pacific", Professor Low says Australia needs to work harder to move transport planning in the right direction.

Transport disadvantage and social exclusion will be two of the key themes discussed at a University of Melbourne forum tomorrow afternoon on public transport in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.

Cities Alliance head and former United Nations settlements expert William Cobbett will share his perspective on the challenges of urbanization in the next Melbourne School of Design Dean’s Lecture for 2010. 

Leading Australian architecture firm Jackson Architecture – behind such designs as the MCG’s Southern Stand and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music – will exhibit at the first Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning’s ‘Alumni Retrospective Series’ for 2010.

Three University of Melbourne projects from the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning will help fly the flag for Australia at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s most important architecture event. 

Children living in high rise apartments want more places to play and explore by themselves, leading to more physical activity, a new study has found.

Dwindling resources and radical environmental change is putting access to essential services like food and water at risk, according to the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL).