The Melbourne Newsroom

University of Melbourne students will gain valuable experience in urban design, planning and architecture as part of a unique travelling design studio to the Central Pacific island of Kiribati.

Scientists have identified a significant problem with current biodiversity management programs and are urging for a large-scale review into conservation techniques that deal with the effects of climate change. The research is published in the latest edition of Nature.

Michael Trudgeon, the Deputy Director of the Victorian Eco Innovation Lab (VEIL), discusses the Melbourne 2032 project, where university students and design professionals examined just how the city would look in 20 years.

Residences that generate power and purify grey water and farming fish and growing vegetables in a refurbished factory are two of the options being proposed in a new Victorian Eco-Innovation Labs (VEIL) plan to make Broadmeadows and other Melbourne suburbs ‘greener’ and healthier.

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."

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.

The State Government will need to rethink its policy on meeting urban demand as the city reaches five million people, urban management expert Professor Nicholas Low warns.

Fixing the planning system in Victoria requires more than “discussion”, says Dr Carolyn Whitzman.

Increasing Melbourne’s housing density along its major tram lines would help achieve the planning goals of Melbourne 2030 according to Dr Carolyn Whitzman at the University of Melbourne. 

“The plan would add a lot of certainty, because right now decisions are being made council by council about what maximum heights are going to be, while this plan is talking about a maximum height of 8 stories. Studies in Europe and North America show that if you increase density, you also increase services."