Boomtown 2050

SOCIAL FORECASTING, FUTUROLOGY. AUSTRALIAN. Perth, a city of 1.5 million relatively complacent people, is changing at a phenomenal rate. Latest predictions are that the city will grow from 1.5 million people to 4.2 million by 2056. To meet this increase the entire city and its infrastructure needs to double in the next 4 decades. This will have huge consequences for the culture and ecology of the city: Perths long term survival is at stake. The book is designed to help the community visualize the results of planning decisions and get everyone involved in the debate about how the city should grow. This is an important and timely book for Perth, but it also presents a model piece of research that could be emulated in any city experiencing rapid change.

This insightful book showcases a range of design, planning and policy responses to ageing populations and the built environment from across the rapidly changing and dynamic Western Asia-Pacific region. Its chapters demonstrate a clear and increasingly convergent preference for and promotion of ageing in place and the need for collaborative efforts to facilitate this at various scales through policy and practice.

The Americas and Oceania: Assessing Sustainability provides extensive coverage of sustainability practices in two regions linked culturally and historically by their relative isolation before the Columbian exchange, by their colonization after it, and by the challenges of pollution, resource overuse, and environmental degradation. Regional experts and international scholars focus on environmental history in areas such as the South Pacific islands, now particularly threatened by rising ocean levels due to climate change, and on countries whose governments and corporations can play a major role in promoting or discouraging sustainable choices: Brazil, an emergent power on the world stage; the United States, the world's third most populous nation; and New Zealand, seemingly on its way to becoming an enviable model of sustainable development.

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) planning principles have informed Australian city planning for over two decades. As such, policy makers and planners often unquestioningly apply its principles. In contrast, this book critiques TOD and argues that while orientating development towards public transport hubs makes some sense, the application of TOD principles in Australia has proven a significant challenge. As a complementary strategy, the book stakes out the potential of Greenspace-Oriented Development (GOD) in which urban density is correlated with upgraded green spaces with reasonable access to public transport. Concentrating urban densification around green spaces offers many advantages to residents including ecosystem services such as physical and mental health benefits, the mitigation of extreme heat events, biodiversity and clean air and water. Moreover, the open space and leafy green qualities of GOD will ensure it resonates with the lifestyle aspirations of suburban residents who may otherwise resist urban densification. We believe in this way, that GOD could be an urban dream that befits the challenges of this 21st century.

In our fast-changing urban world, the impacts of social and environmental change on children are often overlooked. Children and their Urban Environment examines these impacts in detail, looking at the key activities, spaces and experiences children have and how these can be managed to ensure that children benefit from change. The authors highlight the importance of planners, architects and housing professionals in creating positive environments for children and involving them in the planning process. They argue that children‘s lives are becoming simultaneously both richer and more deprived, and that, despite apparently increasing wealth, disparities between children are increasing further. Each chapter includes international examples of good practice and policy innovations for redressing the balance in favour of child supportive environments. The book seeks to embrace childhood as a time of freedom, social engagement and environmental adventure and to encourage creation of environments that better meet the needs of children. The authors argue that in doing so, we will build more sustainable neighbourhoods, cities and societies for the future.

Aimed at students and instructors, alongside practitioners and researchers, in landscape architecture and its allied disciplinary fields, this book provides the reader with a clear framework of theoretical and practical considerations for interpreting and designing post-industrial landscapes. One of the biggest contemporary challenges currently faced in the profession is how to effectively understand and work with the transformational possibilities of post-industrial landscapes, while negotiating significant spatial challenges, such as degradation and fragmentation. Transformative Ground: A Field Guide to the Post-Industrial Landscape presents a range of theoretical perspectives and practical approaches, offering a broad scope of contemporary design strategies that deal with post-industrial landscapes. Through a series of thematic chapters, allied with precedents from leading design offices, this book identifies how the context of post-industrial landscapes has compelled shifts in fundamental ideas that underpin landscape design. As a richly illustrated account of this transformative ground, this book provides a must-have guide to help you reimagine the post-industrial landscape.

The Urban Forest in the Age of Urbanization seeks to reflect on the connotation of urban forestry in line with related emergent holistic theories. Today, much of the planet is urbanised and planners debate “Planetary Urbanization”, economists discuss “The Global City”, ecologists describe the planet’s biodiversity hotspots, and climate scientists warn of a “global” crisis. We might think therefore that focusing on forestation approaches at the Urban and peri-urban “edge”, might be reductionist. However, if the city is everywhere, and everything is a city, if the urbanised world now is a chain of metropolitan areas connected by places and corridors of communication, then what is not urban? And above all, which forests are not urban forests?Starting from the dualism between city and forest and its evolution towards holism, the book seeks to create a framework of dialectical approaches. The case studies included analyse a wide range of urbanisation “processes” to review the practical approaches of urban forestry, in line with the global crisis of the era of globalisation, when climate change, population growth, implosions and explosions of urbanisation, lack of arable land and food are unavoidable.

Contemporary Issues in Australian Urban and Regional Planning looks at a wide range of planning issues in Australia from the city to the regional scale, covering key topics in sustainable development and planning including economic, social, environmental and governance perspectives. It also covers issues of climate change, population and urbanization trends, economic competitiveness and the Quadruple Bottom Line (QBL) Sustainability agenda. The book is organized around three key elements: Pressures and Principles of development and planning for sustainability Planning Practice and Processes focused on essential topics including cities, regions, rural areas, and social and environmental issues and Future Processes and Prospects for planning practice and education covering the fundamental issues of assessing sustainability, managing risk, effective participation and evolving approaches to planning education. Contemporary Issues in Australian Urban and Regional Planning is an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of planning and related fields and provides a critical perspective on current issues in evolving natural and socio-economic contexts in Australian planning.