Slowly, over the past few years, I've realised that the land use debate in Australia had an international generalisation problem. The economics of zoning and permitting reform on housing, energy and urbanism is global. The context - institutions, politics, history - is not.

12.3% annual housing inflation in Brisbane is absolutely brutal, 8.6% in Perth is barely any better. It's an acute reminder that the contours of the housing crisis aren't uniform - some jurisdictions are doing a lot better than others. www.abs.gov.au/statistics/e...

As you might have heard, I'm honoured to be one of the 4 ACT nominees for Young Australian of the Year! We have an Oscars style award ceremony announce who the ACT Young Australian of the year is (along with the other categories), which you can tune in from 6 pm. m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxV...

2026 Australian Capital Territory Australian of the Year Awards

YouTube video by Australian of the Year Awards

m.youtube.com

What does a proposal for a 55 storey tall tower in Woden Mean? It means that the height limit in Civic is far, far, far too low. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Canberra's tallest buildings would be dwarfed by proposed new skyscrapers

A developer wants to add 17 towers to the Woden town centre with the highest proposed to stand at 55 storeys.

abc.net.au

A slow moving scandal in Canberra at the moment is that we launched a new public transport ticketing system which is *so bad* and unreliable that we no longer have any idea how many people are using transit or how.

Impossible to read this passage in Seeing Like a State and not picture Canberra from above

Unsure about this one, in my view the meta-brain gives you insight into the takes of others and arms you with the rhetorical tools needed to combat or support those takes, but only occasionally does this equate to intelligence.

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Posting is a Faustian bargain where in exchange for degrading your mental health you intermittently get access to a far smarter meta-brain.

@jonobri.com hits the grey elephant in the new city debate - that the vast majority of regional towns and small cities are determined to avoid growing any larger than they currently are.

Jonathan O'Brien@jonobri.com · 12mo ago

No, Australia does not need new cities. My new essay sets the record straight: we have a lot of cities, but we aren’t using them as well as we could be. To make our cities more successful, we have to open up a lot more land for commercial uses to enable agglomeration.

I once went seat of my uber to seat of my flight in 8 minutes flat at Canberra Airport.

Matt Brown@mattbrown.bsky.social · last yr.

Actually, you know what? Let’s stop complaining for a second. QT this with a GOOD airport. Defend that title as much or as little as you like. But let’s hear about airports that don’t suck.

Potentially one of the weirdest things about Australian planning culture is how every planning department in the country is hellbent on ensuring that the public and private realm has the least protection from UV rays in the summer possible in the name of preventing "overshadowing"

One of the weirdest things about ACT Politics is that Light rail stage one ($675 million construction) is often cited as an example of unimaginable fiscal proclivity, when as time goes on we're reminded that it was actually a spectacularly good deal. www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05...

The Block and Grand Designs have nothing on the RBA's billion-dollar renovation horror show

Renovating the Reserve Bank's headquarters is increasingly looking like a disastrous episode of home building show Grand Designs. The key difference? The budget for the horror reno is now north of $1 ...

abc.net.au

The Problem with Urban Planning: a professional silo is gatekeeping our nation's growth. My new essay w/ @inflectionpoints.work The problem at the heart of planning is not political—it's professional. 🧵

If you think you have problems, spare a thought for this Rose Bay homeowner that is complaining that zoning changes have made her and her neighbours fantastically wealthy.

Australian journalism is defined by its low expectations of its readership, and so I'm super excited by @inflectionpoints.work and the potential for a masthead that treats its audience as neither stupid or likely to switch off at the 1000th word.

Inflection Points@inflectionpoints.work · last yr.

Talking about reform is our national ritual: white papers, inquiries, op-eds, post-election promises. But too often, these calls create more process than progress. So we’re launching Inflection Points—a new platform for longform policy writing that aims to cut through.

Talking about reform is our national ritual: white papers, inquiries, op-eds, post-election promises. But too often, these calls create more process than progress. So we’re launching Inflection Points—a new platform for longform policy writing that aims to cut through.

The Metro has ongoing near universal support in Sydney, despite being a fantastically expensive infrastructure project with cost overruns, precisely because it's by far the fastest form of transport. No matter how rich you are in Sydney, the Metro is your quickest option for getting through the CBD.

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈@josephpolitano.bsky.social · last yr.

Not picking on Atrios, but I think this is basically the experience problem of US transit creating a zero sum mindset. Nobody in the US (except *maybe* LA/DC/Seattle) ever sees substantial transit service improvements, so it's treated as practical impossibility even though it's normal outside the US

Tapping the sign worksinprogress.co/issue/the-ho...

The housing theory of everything - Works in Progress Magazine

Western housing shortages drive inequality, climate change, low productivity growth, obesity, and even falling fertility rates.

worksinprogress.co

derek guy@dieworkwear.bsky.social · last yr.

Such quality tailoring is possible because the cost of living is much better in Seoul than, say, New York City or San Francisco. The Assisi team tells me you can get an apartment in Seoul for $1k/ month and dinner for $7. Compare that to $3.5k rent and $25 dinner in San Francisco.

Alright, I'm now back on this website more fully - appreciate firing any accounts I should follow as I attempt to build a timeline.

As a Canberran, my first time in Germany was incredibly confusing, because it would be chilly out on the street and then tropical indoors, easy t shirt weather. The cool climate Australian practice of having winter indoor temperatures only slightly higher than outside (maybe 12-14C) is not standard.

William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social · 2y ago

"just wear layers bro" ok but every indoor environment is a furnace so I have to peel myself like an onion, then reverse peel myself like a tenet-onion whenever I step inside or outside

If the heritage industry wants to be taken seriously, they should stop trying to argue the heritage significance of a petrol station on the West Gate freeway...

There’s a deep tension between the value Australians place on freedom and the desire of some policymakers to restrict urban growth. Governments can control housing, but they can’t control people. The only way we can stop people moving to cities is to make them unaffordable.

Building on this, we collectively have a pretty good understanding on how pre-industrial human society + fantasy elements (magic, dragons, dieties etc) works, but very little on how modern society+magic works. This is why many urban fantasy IPs revolve around strict separation of magic and tech.

Jarrett Walker@humantransit.bsky.social · 2y ago

Why is so much fantasy literature set in pre-industrial worlds? 1. Walkable cities and no sprawl, so plenty of room for both agriculture and nature. 2. Plots move forward when strangers meet on a road or street, but not when they are in cars. Image: “Gondolin” by Ted Nesmith

There's a deeply rooted opposition in Australia to small homes. This recent support for continue the ban on smaller apartments is a continuation of mid 20th century efforts to ban terraces and "Street life" - with peter Harrison famously saying that Terraces were "unfit for human habitation".

Philip Oldfield@sustainabletall.bsky.social · 2y ago

As one of the richest and most resource abundant countries in the world Australia should not accept the normalisation of low quality apartments as a solution to the housing crisis Sophie-May Kerr and I write for the Fifth Estate thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spin...

Absolutely insane that real time tracking of the exact positions of buses in the network is an extremely solved technology and we have this happening for whatever reason.

PTCBR - Public Transport Association of Canberra@ptcbr.bsky.social · 2y ago

This can't be true. It just can't. 1 in 4 Canberra buses are late or early. No sane person would design a system which only works if the buses run precisely on time.

One thing that hasn't been talked about as much is that the nominal surge in rents in most cities in Australia stalled hard in 2024, dropping to around or below inflation everywhere but Adelaide on marginal (asking) rents.