posted 01.13 in resources.
This U.S. documentary from 2008, freely available on Youtube, sells the virtues of the New Urban town centre to the general video-watching population. Unfortunately it uses scare tactics to do so. The first two-thirds warns of impending doom in the...
posted 08.12 in resources.
Wow. I am in the midst of watching a documentary about the suburbs. It isn’t your usual documentary though. Maybe it’s even ground-breaking, and there is a lot of ground being broken out in the neighbourhood of Evergreen, in Cranston,...
posted 07.11 in resources.
This Philip Mark Law film for the Australian Film Commission in 1970 could be a KOYAANISQATSI for the Australian city. A slow beginning pans through tumbledown Victorian buildings. Steadily the modern world is juxtaposed, with jarring musical shifts...
posted 11.10 in news.
Kevin McCloud’s “Slumming it” is currently running on the ABC (available at iview for short whiles). I had been turned off by its name but in the end decided to switch on. The word ‘slum’ has always had a derogatory...
posted 07.10 in news.
Victorian Planning Minister’s long proposed 430 square km extension to the Urban Growth Boundary for Melbourne has just received the “green” light from government, in a rare show of bipartisan unity from the major parties. Go to this...
posted 07.10 in news.
ABC News announced tonight that the Melton North subdivision is proceeding. 1,300 houses spread over 106 hectares, this suburb will be much smaller than Toolern , just East of Melton, where 2,500 rural hectares are currently being suburbanised. The...
posted 05.10 in news.
The Age tells us that Melbourne’s largest display home is open for insection in Point Cook. People aren’t too interested in it and there won’t be any more at that size. It’s 52 whopping squares, or 481 square metres, or 52...
posted 05.10 in news.
Maybe it’s worthy a closer look at the density types in Toolern, as the presence of medium and high densities are something that differentiates it from other ‘burbs in the ‘hood. PSP : Housing density targets will range from...
posted 05.10 in news.
The Growth Areas Authority has revised its planning documents for the 2,400 hectares of new suburbs at Toolern, Melbourne. There is no summary document to explain the reasoning behind the changes, and it seems that what little is good about the plan...
posted 04.10 in news.
Toolern A new $15B city is to be built on the road to Ballarat. It’s called Toolern, and will plug lots of the rural gap between Caroline Springs and Melton. The new town’s footprint, if overlaid onto a map of Melbourne, would stretch...
posted 09.08 in resources.
A debunking of a Washington Post article in 2007 that suggested that suburbs and their cars are good. Pro-automobile advocates love to talk about the ‘right to drive’ or the ‘freedom’ to travel, but they never talk about the freedom to...