Human Interest

When you look out of your window in the morning, how many trees do you see? Your answer might depend on what suburb you live in. As you go further from the city centre, the amount of tree cover in a suburb…

Via dilaycock

As Sydney house prices skyrocket and traffic congestion worsens, some enterprising workers are moving north to seek the lifestyle they want in Queensland while continuing their careers in NSW.

Via dilaycock

Via dilaycock

Sydneysiders stuck in peak-hour traffic this afternoon will have plenty of time to ponder this: the city has been ranked as the seventh worst in the world for road congestion, sitting just behind the traffic snarl that is Los Angeles.

Via dilaycock

In the lead-up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall?"

Via dilaycock

Sydney and Melbourne have cemented their place on a list of the world's most expensive cities in which to live.

Via dilaycock

"Human proximity in cities has been rising as a result of increases in world population, and rapid urbanisation – the World Health Organisation has said that, while 4 in 10 people were living in cities in 1970, by 2050 this proportion will be 7 in 10; during that 70-year period, the world population is projected to have grown from 3.7 billion to 9.3 billion.

The human population is also growing older than ever. This is a significant factor in the spread of disease, says Cutler, because, "the older you get, the more susceptible you get. The very young and very old are the two major groups that are prone to infections."

Via dilaycock

The City of Melbourne maintains more than 70,000 trees. This website enables you to explore this dataset and some of the challenges facing Melbourne’s Urban Forest.

Via Joanne Wegener

Via dilaycock

Almost 40% of the world’s waste ends up in huge rubbish tips, mostly found near urban populations in poor countries, posing a serious threat to human health and the environment. John Vidal reports

Via dilaycock, GTANSW & ACT

THE battered Great Barrier Reef may yet face its most damaging issue — urban pollution from millions of people.

Via dilaycock, Sally Egan

The growth of these cities will create a host of environmental and health problems.

 

By 2210, the global population is expected to grow from just more than 7 billion to 11.3 billion — with 87 percent of the population living in urban areas, according to a new working paper by researchers from NYU’s Marron Institute.

Most of these individuals will be in what’s now the developing world — creating a host of environmental and health problems.

If projections are correct, these new urban dwellers will require the world’s existing cities to expand six-fold to accommodate triple the residents, Richard Florida wrote in The Atlantic. Plus, the world will need 500 new “megacities” of 10 million or more, he wrote.

Via mrhill

The Chinese government plans to move 250 million people from farms to cities over the next 12 to 15 years.

Via dilaycock