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Almost all buildings today are built using similar conventional technologies and manufacturing and construction processes. These processes use a lot of energy and produce huge carbon emissions.
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Did you know the Sydney suburb Rosebery was home to the now-endangered green and golden bell frogs? That enormous cauliflowers were nourished by fresh water springs? And that dugong bones were found during excavation for the Alexandra Canal?
The recent 2021 Census revealed “one million homes were unoccupied”.
Chauffeur mums are a well-known Australian phenomenon. A lack of convenient transport options coupled with gendered roles has made many suburban women (and their children) car-dependent, whether they like it or not. And, more often than not, the demands of household chores and child rearing fall more heavily on women.
Outdated plumbing standards are leading to oversized systems and inflated costs for Australian apartment buildings. Their plumbing systems are required to handle demand for water that’s more than three times the actual recorded peak demand, our newly published research shows.
Building materials and construction generate about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Much of these emissions are due to the environmentally unfriendly process of producing ordinary Portland cement, which is widely used in construction materials such as concrete and mortar.
We can all agree humans need to reduce their impact on the environment. And while most of us think of this in terms of daily activities – such as eating less meat, or being water-wise – this responsibility actually extends beyond life and into death.
Humans do a lot of different things to the environment, and there aren’t many natural processes – aside from an asteroid impact or the like – that can rival the scale of change brought on by human activity. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to three experts who study different ways that people are affecting how plants and animals evolve – and how humanity has become the single biggest driver of evolutionary changes on Earth.
Housing took centre stage in Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s first budget this week. Relatively modest but positive steps were made towards tackling Australia’s worsening shortage of affordable social housing, as well as the broader challenge of housing affordability. But parts of the package cast some doubt on the new government’s analysis of the problem and its ambitions to tackle it.
As people age, they often become less confident about walking. Fear of falling can limit the activity of older people, leading them to become isolated.
Whole towns and cities are seemingly locked into more frequent and severe flooding. Business-as-usual development continues despite extreme weather and sea-level rises due to climate change. While some local councils have online mapping, others are still using outdated paper maps.
Private rental housing provides homes, often long-term homes, for one in four Australian households.
