Urban living is getting denser, so how safe are you if there is a fire? Asks Fenella Kernebone on Radio Nationals By Design. Hardly a week goes by when the news doesn’t report a fire in a house, or an apartment, and often someone being killed. It is just one year since 11 elderly people...

Brisbane urbanist and transport planner Rachel Smith puts her case for reconsidering transport models - particularly cycling. Rachel is one of four international experts involved in the latest leg of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a think tank, public forum and community centre that's travelling the world.

Since the end of the 19th century people have struggled to build better cities, free of the slums and smoke that were part and parcel of the industrial revolution. Architects saw that the industrialised world was one of enormous possibilities with room for visionary ideas to escape the problems of the day, be it a...

By Design takes a stroll through the streets of Adelaide, investigating how the city has changed since the early 20th century. In 1936 photographer Gustav Hermann Baring celebrated the city in his publication Progressive Adelaide: As It Stands Today. This was both a catalogue of commerce and a labour of love. In 2012 photographer Mick...

Professor Patrick Troy explores the many different approaches of the Commonwealth toward housing policy since the 1940s; from the post war reconstruction initiatives – to questioning the current trend towards densification. His big question is whether affordable housing is a basic right here in Australia – such as education is - and how has this...