The rapid adoption of reverse-cycle vapour-compression air-conditioning systems in residential buildings has produced an escalation in both total and peak electricity demand, necessitating a high level of investment in electricity infrastructure, and raising concerns over energy security and environmental issues. To address these issues, solar air-conditioning systems can be used in dwellings as a demand-side...

The cost of housing in Western Australia has been a recurrent theme in discussions in West Australian homes, businesses and the policy environment. A long held perception is that housing affordability in the state has spiralled out of control, with rents along with house prices escalating at a rate that many households find hard to...

Australia is a suburban society. It has been since Europeans came. Unlike many other urban societies at the time, there was no existing hard infrastructure to provide the essential needs of human urban life - clean water, food, shelter and waste management. These had to be met by individual residents in the emerging cities and...

This paper explores the complexity of suburbs, with a particular focus on the environmental benefits that they offer, to show that in some respects suburbs have been miscast as unsustainable. Suburban infill development in a provincial New Zealand city is then used to quantify the changes in a suburban environment as a result of infill...

In December 1974, when the Monarto Development Commission’s Town Planning Division asked this question, the new town of Monarto – arguably Australia’s last such project to date – had less than a year left as a serious proposition. Monarto was to be South Australia’s second such development after Elizabeth, and it was hoped its creators...