This paper draws on interviews with local council staff and outlines a series of issues they consider important in shaping renewal in their middle-ring suburbs.

Best regarded as an essentially contested concept, ‘sustainability’ gives rise to numerous, sometimes mutually exclusive, interpretations and applications. As exemplified by the Canberra Plan, as discussed in this paper.

Using metaphors mapped from the concept of ‘metabolism’ the students gain insights into how the urban form and the dominant beliefs and values of the inhabitants combine to induce major stresses on the city’s hinterlands.

This paper investigates approaches for predicting patterns of urban growth using tools developed in a geographical information system (GIS) for various planning scenarios.

This paper draws on examples from a wider study of Australian backyards to inform debate on three themes: urban consolidation vs urban expansion; the ecologies of urban areas; the importance of ethnographic and qualitative research methods in studying human/environment interactions in urban areas.