Great catching up with another Vancouver mate, Micheal Mortenson, in Brisbane staying overnight with me. Wow he has had some amazing experiences in the city making world!

Looking forward to charging the Queensland Walks AGM tonight. It’s a small organisation that punches about its weight in promoting and influencing walking and walkability across the State. www.revolutionise.com.au/queenslandwa...

And part of the extensive waterways of the Gold Coast (administered by the Gold Coast Waterways Authority which I have the privilege of being chair its board).

The high rise spine of the Gold Coast, Queensland.

New theory: All sourdough bread slices look like either a rabbit or map of Australia (minus Tassie).

At the ripe old age of 68, I still love sitting at the front of a double decker bus! 😁 (En route to Melbourne airport on the Skybus.)

Walkability: falling in love with places that offer it!

Caught this little beauty from Bittern to Frankston on the Mornington Peninsula this morning:

Kissing canopy over a footpath in Dandenong:

A little Saturday arvo sketch at my brother’s farm.

My thought for the day:

In the centre of Dandenong, one of Australia’s most ethnically diverse communities, is where you’ll find Harmony Square and signs like this:

In Melbourne today. Caught 7 trams and a train and walked 9000 steps to have 6 meetings around the city. What a great place!

Poinciana!

“We tend to treat the car as a closed thing, ignoring its impact on the environment, the climate, & the pedestrian,. We need to think about big cars in the same way that we think about cigarettes: Affecting not just the user, but everyone around the user.” .

As the jacarandas pass their peak purple in Brisbane, it’s time for the poincianas to shine!

Plenty out enjoying a splendid spring day at Plant 4 in Bowden, Adelaide’s biggest urban renewal project. It’s brilliantly done.

Staying with my mate Stephen Yarwood at his place in Bowden, Adelaide’s biggest urban renewal area. It really is world class!

Excellent Keeble Lecture by Professor Jua Cilliers tonight on the essential role of green infrastructure. It’s not optional, beauty & amenity, it’s an essential asset. A real call to action for all of us: “the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it”.

My local school has organised a walking bus this morning to raise funds for the Daniel Morcombe Foundation. It must be an articulated bus as it’s at least 100m long! 😊 Wonderful to see.

Been drawing some faces lately, with mixed success but lots of enthusiasm.

Two cafes and oat piccolos into this wet and delightfully cool Brisbane day and life is good!

Hey @bsky.app , I’m enjoying your platform and its relatively cordial tone. It also is developing good conversations about cities and urbanism, which @brenttoderian.bsky.social has done much to foster. Keep it up!

After a couple of hot muggy days, Brisbane delivered a cracker of a thunderstorm this arvo, complete with some brief but full on hail.

Despite the rhetoric peddled by self interested groups blaming the planning system for the housing crisis, new research by the University of Melbourne shows most Australian rate it very low (2%). Let’s start dealing with the real issues. theconversation.com/most-austral...

Doing the rounds on Australian social media:

“smart policy (like money) can buy happiness – not by making everyone rich, but by making life less precarious for those at the bottom.” Interesting commentary on the relationship between money & well being/happiness. It helps, but in itself is not the answer www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2025...

It’s jacaranda time in Brisbane. They are emblematic here & bloom in a riot of purple sprinkled over the city. The local story for university students is they signal time to study for end of year exams. For everyone else, time to enjoy their vibrancy and the purple carpet as their flowers fall.

In Tasmania, our island state, this week, I visited the town of Sheffield, which has a great story. On its knees in the 1980s, citizens got together & helped transform it into an outdoor art gallery as the “Town of Murals”, with an annual Murals Fest too. Now attracts over 200k visitors a year!

Down at the Gold Coast for work today, got here early for a quick swim at Main Beach and a spot of breakfast at its old school pavilion. The beach is till recovering from Cyclone Alfred earlier this year but is coming back from the hard work being done to restore it.

Will the car based suburbs of the last 60+ years be looked at in the future as an aberration in the history of human civilization?

A colleague I spoke to today said they’d done some work a while ago researching how cities and communities worked before cheap land and power happened so as to work out how to plan them after that finishes. great way to describe new urbanism, I’d say!

Well, Urban Mentors Collective is off and running. Have started the process with 3 people this week (2 in NZ!) and will be in Tasmania next week working with another senior person there. I find it very energising… urbanmentorscollective.com.au

Some quick brush pen faces of varying quality!

Australians lose more money on falling per capita than anywhere else in the world. Sports events are awash with gambling ads (which I find corrosive & offensive) & government has ignored recommendations of its own inquiry to stop this. This 4 Corners tells the story. youtu.be/D4MSHGEw2U8?...

It’s grandkids time!

Today’s incidental urban wildlife spotting was this tawny frogmouth who decided to sit on the road for a while.

Great to meet up with @uytaelee.bsky.social and show him around Brisbane today. What a great contribution he makes to making city planning meaningful to the average punter!

Got out to my alma mater University of Queensland where the Brisbane signature jacaranda trees usually put on a brilliant purple show in October. It was a sign that you had to study for end of year exams. The dry spring meant this year’s showing was ordinary. See this year’s and last year’s below.

It's quite simple: We need hope, not more of the same: “It truly isn’t complicated and never has been. If governments ensure people’s basic needs are guaranteed and affordable – then hope doesn’t seem so hopeless.” www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politic...

SUVs: safer for people with them, way more dangerous to everyone else: youtu.be/nYyutqP48ok?...

Just spent a week with family at Moffat Beach on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane. It is really special, tucked away from main roads, with surf & still beaches, parks, playgrounds, cafes & restaurants a short stroll away. Didn’t wear shoes or use car for a week!

I’m very grateful to live at Rosalie in Brisbane, a short, easy walk from Rosalie village where I visit my local cafe and lots of other places regularly. Often accompanied by my dog Peanut. I reckon people don’t quite get walkability till they have it, then they love it.

This map of the incidence of diabetes type 2 in greater Sydney a few years ago demonstrates what some medical people call “walking deficit order” - where unevenly distributed walkability contributes to poor community health. (Via Tim Williams on LinkedIn)

Today’s test for ChatGPT was 5-8 actions to address the housing crisis. It gave me a useful list but missed anything on improving our building capacity to deliver housing. So I asked about that & it said the shortage of building capacity is a major bottleneck in responding to the housing crisis!

Today I asked ChatGPT about the long touted concept of trickle down economics. It was spot on again:

Since 2015, I’ve spoken often about the need for fairer cities & society due to the corrosive effects of rising inequality. I asked ChatGPT what the impacts of rising inequality are in western countries. I’d say it did a good job of it. Urbanists, note the urban & spatial impacts it identifies.

Wanna know how to speak so people will want to listen? Invest 10 minutes watching this excellent TED talk by Julian Treasure, to learn the 7 deadly sins to avoid & the 4 key aspects to focus on. You won’t regret it! youtu.be/eIho2S0ZahI?...

Really useful of @brenttoderian.bsky.social to put together this starter urbanism pack. And chuffed to be on the list. Let’s make Bluesky to go to platform for constructive conversations about cities! go.bsky.app/UG85GL8