Elizabeth Farrelly

The destruction of more than 10,000 homes in the Los Angeles fires is a powerful reminder that Australia needs a total rethink of how and where we build to live.

Beauty, truth and justice are at the heart of a functioning, healthy metropolis – three Platonic values our governments and developers too often choose to ignore.

Sydneysiders have embraced their underground Metro and other new subterranean spaces that explore the shadows of a city often perceived as bright but shallow.

An obsession with measurement has undermined judgement and damaged not just cities but also schools and public trust.

Australia’s housing crisis arises from a culture that normalises windfall gains, from the grants of stolen land more than two centuries ago, to the investors who flourish on rental income and tax breaks.

Our hard, cold cityscapes could be replaced with something that better reflects our collective need for connection.

If buildings are shaped by the values and cultures of the day, those that are now proliferating demonstrate how humanity has been sacrificed for efficiency.

The quest for the perfect city has a history of epic failure, as civilisation’s deepest desires are shaped by greed, tyranny and human frailty.

The Finnish education system offers a model by which to fix Australia’s broken school system, but first we need to ban private schools.

The notion of Australia as an egalitarian society is outdated and the burgeoning class system of this country is becoming etched in its urban landscape.

Children’s literature needs to be less about getting cheap laughs out of bodily functions and more about appealing to the imagination and senses – even allowing a little fear.

The time has come for urban Australia to abandon the British Empire-based bungalow sprawl and follow a more collective European apartment model.

The measures needed to cool Australia’s rapidly heating urban environments are already clear – and the case to implement them is now urgent, as global temperature records topple.

The combined forces of the market, the internet and even Postmodern thinking have done the opposite of what they promised – narrowing rather than broadening our experience of the world – which is why the eccentric is more important than ever.

Australia’s housing crisis will not be solved by the generational conflict between the ‘nimbys’ who reject development and the ‘yimbys’ calling for more.

The forces of social media and neoliberalism have all but erased the line between public and private – and while that’s helped lift the burden of shame, there are drawbacks to rewriting the rules of discourse.

The nation’s capital is locked in an architectural battle between the Worst of Sydney and the Way of the Griffins. Happily, it looks as if the Griffins are slowly winning.

Ageing with dignity is impossible if all we can expect is dilapidated institutions with neglectful or abusive staff – the model for aged-care housing should be community-based, connected and full of new pleasures.

Paul Keating’s self-referential praise for Barangaroo is cringeful in its exultation of a development that is short on both architectural merit and social conscience.

The futuristic designs for cities from Saudi Arabia to the American desert are seductive visions grounded in systems of control.

How should we change our food habits to protect the planet and our own health? The more obvious answers aren’t necessarily the best ones.

When the wealthy can commandeer the choicest parts of a city and the poorest are left with nothing, a city has lost its way. Rampant inequality is a blight on the way we live.

A dream of innocence for unfettered, frictionless speed turned into a multi-laned nightmare when poets, painters and polemicists fanned the spark into a conflagration. Can art now offer any kind of remedy?

The Morrison government’s overblown funding of private schools exacerbated inequality, undermined social cohesion and sabotaged cultural creativity.

As Parramatta is rezoned to make way for massive skyscrapers, the decision is a reminder that the world has forgotten how to build beautiful cities.

Neither of the major political parties is offering real solutions to housing stress. Both are focused on getting buyers into the market, rather than affordability.

New sustainable planning policies are being repealed in NSW, which benefits developers and scraps restrictions on building in vulnerable places such as flood plains.

As an independent candidate running against the party machines, a contender in the Strathfield byelection found the odds were against her.