ABSTRACT
Today, we are part of a new revolution, the ‘urban revolution’ cities, which housed 200 million people, or 10 per cent of the world’s population in 1900, now accommodate 3.5 billion people, or 50 per cent of the world’s population. By 2050 cities are predicted to accommodate 6.4 billion people or over 70 per cent of the world’s population (Brugmann 2009). Even in a country such as Australia, where more than 80 per cent of the population already live in urban areas, the major cities are projected to double their size in the next forty years. The enormity of the challenge of building in only forty years the equivalent of a capital city and its infrastructure that took 175 years to create is daunting, especially given the constraints imposed by the global financial crisis. Thus, in 2009, Melbourne, a city of four million, saw a 40 per cent increase in the demand for housing at the same time as house starts had declined by 3 per cent.
