Stephen Marshall explores the architecture of life and future bio-inspiration for the Built Environment.

Prof DLA Gordon reflects on the 'suburban' nature of Australia in light of our recent issue of Built Environment 'Australian Cities in the 21st Centrury'.

Given the challenges of sustainable urban water, reaons to reuse and recyle our so-called 'greywater' is getting stronger says Jonathan Chenoweth, an author in our new issue on this theme.

Across the world massive urban expansion continues, but the limitations to developing our built environments have never been more ubiquitous. The question looms large across the built environment and other disciplines ‘is there such a thing as peak urban?’

As NASA receives a new habitation module, Stephen Marshall explores the "frontier-pushing opportunities where engineering merges with architecture and even urbanism..."

Australian Cities in the 21st Century: Suburbs and Beyond, issue 42(1) of the Built Environment journal, is out now in print and online. As ever we welcome feedback and further commentary, including Built Environment blogs and twitter.

Built Environment journal invites proposals for a guest editor(s) to guest edit a themed issue of the journal on a topic relating to Food Planning. Details at *http://tinyurl.com/FoodPlanningCall*

Given that suburbs are commonly viewed as places that culture forgot, it is refreshing to see a built environment journal publication dedicated to suburban space and cultures. My own work on suburban theory points to the fact that

...Given the difficulties encountered in defining the specificity of ‘the urban’, it is unsurprising that similar problems confront those interested in suburbs, in processes of suburbanisation and in cultures of suburbia....

I am not surprised that the 1960’s drama of Moses v Jacobs, battling it out over the planning of New York City has been made into an opera. The story of local uprisings against wholesale clearance of ‘slums’ is a familiar one, repeated in neighbourhoods the world over from Middleport, to Millers Point and Greenwich...