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...

On 11 October 2015 Malcolm Turnbull, who had been Prime Minister of Australia for less than a month at the time, committed federal funding of A$95m towards the cost of extending a light rail network on the Gold Coast in the northern state of Queensland. This funding announcement, while modest in its scope, marked a major...

As Mr. Secretary Pepys might have said on the morning of 10 November: ‘Rose betimes and abroad to the Centre for London, for the launch of their Intermediate Housing Commission’s report Fair to Middling’. It defines such homes as ‘housing for modest earners – those not entitled to social housing but who struggle...

This blog sets out the rich 'field of yeild' that extends beyond the Built Environment itself. We can venture into science, health, and many more fields for learning, 'research prospecting' and simply bold exploration!