More bike parking than car parking spaces were added in the City of Melbourne last year

More bicycle parking spaces than car parking spaces were created in new buildings within the City of Melbourne for the first time last year, council data shows.

UEM Sunrise international business director Ong Chee Wei
at Aurora Melbourne Central's 700-plus capacity bike locker. 

A total of 3797 bike spaces were added in developments completed within the city in 2019, compared with 3575 car parks.

Since 2015, when the council started keeping track of this information, 15,904 new bike spaces and 22,316 new car spaces have been completed in private developments such as apartment blocks and office buildings. This figure does not include on-street parking or bike hoops on footpaths.

Read the story from The Age by Craig Butt - “More bike parking than car parking spaces were added in the City of Melbourne last year.”

Inspiring Woman Invents Refugee Tents That Collect Rainwater and Store Solar Energy

Since 2011, the Syrian Civil War created one of the most devastating humanitarian disasters in the world, with an estimated number of 13.5 million Syrians internally displaced or are refugees outside Syria, according to the United Nations.

Aimed at alleviating humanitarian disasters,
this tent both collects water and solar energy.

Facing the difficulty of finding basic shelter and a home to live in, award-winning Jordanian-Canadian architect Abeer Seikaly was inspired to come up with a solution to help transform the lives of these refugees.

Named ‘Weaving a Home’, this design uses a unique structural fabric composed of high-strength plastic tubing molded into sine-wave curves that can expand and enclose during different weather conditions, and also be broken down to allow an ease in mobility and transport.

Read the Egyptian Streets story by Mirna Abdulaal - “Inspiring Woman Invents Refugee Tents That Collect Rainwater and Store Solar Energy.”