iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Criticism against the PIA for focusing more on rent-seeking for its purposes rather than the public has a long history. Here's a passage from Shaping Melbourne's Future? by J. Brian McLoughlin (1994).

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Me trying to understand Boroondara's position on tax:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

I'm so glad to see the Greens (rightfully) pushing for the new super tax to have its threshold lowered to $2 million and to be indexed. Super funds are becoming taxpayer-funded inheritance schemes. Thank god for the first progressive senate majority.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Inquiry into Victoria Planning Provisions amendments VC257, VC267 and VC274 Final Report:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Gotta respect the hustle of the PIA running a journal where you can just say whatever you want, no need to abide by the existing literature, just vibes:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Parkville residents furiously opposed a new hospital, but thankfully the Victorian Government intervened to get it approved.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Knox Council sold some land to a developer in 2023… and just blocked the 24 townhouses the developer proposed to build on it. They made the sale and then pulled up the ladder. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Incredible!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Jokes aside, this is a good study helping quantify how the housing market is strongly gender-segregated, with non-cisgender and cismen being the "losers" in a tight market. doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

People claim that economics is right-wing. The economic journals in question:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

The Liberal opposition wants to end work-from-home arrangements for the public service. New research suggests this may mean they're going to end up with a less talented APS or a higher wage bill to get the same talent as before:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

There's no way to characterise the NSW Low and Mid-Rise reforms other than cowardly dangerous. The inevitable failure of these reforms will allow critics of pro-housing policies to point to this as "proof" that upzoning doesn't work.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

The planning industry's reaction to yesterday's NSW housing announcement is a shocker. I'm not sure why on earth they're obsessed with the one form of subsidised housing that explicitly excludes the poorest people. They are not beating the wealthy property owner defender allegations.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

An under-discussed case against decentralisation is that our cities are powerhouses in fostering the arts. It's sad to think how much art will never be produced or will be lost to time simply because they are denied access to our cultural hubs due to high housing costs.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Some are concerned that CRA increases just result in higher rents, but the evidence suggests this concern is unfounded thankfully!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I love @grattaninstitute.bsky.social's new report making the case for a 40-50% increase in Commonwealth Rental Assistance. It's the most efficient way for the Commonwealth Government to provide renters with some immediate relief. 👇

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Interesting study: subsidised housing works better when exempt from local planning controls, making it easier to help those in need. It's weird how zoning always seems to shield wealthier areas from low-income housing... Thankfully, in Victoria, social housing isn’t bound by local schemes!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Local lobbying reforms are welcome, but councillors face higher regulatory burdens due to the part-time nature of the role. Council amalgamation could enable full-time roles and better oversight.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

What strikes me when reading old urban planning takes is how consistently wrong prominent urban planning academics were about cities. From 1994:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

It's the problem with designing a zone without a robust analysis of whether its intentions are viable. When we argue for upzoning, we're generally arguing for upzoning that overcomes the feasibility gap (which is why we argue for 6-storeys generally).

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I suspect we're talking past each other! GRZ is good in theory, but when we did feasibility modelling, we found that projects that used the full capacity of GRZ were mostly unfeasible. I'd argue that this *is* a constraint (though likely unintentional by the system designers).

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Frankston Council will build us out of the housing crisis 🙏❤️

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

5 years, 3 planning applications and 3 trips to VCAT. Victoria’s amazing planning system at work ❤️

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

Say what you want about pre-WWII planners, but they cut the bullshit and go straight to the point. Planning controls have always been about increasing the cost of housing in exchange for an (assumed) increase in quality. At least they admitted to it!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Boroondara's "Director for Urban Living" seems to misunderstand the fundamentals of the VIF projections. They're not a projection of demand for housing in Boroondara; they're a projection of growth constrained by current housing capacity!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

As it existed before, all social housing builds under this clause are exempt from the local planning schemes too :)

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

A small but meaningful change to the Planning Scheme was just implemented. Effectively *all* social housing that receives at least some funding from the Commonwealth or Victorian Government can bypass local councils. A solid win for the quicker rollout of social housing.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

You can see this clearly with one of their active listings which has an affordable two bedroom rental listed at $640 a week. But if you read the fine print the whole household needs to be earning $111,000 to be able to rent it. This isn't what's implied by the article at all!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Generally social housing is linked to a % of your income, regardless of how poor you are, whilst affordable housing is either a % discount of market rate rents or has a floor to how poor you can be to rent them. Yet the example given doesn’t highlight this at all!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

HIA is calling for 16.5% of the new homes in the ACs to be either social *or* affordable. These are two radically different types of housing. Yet the author just says “affordable”. Below is the CHIA presser:

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Generally, social housing is linked to a % of your income, regardless of how poor you are, whilst affordable housing is either a % discount on market rate rents or has a floor to how poor you can be to rent them. Yet the example given doesn’t highlight this at all!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Victoria is so back. The Government is abolishing the need for a permit to serve alcohol and for businesses to have outdoor dining

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

If the heritage industry wants to be taken seriously, they should stop trying to argue the heritage significance of a petrol station on the West Gate freeway...

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Would it shock you to find out that the planning system has made ALDI's expansions into our cities a living hell? (below is an excerpt from an unpublished piece I never finished)

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Those in the bayside bubble are telling young Victorians to fuck off, leave their local community and live in the bush. To that, I say: you first.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Albanese said these hollow words when he announced the new National Urban Policy. How embarrassing that this is all he could muster to deliver.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The minister's foreward might some of the most bland words committed to paper about cities I've read in years.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

But should we even be implementing regulation based on a correlation? The study concedes that reverse causation is entirely possible (i.e. people with psychiatric disorders could be seeking darkness during the day and light during the night).

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Specifically, it looks at the correlation between light exposure during the night AND day, with the risk of various psychiatric disorders. All it found was that more light during the day was negatively correlated and more light during the night was positively.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The ABC article, which is framed around natural light, references a study on day and night light exposure and its association with psychiatric disorders. One of the authors mentions that brighter “daylight” can help reduce the risk. Seems like a closed case. But it’s not.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

From the below, you’d assume that *sunlight* is the key factor here in lowering the risk of mental health issues. The authors don’t link to a study but instead an ABC article. So, is the ABC article correct?

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

The Herald Sun makes Jacinta Allan look like an absolute CHAD

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

"Sorry you're not going to make it to the hospital in time but at least North Melbourne residents have on-street parking"

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

r/melbourne has discovered how heritage activists' preferences make cities less usable for their own aesthetic ideals.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

If you think building an inner city hospital is an "absolute disgrace", I think you need to reflect on your priorities.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

If an apartment didn't have "adequate" across all of these criteria it failed! You could theoretically have the roomest kitchen, a pantry for space the size of a supermarket and the world's most functional island bench, but if it doesn't have seating, it's considered inadequate!

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

I do not understand the weird AHURI obsession with figuring out how to make tax concessions to property investors "progressive".

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Last night ABC's 7:30 ran a report on Victoria's housing reform, and the youngest person they consulted was a 40-year-old homeowner. No renters. No young people. Those most affected by the housing crisis were ignored.

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Ethan Gilbert ✨🏗️ @ethangilbert.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

The NSW Patternbook winners just got announced, and shade awnings are so BACK. I'm glad to see the return of one of the great climate-resilient design choices.

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