iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 15/06/2026

🚨🎙️ Live Podcast Announcement! Join me and Stuart Donovan in Canberra next week to record a live @inflectionpoint.work Podcast on the history of the Auckland upzoning and the Auckland Unitary Plan.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 09/06/2026

Fantastic news that the Planning Institute of Australia has finally accepted the evidence on Auckland. Broad upzoning works, and it’s great to see PIA get instep with the evidence. But the strategic planning process made Auckland’s reforms worse: the process locked up wealthy inner-city areas.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 19/05/2026

wake up babe new brattan report just dropped

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 12/05/2026

The changes to CGT and Negative Gearing are good tax policy—but they’re not a meaningful housing policy. All available research tells us these policies explain less than 5% of house prices. But the new Local Infrastructure Fund is a juicy $2 billion carrot.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 10/05/2026

By tying the new infrastructure fund to meaningful statewide planning and construction reform, the Feds are upping the stakes for states to do what’s right and make housing legal and easy to build where people want to live. This is the first real piece of Commonwealth housing leadership.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 04/05/2026

Very excited to be hosting the Birthright film Premier and Q&A next Monday 11th at the brand new Brunswick Picture House. This is a brand new Australian film about struggling with the housing crisis. It’s dark, funny, and—most of all—it’s fun.

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Warren Wells, AICP @warrenjwells.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Planners only want one thing and it's disgusting.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 12/04/2026

The Planning Institute’s call for a National Settlement Strategy is finally live. They provide four indicators of success. The good news for the PIA is that there is one clear way to improve all of these indicators: broad-based upzoning of all Australian inner-cities.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 11/03/2026

Absolutely delighted to publish Ryan Ginard on Australia’s urgent need for charitable giving reform. Ryan’s article appears in the fourth edition of Inflection Points, alongside Allegra Spender, Tim Nelson and team, and Keith Wolahan.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 01/03/2026

Australia faces three major crises: housing, energy, and productivity. Boundless is a book about how we might confront these great problems of our time, and it’s coming out in 2027. Co-written with the excellent @howardfmaclean.bsky.social and published by also-excellent Pantera Press.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 15/02/2026

After more than a decade of entering writing prizes, I am absolutely honoured to find myself on the other side. Introducing the $5,000 Inflection Points Writing Prize—for the best new piece of writing about the problems Australia faces, and the solutions within our grasp.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 02/02/2026

In September of last year, I was lucky enough to have dinner with Alain Bertaud—author of Order without Design, one of the best books ever written about cities—in a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. Now, he’s coming to Australia.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 09/12/2025

Last night, the Planning Amendment Bill 2025 passed the Legislative Council. This is an astronomically impactful reform. Congratulations to @australianlabor.bsky.social, @greens.org.au, @davidlimbrick.bsky.social, and @animaljusticeparty.bsky.social for forming a cross-partisan, pro-housing bloc.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 05/11/2025

This new work from @grattaninstitute.bsky.social is nothing short of seminal. For too long we have let our cities be locked up by bad, unjustifiable land use and housing policy. But the tide is turning on bad policy—and that is for the better. bsky.app/profile/grat...

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 30/09/2025

Why does Australia have so many live house auctions? On my recent trip around the US, I learned that the Saturday morning pastime of house auctions are mostly unique to Australia. So I set out to investigate.

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Howard Maclean @howardfmaclean.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

@jonobri.com hits the grey elephant in the new city debate - that the vast majority of regional towns and small cities are determined to avoid growing any larger than they currently are.

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Andrew Donnellan @andrew.donnellan.id.au · 26/09/2025

As a proud Canberran, and being regional New South Welsh by birth, I agree with this. It's taken a century to build Canberra - a city built to solve a specific problem, not for housing - into a real city. Let's not repeat that. We need to interrogate the mindset of large towns versus small cities.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 25/09/2025

No, Australia does not need new cities. My new essay sets the record straight: we have a lot of cities, but we aren’t using them as well as we could be. To make our cities more successful, we have to open up a lot more land for commercial uses to enable agglomeration.

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Emily Hamilton @ebwhamilton.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Great piece on the intersection of housing, demographics, and schools in Australian cities by Katie Roberts-Hull. What's worse for neighborhood incumbents than school crowding? School closures. inflectionpoints.work/articles/the...

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 10/09/2025

A flagrant violation of what it means to live in a city.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 03/09/2025

It is fantastic to see Clare O’Neil and the Federal Government increasingly on-message about the housing crisis. The Minns and Allen governments are undertaking some of the most meaningful and ambitious housing reforms in decades. Federal Government backing is crucial— 🧵

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 31/08/2025

Today we @yimby.melbourne drop our new research note, demonstrating the bias of opt-in community consultation. It will shock no one who’s paying attention, but our sample of 15 consults across six councils found a massive overrepresentation of homeowners and older folk.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 28/07/2025

The conservative stalwarts over at Charter 29 have put out a new report on Victorian planning reform. It reveals a complete lack of understanding. They think the 'missing middle' is a set of suburbs—but no, it's the medium density housing that they'd like to see remain banned.

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YIMBY Melbourne @yimby.melbourne · 27/07/2025

We used to build 50 homes per planner annually, but now it’s less than 9. Alan Kohler covering our recent research note on planner productivity 👇 www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iEh...

youtube.com

What’s slowing down housing development? | Alan Kohler | ABC NEWS

YouTube video by ABC News (Australia)

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 24/07/2025

Absolutely awesome to see my dear friend and collaborator Siang Lu take home the Miles Franklin Award for his excellent novel Ghost Cities. The devil works hard. Siang Lu works harder.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 24/07/2025

The @inflectionpoints.work launch made an enormous splash. I could not be more proud of what we have already achieved. Our Melbourne launch event is next week, free, and getting booked out fast. Get yours at the link below!

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Andrew Donnellan @andrew.donnellan.id.au · 14/07/2025

This essay won't make the Planning Institute feel any warmer towards @jonobri.com, but the time is ripe for a discussion about the outcomes we expect from our land use planners, and how professional doctrine shapes not just the substance but also the framing of land use and housing debates.

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Evan Roberts @evanrobertsnz.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Interesting article from Australia yesterday about the collapse in the productivity of urban planning: for every planner employed there are many fewer homes being produced bsky.app/profile/jono...

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 14/07/2025

Thank you to the Australian Financial Review for publishing an op-ed version of The Problem with Urban Planning. Always an honour to be an editor's choice! bsky.app/profile/jono...

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Inflection Points @inflectionpoints.work · 13/07/2025

🚨We’re launching the FIRST issue of Inflection Points 🚨 - Michael Brennan & Dan Andrews - Katie Roberts-Hull - Jonathan O’Brien - Andrew Leigh 🧵

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YIMBY Melbourne @yimby.melbourne · 13/07/2025

Our lead organiser, @jonobri.com, writes for @inflectionpoints.work about "The Problem with Urban Planning" 👇

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gina rushton @ginarush.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Spoke to dozens of people for this piece on Australia’s attempts to increase housing density, including the housing minister who says this is “not because of a New York Times bestseller”. Have a read! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...

abc.net.au

YIMBYs vs NIMBYs in the battle for your backyard

The Yes In My Backyard movement is lobbying for denser cities and more housing in places people want to work and live and YIMBYs want these homes built yesterday. But the NIMBYs haven't given up yet.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 12/07/2025

The Problem with Urban Planning: a professional silo is gatekeeping our nation's growth. My new essay w/ @inflectionpoints.work The problem at the heart of planning is not political—it's professional. 🧵

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 12/07/2025

Soft launching this today. Hard launching this tomorrow.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 11/07/2025

We are also open to funding from Australian tech billionaires.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 10/07/2025

Fringe groups have recently started to push a curious line about upzoning and planning reform: they call it "empirics without a theory". They state this line as if it is a gotcha, but forget one thing: empirics is much more important than theory. bsky.app/profile/pros...

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 07/07/2025

This morning, Alan Kohler published an article based on claims from a single conservative legacy planner. Central to the piece is an assertion that Australia needs to develop 34 square kilometres of infill land each year. But it's based on some bizarre assumptions.🧵

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 19/06/2025

The Auditor-General is right: Victorians should not be paying for the privilege of having our public sector deskilled. There are two reasons a department might rely on external consultants, and neither is particularly good. 🧵

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 18/06/2025

It's disappointing to see arbitrary protectionism continue to entrench itself within Australian governments. The primary role of government should be the efficient delivery of infrastructure and services. Mandating localised inputs will only raise costs and lengthen timelines.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 10/06/2025

Over the weekend, various planners praised New South Wales' use of floor area ratio (FAR) as a planning tool. This is deeply troubling, because everything we care about should tell us that Sydney’s planning system is far from a model—rather, it's a cautionary tale.

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Tom Cowie @tomcowie.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Wrote about Japanese kei trucks, an increasingly common sight on Melbourne’s steeets as a smaller alternative to all those truckzillas www.theage.com.au/national/vic...

theage.com.au

No monster utes, thanks: Compact Japanese trucks are more than oh-kei

With tiny engines and smaller price tags than monster utes, Japanese kei trucks are finding a devoted fan base in Australia.

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YIMBY Melbourne @yimby.melbourne · 03/06/2025

The mandate for building more is clear. Now it's time to do it. 🏗️🏬

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 03/06/2025

The YIMBY vibeshift continues.

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Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 29/05/2025

Recently, a group of conservative planners called Charter 29 presented at the planning reform inquiry. The org proudly names themselves after the never-implemented Melbourne Plan of General Development (1929)—a plan that would have destroyed our city. 🧵

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