Envy Apartment

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...

NEW YORK, NY — It's one of the oldest rivalries in American migration: New York vs. Los Angeles. For the better part of a century, residents of the nation's two largest metro areas have been defending their chosen kingdom and dismissing the other on an endless loop of judginess between kitty-corner coasts. Ew, the traffic! But the sunshine! But the subway! But the garbage! But the skyline! But the coastline! But the bustle! But the chill! In this tireless war of words, a clear winner has yet to emerge. But it's harder to argue against the numbers. Thousands of working professionals have relocated to Los Angeles County from New York City in the past year and a half, according to a series of monthly "workforce reports" released this spring and summer by the job- networking site LinkedIn (and spotted by LA Weekly). And it's not exactly a two-way street. Since early 2016, according to LinkedIn, around seven or eight out of every 10, 000 site users in LA report...

The iconic London landmark uses its public spaces to counterpoint the unbridled growth of London’s luxury private structures I recently found myself staring into a stranger’s living room, waiting for something beautiful to happen. I was standing on the 10th- floor viewing terrace of the Tate Modern’s new wing, a twisting ziggurat of perforated brick and mortar that rises above the museum’s home in the old Bankside Power Station . The terrace allows for 360-degree views of the building frenzy that has consumed much of London’s skyline. Cranes dip and dive in every direction; to the east, the Shard, an overwhelming ice pick of a skyscraper, dwarfs the Victorian roofs of the surrounding neighbourhood; to the west, the pregnant monolith of One Blackfriars, a 50-storey mixed-used building, looms over the Thames like an alien mothership. As is the case all over the city, many of its £4 million (Dh19 million) apartments will be scooped up as investments, only to stand empty. Idle butlers ...