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Through the significance matrix, this paper aims to investigate and explore the main sustainability factors of mega transportation infrastructure projects. Sydney’s Metro mega transportation infrastructure is used as a case study. Sydney’s Metro was selected because of its sustainability challenges faced because of the areas’ diverse ecological zones. Sydney’s Metro is thus examined as the basis of best practice for the determination of the sustainability factors of transportation infrastructures.

Using the significance matrix as a methodology, this research evaluates the environmental impact assessment and environmental assessment processes, to alleviate the problems of the mega transportation infrastructure.

This research found that a more comprehensive determination is needed to further analyse the sustainability factors of mega transportation infrastructures, use of a significance matrix would further assess the environmental complexities of mega transportation infrastructures and the sustainability factors of mega transportation infrastructures should include a nonlinear and asymmetrical scheme highlighting its components and carefully outlining its integration and consolidation.

Although there is concurrent research into sustainability factors of mega transportation, this paper undertakes a new methodology for such infrastructure. While the significance matrix is not a new concept, it has never been used specifically for mega transportation infrastructure. Subsequently, using the significance matrix as a methodology, this research undertakes such environmental analysis and assessment and thus produces a qualitative risk analysis matrix. The findings from this research will ultimately assist the key stakeholders of mega transportation infrastructures to better plan, monitor and support similar projects.

The purpose of this paper is to initially evaluate the most current and important complications of sustainable mega rail transportation projects. This purpose is assisted by thoroughly reviewing the foremost uncertainties and challenging issues of STI. Once these factors are established, they will be the base of STI indicators. Finally, to consolidate such alignment, the Sydney Metro and Melbourne Metro are then compared and analyzed. The analysis would then create a platform to measure sustainability and relevant complexities in mega rail transportation projects.

To further consolidate such hypothesis, this research investigated two mega rail transportation projects in Australia. Both Sydney Metro and Melbourne Metro Rail were selected as the basis of case study, as both possess similar sustainability aspects.

As an outcome this research found that, complexities in both of these projects were based on future challenges and opportunities including imperfect equalization or not balancing all the four sustainability indicators; and where and how to emphasize the overlapping of these four indicators. In summary, these findings can assist the relevant planners, to better prepare and manage mega railway infrastructure and their operations.

While the sustainability for transportation infrastructure has been covered extensively by other authors, this paper strengthens the four specific and separate STI indicators – especially for mega rail infrastructure. Although, there are some crossover areas within these indicators, however, this research separately validates each as an independent entity. Commonly, there are three dimensions within the sustainability domain – environmental, economical and social. Nevertheless, for this research, a fourth dimension engineering which includes all the technical focus, has been separately developed. This is particularly important to effectively deal with all the complexities, particularly for mega projects, such as rail transportation infrastructure. Accordingly, separating the engineering dimension would thus reshape the triple bottom line factors to include a separate technical focus. To further evaluate this separation of the four specific areas, two mega Australian rail transportation projects are then reviewed as experiments.

This study examines the effectiveness of passive value capture mechanisms as an effective form of mechanisms in funding infrastructure from an Australian perspective. The lukewarm response of active value capture mechanisms such as betterment levies in Australia is also discussed.

A case study of the Sydney Metro City and Southwest (SMCSW) project in Sydney is used to illustrate passive value capture mechanisms.

Unlike many developed countries, passive value capture mechanisms have been adopted in Australia. This approach is an effective form of value capture mechanisms to capture the value uplift to offset the total development cost of the SMCSW project. However, this approach is highly sensitive to property transaction activities that could be affected by the general economic conditions and unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, there is a widespread discussion of the efficiency of land tax in New South Wales (NSW) in capturing all properties subject to the value uplift. Consequently, a shift towards a broad-based land tax is recommended in which it would provide a more efficient way of infrastructure funding.

Policymakers should consider a broad-based land tax for residential and commercial properties in order to improve the efficiency of passive value capture mechanisms. This also highlights property valuers should play a greater role in the development of broad-based land tax system.

Previous studies have extensively demonstrated property value impacts of transit investments; very little research assesses the growth of value capture funding mechanisms, particularly passive value capture mechanisms. Specifically, this paper is the first paper to assess the effectiveness of passive value capture mechanisms.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) for transport infrastructure should consider geological constraints, legislative regulations, public policy and other strategic considerations. These strategic considerations and constraints that are often seen as the most challenging issues facing transportation planners are critically reviewed. Subsequently, this study aims to evaluate the enviromnetal impacts of civil transport infrastructure.

Using a mixed-method approach, this study examines the EIA and environmental impact statement (EIS) dimensions of transportation infrastructure.

Through the development of the EIA and EIS policy framework for transport infrastructure, this paper found that to better enhance the EIA and to effectively calculate various indicator variables, a hybrid approach to the method, known as input–output analysis (IOA), needs to be adopted. Knowing that a feasible cost breakdown is usually available within projects, it can be concluded that it is plausible to add an input–output (I–O) model into an existing EIS to obtain results not only for on-site effects but also for off-site effects. Moreover, some of the benefits of implementing a hybrid IOA can significantly improve the completeness of any conventional EIS for a range of quantifiable indicators, improve the ability to rank alternative options and provide a valuable overview of indirect impacts to be used for streamlining the EIA audit. For these reasons, input–output techniques could be incorporated as optional elements into the EIA standards.

With input from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and national I–O tables of the industry sector, this research was able to determine that indirect effects within transport projects are not being considered for what they are worth. This enables us to answer key questions dealing with the effects of EIAs on the transportation sector. This, in turn, can assist with planning through the commissioning of such projects.

The I–O model introduced in this paper will ultimately lead to better incorporation of various environmental elements. The findings of the paper can thus assist transportation planners in better aligning environmental impacts with EIA. This, in turn, can result in improvements in the completeness of any conventional EIS, enhance the ability to rank alternative options and provide a valuable overview of indirect impacts to be used for streamlining the EIA audit.

As a part of adaptive and complex system thinking, geographic information systems (GIS) are beneficial particularly for transportation projects, where uncertainty is frequent. Accordingly, this paper aims to examine the utilization of GIS in line with adaptive and complex system thinking, as the basis of the methodical formulation of perceived gaps within the integrated transportation planning (ITP) specifically for the mega transportation projects. Such a framework is undertaken, as the mega transportation projects although may seem straightforward, however, are problematic and require more consideration than the traditional triple bottom line factors. Using the Sydney Metro as the case study, the outcome demonstrates the significance of the fourth separate dimension of engineering into the aforementioned bottom-line factors.

The research examines the utilization of adaptive and complex system thinking, as the basis of the methodical formulation of perceived gaps within the ITP. The use of Sydney’s Metro project is a novel example of the proposed methodical formulation and its empirical assessment and provides a better understanding of the use of mapping and planning tools for mega transportation projects.

Aptly, using the developed conceptual framework, this research further validates the inclusion of a separate engineering dimension with the usual triple bottom line factors. Such inclusion is paramount in responding to the existing ITP gaps found within the current literature.

This research uses GIS and ITP process to support the aforementioned adaptive and complex system thinking. This, in turn, is used as the basis of a methodical formulation framework in dealing with mega rail transportation infrastructure. To support such a proposition, Sydney Metro is examined as the basis of a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the innovative approaches to further reduce the environmental impacts during the construction of mega transportation infrastructure, particularly for Australia.

As part of this research, the Sydney Metro was exploited as a case study. This included reviewing the elements of reducing the environmental impacts for the Sydney Metro.

This research has found that there are six elements of reducing the environmental impacts of the Australian public transport infrastructure process. Moreover, this research also found that for the Sydney Metro, first, the logistic planning and optimisation was carefully developed followed by the remaining five elements.

The originality of this research consists of carefully examining the Sydney Metro’s environmental implications including its on-going EIA and EPA compliance.

This paper aims to examine the planning policy and legal framework governing the creation and operation of urban agriculture in Sydney, Australia’s global city. All levels of urban agriculture are considered – from domestic and small community gardens to large agribusiness – as all make an important contribution to agricultural production in an urban context.

Using the Australian State of New South Wales and its capital Sydney, as a focus, the study examines the recent trend of the recognition and re-establishment of agriculture as a desired land use in cities. Three examples are selected for closer scrutiny – Horsley Park Urban Agriculture Precinct, located in the Western Sydney Parklands; City of Sydney’s City Farm, located in the inner suburb of St Peters; and the Western Sydney Aerotropolis Agribusiness Precinct, located at a new airport on the fringe of Sydney.

As more city-dwellers embrace urban food production and as city authorities seek to encourage and facilitate farming activities, it is clear that regulatory structures which allow it to happen should be incorporated into urban planning legislation at (in the Australian context) state government level. If cities want to encourage urban agriculture, planning legislation needs to be part of the broader legal framework for enabling it to germinate and thrive.

This paper explores the emergence of two new types of urban agriculture: first, the multi-functional, small-scale urban farming operation, situated conceptually between a community garden and a full-scale commercial agricultural enterprise, and located spatially in the midst of built-up urban form; and second, the intensive, high tech export-oriented model exemplified by the Aerotropolis Agribusiness Precinct.

House price fluctuations send vital signals to many parts of the economy, and long-term predictions of house prices are of great interest to governments and property developers. Although predictive models based on economic fundamentals are widely used, the common requirement for such studies is that underlying data are stationary. This paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness of alternative filtering methods for forecasting house prices.

We specifically focus on exponential smoothing with trend adjustment and multiplicative decomposition using median house prices for Sydney from Q3 1994 to Q1 2017. The model performance is evaluated using out-of-sample forecasting techniques and a robustness check against secondary data sources.

Multiplicative decomposition outperforms exponential smoothing at forecasting accuracy. The superior decomposition model suggests that seasonal and cyclical components provide important additional information for predicting house prices. The forecasts for 2017–2028 suggest that prices will slowly increase, going past 2016 levels by 2020 in the apartment market and by 2022/2023 in the detached housing market.

We demonstrate that filtering models are simple (univariate models that only require historical house prices), easy to implement (with no condition of stationarity) and widely used in financial trading, sports betting and other fields where producing accurate forecasts is more important than explaining the drivers of change. The paper puts forward a case for the inclusion of filtering models within the forecasting toolkit as a useful reference point for comparing forecasts from alternative models.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper undertakes the first systematic comparison of two filtering models for the Sydney housing market.

In this article the development of the Olympic Games (the biggest mega sport event ever) will be described as an interesting case in the sport‐tourism relationship. The Olympics are indeed the biggest show on earth … the most participants in history, … spectators on site and the greatest television audience ever. This marriage of convenience between sport and tourism will be explored and examplified, first in general and second by means of on historical overview (of the Summer and Winter Games) and the economic impact of the Olympic Games.