Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 8d

You can read the full essay here: 🔗 mail.jonobri.com/live-auctions

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 8d

Why? Because different states have different rules around cooling-off periods. Where auctions and private treaty are subject to the same rules, auctions are far less popular, as they offer fewer net benefits for either the buyer or the seller.

1

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 8d

Almost 200 years later, more than 25% of properties in Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra sell at auction, while Perth and Hobart barely use them.

1

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 8d

Auction popularity can be traced back to colonial land auctions, which were mandated in 1831 when the British Colonial Secretary ended free land grants due to a concern that settlers were spreading themselves too thin across vast territories.

1

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 8d

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.

1 2

Reposted by Jonathan O'Brien

Howard Maclean @howardfmaclean.bsky.social · 13d

@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.

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

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.

1 2 4

Reposted by Jonathan O'Brien

Andrew Donnellan @andrew.donnellan.id.au · 13d

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.

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

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.

2 4 20

Reposted by Jonathan O'Brien

Bryn Davidson - Lanefab @lanefab.com · 15d

The Connecticut news opted for a photo of the Vancouver guy and Melbourne guy when talking about #Yimbytown2025 #NewHaven @desegregatect.bsky.social

www.ctpublic.org/news/2025-09...

The largest pro-housing conference in the US meets in New Haven

The YIMBYTown conference, which stands for “Yes in my backyard,” runs from Sunday through Tuesday. More than 1,000 housing advocates, policy makers and state and local politicians gathered downtown to...

www.ctpublic.org

1 1 15

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

Incredible bait (thank you)

1

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

You can read the full essay here:
mail.jonobri.com/p/new-cities

2 6

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

Still, we should enable industries—especially those which are land-intensive—to take advantage of our smaller cities. That means making planning rules much less restrictive, and enabling firms and individuals to move without friction in cases where it is advantageous to do so.

1 6

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

Moving down the line, sizes of Australian cities as a proportion of our largest city don’t stand out particularly from peer countries, showing that our concentration is not worth writing home about.

1 4

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

It’s worth noting, as per Jonathan Nolan, Australia is not particularly concentrated in our capitals. Sydney and Melbourne are two very big cities, but together they don’t meaningfully stand out from other top-two city pairs globally.

1 4

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 13d

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.

3 10 23

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 23d

@yimbytown.bsky.social

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 23d

big things are happening

1 3

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 27d

I noticed that on all the city’s wayfinding signs when I was there in August—embarrassing!

Reposted by Jonathan O'Brien

Emily Hamilton @ebwhamilton.bsky.social · 28d

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...

1 5 16

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 28d

I’m excited to see Melbourne grow. I’m excited to see these reforms take shape. I’m excited to see them iterate and evolve and lay the foundations of building the more affordable, liveable, and sustainable city of tomorrow. A Melbourne of more, for more people.

3

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 28d

The concept of an “urban village” is a falsehood, and a linguistic sleight of hand. There are cities and there are villages, but there are no urban villages.

2 1 3

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 28d

The YIMBY movement’s crowning cultural achievement is making it abundantly clear that to live in a city is to live in a place that changes and grows and evolves—over and over and over again.

Despite what the NIMBYs might believe—a city is never finished. A city is never done.

1 2

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · 28d

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

1 2 7

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · Sep 3

It’s important to keep perspective on what exactly is being debated here. And then it’s important to keep pushing for the reforms our nation desperately needs.

2

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · Sep 3

So let’s be extremely clear about exactly what these people are arguing: that it is somehow justified to ban new dense housing on the most valuable land in our nation. That it is somehow “good planning” to ban the construction of homes in places where people most want to live.

1 1 3

Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri.com · Sep 3

There has of late been a lot of scaremongering from the legacy planners about these reforms, pointing to upzoning and planning reform as umbrella “deregulation”. But this shorthand distracts from the substance of what these reforms will do.

1 4