One in four Australians feel lonely on three or more days a week. Our longitudinal study, just published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, finds adults in neighbourhoods where at least 30% of nearby land was parks, reserves and woodlands had 26% lower odds of becoming lonely compared to their peers in areas with less than 10% green space. For people living on their own, the associations were even greater – in areas with 30% or more green space the odds of becoming lonely halved.
This is good news for cities around the world – including Barcelona, Canberra, Seattle and Vancouver – that have set targets of 30% green cover. It’s even better news for the City of Sydney and the City of Melbourne, which have targets of 40% green cover by 2050 and 2040 respectively.
Melbourne homebuyers are abandoning the search for houses under $1 million, according to Realestate.com.au data which shows spiking interest in properties with seven-figure values.
More Australian businesses have used cloud computing technologies in 2019 to 2020, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
In the ABS’s recent Characteristics of Australian Business report for 2019-20, the Bureau said the business use of paid cloud computing during the period was at 55 percent, up from 42 percent in 2017-18.
The ABS defines “paid cloud computing” as “IT services that are used over the internet to access software, computing power or storage capacity.”
The data also noted that the percentage of companies using cloud also increases depending on the size of their workforce.
ABS said 81 percent of businesses of 200 employees or more use cloud technologies, followed by 76 percent of companies with 20 to 199 employees, then 65 percent of companies with 5-19 employees. Those with 0 to 4 employees had 49 percent using cloud technologies.