Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Green And Blue Infrastructure In Darwin; Carbon Economies And The Social And Cultural Dimensions Of Valuing Urban Mangroves In Australia, Jennifer M. Atchison

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Darwin's mangrove ecosystems, some of the most extensive and biodiverse in the world, are part of the urban fabric in the tropical north of Australia but they are also clearly at risk from the current scale and pace of development. Climate motivated market-based responses, the so-called 'new-carbon economies', are one prominent approach to thinking differently about the value of living infrastructure and how it might provide for and improve liveability. In the Australian context, there are recent efforts to promote mangrove ecosystems as blue infrastructure, specifically as blue carbon, but also little recognition or valuation of them as green or …

Are Urban Development And Densification Patterns Aligned With Infrastructure Funding Allocation? Examining Data From Melbourne 1999-2015, Nicole T. Cook, Ilan Wiesel, Fanqi Liu

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Densification of cities and suburbs is a contentious issue for many communities in lower-density settings. Local opposition to densification is often premised on concerns about the inadequacy of existing infrastructure to support growing populations and is strongest and most successful in wealthier neighbourhoods. While the urban consolidation agenda in cities such as Melbourne and Sydney is justified in policy contexts as a strategy to improve utilisation of existing infrastructure in built up areas, densification over time also produces new demand for services. Whether or not densification drives new infrastructure spending is therefore an important question in the governance of social …

What Factors Contribute To The Continued Low Rates Of Indigenous Status Identification In Urban General Practice? - A Mixed-Methods Multiple Site Case Study, Heike Schutze, Lisa Jackson Pulver, Mark Fort Harris

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background Indigenous peoples experience worse health and die at younger ages than their non-indigenous counterparts. Ethnicity data enables health services to identify inequalities experienced by minority populations and to implement and monitor services specifically targeting them. Despite significant Government intervention, Australia's Indigenous peoples, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, continue to be under identified in data sets. We explored the barriers to Indigenous status identification in urban general practice in two areas in Sydney. Methods A mixed-methods multiple-site case study was used, set in urban general practice. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and self-complete questionnaires with 31 general practice …

The Aboriginal Riverkeeper Team Project - Building Indigenous Knowledge And Skills To Improve Urban Waterways In Sydney's Georges River Catchment, Vanessa I. Cavanagh

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Indigenous Ranger programs, which are predominantly located in regional and remote areas, are commendable for their jobs creation, for strengthening of livelihoods of individuals and communities, and for the cultural and environmental outcomes they engender. However, can similar outcomes be attained in a highly urban setting? This paper is a case study of a current project, the Aboriginal Riverkeeper Team in the Georges River in Sydney's south-west. Through the narrative of the Aboriginal trainees who have been members of the Aboriginal Riverkeeper Team ('the Team'), this paper will illustrate how an environmental project has been successful in delivering significant cultural …

Configuring Urban Carbon Governance: Insights From Sydney, Australia, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Harriet Bulkeley, Robyn Dowling

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In the political geography of responses to climate change, and the governance of carbon more specifically, the urban has emerged as a strategic site. Although it is recognized that urban carbon governance occurs through diverse programs and projects-involving multiple actors and working through multiple sites, mechanisms, objects, and subjects-surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which these diverse elements are drawn together and held together in the exercise of governing. These processes-termed configuration-remain underspecified. This article explores urban carbon governance interventions as relational configurations, excavating how their diverse elements-human, institutional, representational, and material-are assembled, drawn into …

Assembling Urban Regeneration? Resourcing Critical Generative Accounts Of Urban Regeneration Through Assemblage, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Kathy Mee, Kristian J. Ruming

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In critical urban studies, managed urban regeneration has been linked to trajectories of neo-liberalising urban policy and urban entrepreneurialism. While the insights arising from this work have been many and valuable, significant gaps remain particularly in terms of the foci of analysis and the conception of politics. In this paper, we aim to address these gaps and to reposition the conceptualization of regeneration as a performed and emergent consequence of 'relatedness' and as subject to a range of relational effects and determinations. To do so we work through four capacities of assemblage thinking that are particularly productive for this task: …

Illawarra Aboriginal Community Profile: A Snapshot Of An Urban Aboriginal Community, Kathleen F. Clapham, Scott F. Winch, Valerie Harwood, Peter James Kelly, Paul A. Chandler, Kate Senior, Darcelle Wu

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This community profile report provides information about the Aboriginal population of the Illawarra Region. It is intended to begin a discussion about how research can contribute to the social health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people. The report highlights disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that are apparent not only in the health statistics but also in almost every key socioeconomic indicator.

However the report is not just about ill-health and disadvantage. The Illawarra region has numerous well-established Aboriginal-controlled organisations which provide important leadership and social health and wellbeing services for Aboriginal people, many of which have survived within the region …

Planned Derailment For New Urban Futures? An Actant Network Analysis Of The "Great [Light] Rail Debate" In Newcastle, Australia, Kristian J. Ruming, Kathleen Mee, Pauline M. Mcguirk

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

With urban and economic restructuring, facilitating urban regeneration for rundown post- industrial cities has become a central urban planning policy objective in Western cities since the late twentieth century, leaving some centres in prolonged social and economic decline. This chapter explores one example of planning policies seeking to regenerate an urban centre. Our focus is Newcastle, approximately 160km (100 miles) north of Sydney, Australia. Newcastle has a long history as an industrial city, dominated by manufacturing and coal-mining in the surrounding Hunter Valley. The port of Newcastle remains the world's largest coal export port. In 1999, BHP closed the Newcastle …

Identity Formation Of Lbote Preservice Teachers During The Practicum: A Case Study In Australia In An Urban High School, Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen, Lynn D. Sheridan

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The article presents a case study of a growing number of English language background other than English (LBOTE) students in teacher education in Australia. Topics discussed include the impact of teaching practice in the identity formation of preservice teachers, the work experience of teachers in Australian schools, and the teacher identity.

Making A Smart City For The Smart Grid? The Urban Material Politics Of Actualising Smart Electricity Networks, Harriet Bulkeley, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In a growing debate about the smart city, considerations of the ways in which urban infrastructures and their materialities are being reconfigured and contested remain in the shadows of analyses which have been primarily concerned with the management and flow of digitalisation and big data in pursuit of new logics for economic growth. In this paper, we examine the ways in which the 'smart city' is being put to work for different ends and through different means. We argue that the co-constitution of the urban as a site for carbon governance and a place where smart energy systems are developed …

Biopedagogies And Indigenous Knowledge: Examining Sport For Development And Peace For Urban Indigenous Young Women In Canada And Australia, Lyndsay M C Hayhurst, Audrey R. Giles, Jan Wright

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper uses transnational postcolonial feminist participatory action research (TPFPAR) to examine two sport for development and peace (SDP) initiatives that focus on Indigenous young women residing in urban areas, one in Vancouver, Canada, and one in Perth, Australia. We examine how SDP programs that target urban Indigenous young women and girls reproduce the hegemony of neoliberalism by deploying biopedagogies of neoliberalism to 'teach' Indigenous young women certain education and employment skills that are deemed necessary to participate in competitive capitalism. We found that activities in both programs were designed to equip the Indigenous girls and young women with individual …

The Effect Of Urban Form On Wellbeing, Thomas E. Astell-Burt, Xiaoqi Feng

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this Evidence Check was to conduct a rapid review of existing evidence on the impact of the built environment on mental health and psychological wellbeing (hereafter referred to collectively as wellbeing). A total of 103 studies were reviewe d after a systematic search of the literature. Most studies used the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale, the General Health Questionnaire, or the Kessler scales to measure wellbeing.

Shading Liveable Cities: Exploring The Ecological, Financial And Regulatory Dimensions Of The Urban Tree Canopy, Nicole T. Cook, Rachel Hughes

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Trees are known for their positive impacts in cities including: the provision of shade, reducing heat island effects, improving amenity, reducing social vulnerability, processing carbon and improving health outcomes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, greening policies at the local and state level have proliferated. Despite these initiatives, tree cover remains stubbornly uneven. A cursory analysis of vulnerability and tree-cover by location shows that those who are most vulnerable to extreme heat events often live in those parts of cities that are most poorly shaded. Drawing on a new set of 50 online questionnaire and face-to-face interviews with local council officers in Melbourne conducted …

Urban Carbon Governance Experiments: The Role Of Australian Local Governments, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling, Clare Brennan, Harriet Bulkeley

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Cities, and particularly urban local governments, are now widely recognised for their part in the complex, multilevel landscape of climate governance and carbon reduction. Nonetheless local government projects and initiatives are often framed as of limited value, outside the formal governance framework, and unable to contribute systematically. In contrast, this paper locates these initiatives as already part of the way in which governing climate and carbon is conducted and as governance experiments. We provide a descriptive analysis of these initiatives across Australia's capital cities, highlighting the domains, mechanisms, and partners through which they operate. We illustrate the enactment of experimentation …

Life In The Gayborhood: Safety, Difference And Change In The Urban Gay Neighbourhood, Scott J. Mckinnon

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Book review of: Amin Ghaziani There Goes the Gayborhood? Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014 (280 pp). ISBN 9-78069115-879-2 (hard cover) RRP $64.00.

Shading Liveable Cities: Exploring The Ecological, Financial And Regulatory Dimensions Of The Urban Tree Canopy, Nicole T. Cook, Rachel Hughes, Elizabeth Taylor, Stephen J. Livesley, Melanie Davern

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Recognising the critical role of tree cover in the context of urban resilience and vulnerability, the objective of the Shading Liveable Cities project was to better understand the different factors shaping the provision and maintenance of the urban tree canopy in suburban contexts.

Practices, Programs And Projects Of Urban Carbon Governance: Perspectives From The Australian City, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Harriet Bulkeley, Robyn Dowling

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper addresses the governance of transitions to lower carbon cities. Drawing on both governmentality and neo-Gramscian perspectives, we chart and explore the diverse objects, subjects, means and ends evoked as governmental programs, or hegemonic projects in-the-making, are shaped to orchestrate urban carbon governance. We ask about the diversity of what is being sought through the governance of carbon in the city, how this is rendered and how carbon is being made to matter in the city. We do so through analysis of an audit of carbon governance initiatives in Australian cities, and a characterisation of these initiatives as four …

Repositioning Urban Governments? Energy Efficiency And Australia's Changing Climate And Energy Governance Regimes, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling, Harriet Bulkeley

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Urban local governments are important players in climate governance, and their roles are evolving. This review traces the changing nexus of Australia's climate policy, energy policy and energy efficiency imperatives and its repositioning of urban local governments. We characterise the ways urban local governments' capacities and capabilities are being mobilised in light of a changing multi-level political opportunity structure around energy efficiency. The shifts we observe not only extend local governments' role in implementing climate change responses but also engage them as partners in conceiving and operationalising new measures, suggesting new ground is being opened in the urban politics of …

Inter-Ethnic Partnerships: Remaking Urban Ethnic Diversity, Alexander Tindale, Natascha Klocker, Christopher Gibson

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Inter-ethnic couples are a growing population with unique and understudied residential geographies. Using customised 2006 Census data for the Greater Sydney region, we investigate the prevalence and geographic distribution of a socially significant subset of cohabiting inter-ethnic couples: ethnic majority-minority couples. These couples are comprised of an Anglo/European or ('white') Australian partner and a partner from a 'visible' ethnic minority group. We find that ethnic majority-minority couples are most concentrated in inner-city areas of moderate ethnic diversity and high socio-economic status; and are more residentially dispersed than their respective ethnic minority groups. Inter-ethnic partnership appears to alter the residential geographies …

Reconnecting Urban Planning With Health: A Protocol For The Development And Validation Of National Liveability Indicators Associated With Noncommunicable Disease Risk Behaviours And Health Outcomes, Billie Giles-Corti, Hannah M. Badland, Suzanne Mavoa, Gavin Turrell, Fiona Bull, Bryan Boruff, Christopher Pettit, Adrian E. Bauman, Paula Hooper, Karen Villanueva, Thomas Astell-Burt, Xiaoqi Feng, Vincent Learnihan, R Davey, Rob Grenfell, Sarah Thackway

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Aim: Liveable communities create the conditions to optimise health and wellbeing outcomes in residents by influencing various social determinants of health - for example, neighbourhood walkability and access to public transport, public open space, local amenities, and social and community facilities. This study will develop national liveability indicators that are (a) aligned with state and federal urban policy, (b) developed using national data (where available), (c) standard and consistent over time, (d) suitable for monitoring progress towards creating more liveable, equitable and sustainable communities, (e) validated against selected noncommunicable disease risk behaviours and/or health outcomes, and (f) practical for measuring …

Effect Of Air Pollution And Racism On Ethnic Differences In Respiratory Health Among Adolescents Living In An Urban Environment, Thomas E. Astell-Burt, Maria J. Maynard, Erik Lenguerrand, Melissa Whitrow, Oarabile R. Molaodi, Seeromanie Harding

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Recent studies suggest that stress can amplify the harm of air pollution. We examined whether experience of racism and exposure to particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 µm and 10 µm (PM_2.5 and PM₁₀) had a synergistic influence on ethnic differences in asthma and lung function across adolescence. Analyses using multilevel models showed lower forced expiratory volume (FEV₁), forced vital capacity (FVC) and lower rates of asthma among some ethnic minorities compared to Whites, but higher exposure to PM_2.5, PM₁₀ and racism. Racism appeared to amplify the relationship …

Looking Inwards: Extended Family Living As An Urban Consolidation Alternative, Natascha Klocker, Christopher Gibson

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Western cities face multiple interrelated and complex predicaments. Demand for new dwellings has outstripped population growth due to a confluence of socio-demographic trends that contribute to shrinking household sizes: population ageing, high rates of divorce and delayed age of family formation (Wulff, Healy and Reynolds, 2004).In Australia,a quarter of households now contain just one person (ABS, 2012). Similar socio-demographic processes, with associated urban spatial planning implications, have unfurled throughout Europe, the UK and North America (Buzar, Ogden,and Hall, 2005,Re'rat, 2012). Households arekey "agentsof urban transformation"; we need to understand them in order to grapple with contemporary urban problems (Buzar et …

Geographies Of Urban Politics: Pathways, Intersections, Interventions, Pauline M. Mcguirk

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper deals with urban political geographies and, most particularly, with political economy perspectives on urban politics. It offers an account that narrates what I see as influential pathways and intersections, theoretical debates, and methodological developments that have shaped contemporary urban political geographies in this vein since the 1970s, including: the 'new urban politics', intersections with postmodernism, and postcolonialism; urban neoliberalism and the contingency of urban politics; and, most recently, poststructural political economy and the notion of assemblage. This leads me to trace the implications of the shift in understanding from urban political geography to geographies of urban politics, and …

Governing Social Reproduction In Masterplanned Estates: Urban Politics And Everyday Life In Sydney, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Critical urban research arising from the 'new urban politics' rich heritage has conventionally privileged the politics of accumulation and the city's downtown over the politics of social reproduction and everyday, residential spaces. This paper focuses on residential spaces and the politics involved in recasting everyday practices of social reproduction through private neighbourhood governance. Focusing on the masterplanned estates increasingly prevalent across Sydney's residential landscape, it explores the material practices and subjectivities shaped by these estates' contractual governance and the contours and limits to the formation of self-governing middle-class consumer citizens. The paper highlights a granular fabric to urban politics produced …

Spatial Theories Of The Urban, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Phillip O'Neill

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper explores how spatial theories, models and concepts function as representations whose underlying logic and reasoning are primarily metaphorical. We examine the underlying metaphors and founding premises of key theories of urban systems and of cities' internal spatialisation, and we trace these theories' production as artifacts of how we think space. The purpose of this is to focus attention on how metaphors, as representations of space, make the city available to us for analysis; what they foreground and what they elide. We suggest how, as representations, these theories give us interpretive frames through which we grasp empirical data and …

Urban Vitality, Culture And The Public Realm, Pauline Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling, Christopher R. Gibson, Kurt Iveson, Kathy Mee

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The urban public realm is critical to creating and maintaining vital and inclusive cities. There has been a welcome acknowledgement of the importance of the urban public realm in Australian urban policy, with increasing amounts of energy and resources devoted to its improvement. However, while there is apparent agreement on the significance of public space there is less clarity over what constitutes 'good' public space and the degree to which it can be deliberately created. Beyond this, urban public spaces and institutions are being transformed by urban redevelopment trends, culture-based and creative city planning strategies, shifts in management and ownership …

Performance, Anxiety: The Video Games Arcade And Urban Space, Jason Wilson

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In a recent gaming anthology, Henry Jenkins cannot help contrasting his son's cramped, urban, media-saturated existence with his own idyllic, semi-rural childhood. After describing his own Huck Finn meanderings over "the spaces of my boyhood" including the imaginary kingdoms of Jungleoca and Freedonia, Jenkins relates his version of his son's experiences:

My son, Henry, now 16 has never had a backyard He has grown up in various apartment complexes, surrounded by asphalt parking lots with, perhaps, a small grass buffer from the street… Once or twice, when I became exasperated by my son's constant presence around the house I would …

Prosperity Along Australia's Eastern Seaboard: Sydney And The Geopolitics Of Urban And Economic Change, Phillip O'Neill, Pauline M. Mcguirk

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Throughout the last decade, the Australian economy has experienced its second longest period of uninterrupted prosperity in recorded history. The paper argues that this prosperity is sourced from an extraordinary surge in finance-based economic activity along Australia's eastern seaboard, especially in the Sydney region. Population growth in the Sydney basin has further fuelled the region's economic growth. The spatialised nature of this prosperity has produced a major shift in distributional outcomes across Australian regions and among households. Sydney-based households, especially those in inner 'global Sydney' neighbourhoods, have had access to high rates of job creation and sustained increases in income …

Power And Influence In Urban Planning: Community And Property Interests' Participation In Dublin's Planning System, Pauline M. Mcguirk

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Using local authority planning in Dublin as a case study. the extent and effectiveness of community and development interests' participation in policy formulation is examined. A primary locus is on the nature and timing of participation as a determinant of the relalive influence that each can exert over policy decisions. A critical distinction is drawn between formal and informal participation channels. The vast array of informal channels available to development interests can mean that they have little need to participate formally; thus a primary and secondary layer of influence on policy formulation can be distinguished. The primary layer is largely …