Around the world, people volunteer their time to manage multi-unit properties. These elected representatives are responsible for managing homes and assets of millions of people. As populations age, increasing proportions of these volunteers are retirees. This article draws on findings from surveys of 1,433 strata title (multi-unit) owners in Australia, and 41 follow-up interviews, to discuss the challenges this group faces in managing their buildings. A significant challenge is presented-the incentive retirees on fixed incomes have to minimize spending-and implications for the quality of the urban environment discussed. The article argues there has been a devolution of responsibility to the "private governments" that manage strata schemes, without sufficient support and training. To address this challenge, and realize the potential benefits afforded by the increasing availability of retired volunteers, increased support is essential to encourage better property management and underpin the good governance of urban areas.
In order to understand why people move, we must first try to comprehend how they understand their migration decisions and recognize that such understandings are intricately tied to their understandings of places. Place construction - the way people understand and discuss the nature and meaning of places - occurs at all levels from individual constructions to constructions by economic and political interest groups. These place constructions necessarily influence each other, and hence they are in constant flux and reflect power relations evident in society. This article examines these issues in the context of the negative net migration of young adults in the Australian state of Tasmania through an examination of the experiences of thirty young return migrants who participated in in-depth interviews and group discussions about their experiences of migration. It finds that bounded constructions of Tasmania - which stress the physical isolation and social and political insularity of the state as well as the uniqueness of the state's environment and society - appear to be dominant for these young returned migrants. However, the article argues that these bounded constructions necessarily exist in relation to networked constructions, which focus on the opportunities for people, ideas, goods and money to benefit through connections with other places as well as the loss of the uniqueness of the Tasmanian environment and society. This article concludes with a discussion of the political, economic and social consequences of these different forms of place construction.
This article reviews literature on the concept of 'place' and discusses its relevance to housing research. The article begins by providing a working definition of place before embarking upon an examination of the connections between place and identity. The nature of such attachments to place is examined through the work of Martin Heidegger (1973) and Pierre Bourdieu (1979). The relationship between place attachment and the volatile political-economy of place construction is subsequently discussed. The paper then continues with an outline of the importance of the concept of 'place' for housing researchers and concludes with some suggestions for further research. While discussions about 'place' have been a key preoccupation of geographers for some decades, housing researchers have barely touched on the subject. Yet, at the present time - a time of increasing migration, expanding urbanization, and swelling investments in place-construction (ranging from individual real-estate sales to city and regional re-developments) - the importance of the concept of place for housing researchers has come to the fore. The literature on 'place', especially the literature which sees 'home' as a particularly significant type of place, provides insight into the relationship between places and people's identities and psychological well-being; the dynamics of conflicts surrounding home-places; and the political-economy of home places. It also points to the need for a more integrated approach to housing research that looks beyond the scale of individual households to the regional, national and international scale.
Paul Mees' urban ideal counted on watchful, confident and well-informed citizenry to work collectively in a quest for fair and just cities. As such, The Public City is largely a critique of neo-liberalism and its arguably negative influence on urban prospects. As Mees explained it, neo-liberal urbanism was much more than a political aberration; it was a threat that imposed many costly failures in an age overshadowed by grave ecological challenges.Fifteen of Australia and New Zealand's leading urban scholars, including Professor Emeritus Jean Hillier and Professor Brendan Gleeson, have contributed to this collection.The Public City includes a foreword by the late Professor Sir Peter Hall, a world leader in urban planning from Britain. Kenneth Davidson, one of Australia's top economic columnists, has also contributed a chapter. The collective works in this book extend beyond an analysis of urban patterns to provide a blueprint for the improvement of civic and institutional purpose in the creation of the public city. - See more at: https://www.mup.com.au/items/154962#sthash.feTeKfnD.dpuf
This paper addresses the governance of strata title developments, in the context of current Australian metropolitan planning strategies promoting increased urban consolidation. It argues that the current focus on higher density development is vulnerable to challenges relating to regulation, representation and termination in strata developments. The governance of strata schemes is found to take the form of ‗nodal' governance based on market principles, where stakeholders do not have equal rights to participate, and the market is not free, but is regulated by a legislative structure that has inevitably lagged behind developments driven by the market. Principal among these is the increase in the size and complexity of strata schemes, which has put pressure on legislative arrangements originally designed for small developments. These problems are likely to escalate as an increasing proportion of the population move into strata.
Migration is an important part of the lives of many young adults. In numerous areas around the world, and particularly in regional and remote areas, cultures have emerged where the migration of young adults is normalised and expected. While the impact of the migration of young adults on the areas they have left and have moved to has received considerable attention in both political and academic arenas, there is a need for more research that addresses the cultural meaning of migration and the importance of the migration process for young people themselves. The paper is based on two large research projects undertaken between 2000 and 2005, which focused on the experiences of migration of young adults in Tasmania, and includes data sourced from interviews and focus groups with young migrants as well as an analysis of media and policy documents. We discuss the 'turbulent lives' of young people in Tasmania, including the expectations and aspirations of young adults growing up in a culture in which migration is normalised and their experiences of leaving, and returning to, their childhood homes. These issues are considered in the context of recent theoretical debates surrounding the impact of mobility and attachment to place on the identities of migrants.
The idea of the 'creative city' has become increasingly popular over recent decades in Australia, with planners and policy-makers connecting popular ideas about economic development to the 'soft' attributes of cities, such as liveability, innovation and creativity. The espousal of these ideas through policy has seen cities increasingly being branded as innately creative while seeking to attract 'creative' classes. We discuss how these ideas are worked through the strategic operations of city-State governments, using the example of universities to illustrate how planning emphasizes the training and retention of students as part of a creative class in utero. We detail deliberative efforts around student attraction and retention that form broader multi-level partnership efforts at consolidating economic development. We report on empirical research involving a hundred interviews, with community and city-level key actors, and the analysis of policy and State budget documentation. We find that universities, in partnership with city and State governments and private partners, tactically draw on the liveability of their cities to attract students as part of a broader effort to attain stronger positions within the creative economy.
The study was undertaken by researchers at UNSW Sydney, with the assistance and support of the City of Sydney Council.The aim of this research was to develop a survey tool for on-going assessment of social interactions and social cohesion at a large-scale urban renewal site that could be used to:➢ Measure the nature of social cohesion and social interaction and identify opportunities and barriers residents face in contributing to social cohesion and community development.➢ Understand the wellbeing of residents and workers, including their satisfaction with and attachment to the area, their local area preferences and desires, and their plans for the future.The results of the survey were presented to staff across the City of Sydney Council. It is expected that the survey findings will be used to inform Council's investments and activities across a range of areas, including community development, civic engagement, communications, placemaking, land use planning, open space and public domain planning, and local business development. The implications for practice presented here are preliminary and it is expected that City staff will further analyse and apply the survey findings to inform their work going forward. The City intends for the survey to be undertaken on a recurring basis over coming years, to monitor changes to the social fabric over time as the urban renewal area develops.Implications for community development: Green Square is an area with a large proportion of new residents (72% of survey respondents have lived in the area for 5 years or less), but that majority (70%) plan to remain resident in the area for a number of years. People feel more strongly connected to community at the larger scales of Sydney and Australia than at the local level of the suburb and street, but there is a desire to build more local connections, with the majority (68%) of residents wanting to have more interaction with others who live and work in the area.Private renters and younger people in particular desire more local social connection. Importantly, connection to community at the building scale is higher than at the suburb or street level, and the building scale was the only scale at which sense of community increased between 2017 and 2020. This suggests that community development at the building level is promising, but also that there is room to further develop community connections at the local suburb level. Interventions to encourage social interaction will be needed that engage residents who demonstrated a desire for greater involvement in social interactions but are constrained because of a lack of time and/or knowledge about the opportunities available to them, and a lack of confidence when dealing with strangers.Implications for civic engagement Around a third (32%) of residents felt they understood their rights around planning and urban development in the local area, slightly higher than in 2017 (27%). A smaller percentage (17%) felt they had made a civic contribution by working with others to improve the area. One in five felt that their thoughts about local issuescould be heard by people who make a difference (22%) and that there was strong local leadership in the area (18%), demonstrating a slight improvement from 2017 (when the figures were 20% and 15% respectively). There is potential for improved engagement amongst residents in the area as demonstrated by their willingness to be engaged in political discussions, with more residents having participated in other research (25%) and signed petitions (35%). There was also a substantial increase in the proportion of people who had joined a protest or demonstration from 8% in 2017 to 17% in 2020. The survey also revealed that relationships between language spoken at home and civic engagement are complex. People who speak a language other than English at home are less likely to be involved in communicating with a local politician or participated in the running of a strata or community title scheme. However, participation in research and council planning processes were equal or higher amongst people who speak a language other than English at home. There were also differences between people who speak a Chinese language and other language at home, with participation in online discussions, attendance at community events and sending letters to the media being higher amongst Chinese speaking residents than those speaking another language at home. In comparison, participation in a protest or demonstration was higher for those speaking English and another language at home compared to Chinese-speaking residents. These observed differences are based on small sample sizes and should therefore be treated with caution. However, they suggest that different strategies may be needed to encourage civic engagement of people who speak a language other than English at home and that different strategies may be more effective for different language groups.Implications for communications: Aside from time constraints, difficulty in finding information about social activities (26%) was the second most common limitation given by residents to socialising with others in the area. Barriers to participate in community activities were more pronounced among people speaking languages other than English at home. However, there are some interesting differences when comparing people speaking a Chinese language at home and people speaking another language at home, notably that people speaking a Chinese language are more likely to say that they are not confident with strangers, not interested in getting involved and have difficulty accessing facilities or venues, but are less likely to say that they do not feel welcome than people speaking another language at home.Residents would like to receive information about social activities through social media (63%), e-mails (56%), noticeboards in public places and their buildings (52%) and websites (36%). The City can provide such information through City-specific social media and through partnering with other social media platforms known to be actively used in the area, as well as collaborating with building managers. These approaches were effective in promoting the survey to residents. However, preferences for information differ greatly by age and language spoken at home. People aged over 50 were much less likely to want to receive information via social media (36%). However, e-mailed community newsletters were a more popular option amongst people over 50 (56%). People speaking a Chinese language at home are more likely to want to receive information via social media, noticeboards in public places or their building, websites, at the local community centre or library and in local newspapers and businesses and less likely to want to receive this information via word of mouth than both people speaking English and those speaking other languages at home. These results indicate that a variety of communication methods will be needed to reach all groups. However social media, e-mailed community newsletters and websites are important sources of information.Implications for placemaking: The majority of residents (90%) agreed that the area is a good place to live. This proportion has changed little since the 2014 and 2017 surveys and did not change before and after the introduction of the Covid-19 restrictions. This suggests that a high level of satisfaction with the area. However, people felt more strongly connected to Australia, Sydney and the inner city and surrounds than to their local area, street or building. Respondents to the 2020 survey were less connected to the communities at different scales than in 2017, with the exception of the building scale. As there is a relationship between length of residence and community attachment, this likely reflects the high proportion of residents who have lived in the area for less than six years, but nevertheless suggests that there is potential for further community development at the local scale.Implications for land use planning: The things people most commonly said they disliked about the area related to the danger of overdevelopment and the impacts of construction on the area and its overall density. Many people were also concerned about heavy traffic (48%) and parking (31%). However, while improvements to traffic management and public transport were the most important improvements residents wanted to see in 2017 (mentioned by 49% and 50% of resident respectively), in 2020 they remained important (mentioned by 43% and 43% of residents respectively) but were no longer the most commonly mentioned improvement. This likely reflects the gradual maturity of Green Square as a neighbourhood, where most hard infrastructure is now in place. More than half (58%) of residents travel to work or study using public transport and almost half (47%) of people said they moved to the area because of the proximity to public transport, demonstrating the important role that public transport plays in the attractiveness of the area.Notably, improvements that residents wanted to see in the area differed between age groups with younger people more likely to desire a greater variety of cafes, restaurants and bars, evening activities and public transport that connects to more parts of the city, while older people were more likely to desire landscaping in streets and parks a greater variety of retail shops and improved traffic management.Implications for open space and public domain planning: Parks and public spaces are significant locations for social interaction in Green Square and heavily used by residents. After cafes and restaurants, local (79%) and regional (66%) parks were the most commonly used local facilities. This could influence local land use planning and infrastructure development in Green Square and in future urban renewal areas, as it indicates that parks are important in facilitating local social interaction. However, there remains an important role for more formal community facilities, especially for particular groups, demonstrated by the higher proportion of unemployed people making use of community centres (19%) compared to the population as a whole (10%).Implications for local business: The most common places where people socialise with others in Green Square is cafes, restaurants and/or pubs (52%) and incidental interaction also commonly occurs in these places (52%). Cafes and restaurants are also the most commonly used services and facilities (94% of residents). Such businesses are therefore playing an important social role in the area, and two-thirds of residents (65%) said that they would like to see a wider variety of cafes, restaurants and bars in the area in the future. This suggests that the ideal of mixed-use development encouraging greater social interaction is supported by the findings in this case and has implications for development application planners who are making decisions about new businesses in the area.
The impact of housing on students' wellbeing has recently gained much media and political attention in Australia. The dire situation of students living in overcrowded housing was, for example, highlighted by State MP Cr Clover Moore, who reported deceptive practices linked to overcrowding among international students in apartments in the Sydney CBD. Others have reported on some students residing in sub-standard accommodation. The recent political and popular attention on student housing and wellbeing is, however, yet to flow on to corresponding academic research investigating student housing options, experiences and outcomes. This is despite well-acknowledged links between housing experiences and residents' long-term wellbeing.This paper presents a typology of housing options available to students in metropolitan Sydney, as well as an overview of the complexities of the student population in Australia. While the overwhelming complexity of the student body and the myriad of housing options available to students has the potential to stymie effective policy development and action, in this paper we draw upon statistical analysis, media articles, an extensive literature review and interviews with 12 stakeholders to draw attention to particular housing pathways with severe negative implications for those students. Our typology will assist policymakers and practitioners to target particular housing pathways (i.e. particular parts of the student body and the housing market) where interventionist housing policies and action will have the most impact.
No matter where in the world they live, if a person lives in a city it is increasingly likely that, if they can buy a property, it will be an apartment. Yet the documents a Sydney buyer's lawyer will review will be different to those in New York or Helsinki because there are many different systems of multi-owned property ownership around the world. These differ because of underlying differences in property law, but also because different jurisdictions have dealt with the dual challenges of horizontal subdivision and cooperative management in very different ways. While creating typologies for these different systems is helpful to understand the varied forms they can take, typologies are challenged by the fact each system differs in practice. In this paper, we draw on Ho's (2014) 'credibility thesis' to explain why it is so difficult to classify multi-owned property systems across jurisdictions. We demonstrate that similar legal systems of multi-owned property can result in different outcomes for owners in practice, just as different legal systems can result in similar outcomes. This is because the relationship between legal systems of ownership and the experiences of owners is mediated by local social, cultural, economic and political contexts.
Australian society is becoming more culturally diverse (ABS 2012a). In contrast, it is also becoming less welcoming in many ways. Research by the Scanlon Foundation (Markus 2016), for example, has documented an increase in racism in Australia over the last ten years, including verbal abuse, physical violence, and worsening local relations (see also Acharya 2017; Reconciliation Australia 2016). Such a shift undermines the country's social cohesion and political stability, and the health and well-being of individuals, particularly migrants (Dunn et al. 2016).Australian research on everyday multiculturalism has demonstrated that local neighborhoods are important sites for tackling racism and fostering intercultural understanding. Everyday multiculturalism, as distinct from official multicultural policy, is concerned with the quotidian daily encounters between individuals who share culturally diverse social spaces, including local residential communities (Ho et al. 2015; Wise and Velayutham 2009). Increasingly, cities are places where large proportions of the population live in apartments (ABS 2014). At the same time, most migrants to Australia settle in cities and migrants are over-represented as a proportion of dwellers in private apartments (see below). This trend suggests the importance of apartments as key elements of urban neighborhoods and the specific roles they may play as significant places of intercultural interaction. These roles have not yet been properly recognized, even in very recent research (see e.g. Fincher et al. 2014; Harris 2016; Neal et al. 2013).
The global trend towards city living, together with population ageing, has precipitated significant economic, social, political and environmental shifts, leading to changes in family configurations and living arrangements. Some changes are directly related to family forms, notably delayed childbearing, increasing divorce rates and higher incidences of re-partnering while others are less directly related and include improved employment opportunities for women, delayed retirement and more complex migration patterns both within and between countries. These changes are also happening in highly urbanised Australia. As in many developed countries, the majority of recent Australian housing and urban policies have focussed on responding to the rise in the number of small and especially single-person households in urban areas. As evidence attests, however, there is also a concurrent, yet largely unrecognised, rise in the number of multigenerational households, households where two or more generations of related adults live in the same dwelling. Between 1981 and 2006 in Australia, the number of people living in a multigenerational household increased by more than 800,000 (ABS 2011). By 2006, nearly one in four people in metropolitan Sydney (23.1%) and Melbourne (22.9%) lived in households that comprised two or more generations of related adults. The number of multigenerational households in Sydney alone totalled more than a quarter million in 2006. The share of multigenerational households as a share of all family households has also risen over this period; this is despite the concurrent increase in the number of single-person households and the overall decline in average household size. Recent Australian and international work in this area has focused on delayed home leaving amongst the younger generations (e.g. Alessie et al. 2005; Flatau et al. 2007) and the financial dis-benefits experienced by older generations as a result of this observed increase (e.g. Cobb-Clark and Ribar 2009). Some work also recognises the differences in practice in different contexts, especially the higher incidences of multigenerational households in cultures such as East Asia (Chui 2008; Izuhara 2010), Southern Europe (Billari and Rosina 2005) and the Middle East (Mehio-Sibai et al. 2009) where such household forms are more common. Evidence is also now emerging from countries where such living arrangements, while not traditional, are becoming more prominent (Gee et al. 2003) as well as the "boomerang" phenomenon, where adult offspring return to live in the parental home after periods of independent living (Kaplan 2009). The overwhelming significance of multigenerational living for Australia's urban population raises two important questions: Who lives in these multigenerational households, and why? This chapter draws upon a detailed analysis of customised Census data and findings of a survey of members of multigenerational households in Sydney and Brisbane to answer these questions. The chapter expands upon existing research by considering a range multigenerational living arrangements, besides the common phenomena of adult children remaining at home as well as the economic and non-economic benefits and disincentives for multiple generations to cohabit.
Many people around the world live in households with multiple generations of related adults (multigenerational households). Amongst certain cultures - in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe in particular – multigenerational living has formed an important part of the cultural fabric. But multigenerational living is also an important part of the lives of millions of people in societies where this family arrangement has not traditionally been seen as 'the norm'. This is the case in Australia, and yet approximately one in five people in Australia currently live in a multigenerational household. While some of these multigenerational households have moved to Australia from countries where multigenerational living is common, many have not. How then do people who live in multigenerational households understand their own experiences of living together, and what might this tell us about changing social expectations regarding the form and role of families in Australia? This paper presents findings of a multi-year research project on multigenerational households in the cities of Sydney and Brisbane in Australia, including a survey of 377 people, 18 follow-up diaries and 21 follow-up interviews to explore this issue. The findings of this research highlight that the stigma associated with living in a multigenerational household in Australia has lessened, and that normalised ideas surrounding the form and function of family are shifting. The paper concludes with a discussion of some potential explanations for this important cultural shift.
In the last few years, shared equity arrangements – where the consumer shares the capital cost of purchasing a home with an equity partner in return for a share of any home price appreciation that occurs – have seen significant growth in Australia. Most states and territories now have schemes operating, although a number remain on a relatively modest scale. More substantive engagement has occurred in jurisdictions where 'government-backed' but arms-length agencies, such as HomeStart in South Australia and Keystart in Western Australia, remain an integral part of local institutional and mortgage finance frameworks. For these organisations, shared equity provision has signified a key innovation within their product portfolios, providing a response to growing housing affordability constraint and a continued commitment to assist lower and moderate income households into homeownership. Alongside government interest, Australia has also been a market leader in terms of unsubsidised, private sector-led shared equity product development.
