Dr Gethin Davison

In Australia, as in many other countries, private high-density housing is typically marketed as the domain of middle- and higher-income residents. But, in practice, it accommodates many lower-income households. These households often live in mixed-income communities alongside wealthier neighbours, but, because of constrained budgets, they rely more heavily on access to community services and facilities. This has implications for public infrastructure planning in high-density neighbourhoods where private property ownership dominates. In this article, we examine two neighbourhood case studies within the same local government area in Sydney that have sizable populations of lower-income households living in apartments, but which provide markedly different day-to-day experiences for residents. We consider the causes of these varying outcomes and implications for neighbourhood-scale planning and development. The article argues that coordinated and collaborative planning processes are key to ensuring that the needs of lower-income households are met in privately developed apartment neighbourhoods.

Although an ever-increasing number of social interactions are taking place virtually, people’s relationships with their neighbors remain important. Apartment residents make up a growing proportion of the population in cities worldwide, but there is evidence that many find it challenging to form and maintain local social connections, especially those renting their home. This can negatively impact physical and mental health, and have implications for the management of apartment complexes and local area social sustainability. In this paper, we draw on interviews (n = 41) with renters of four large case study condominium complexes in Sydney, Australia, to investigate their local social interactions. The findings reveal that while many renters desire greater local connection, their opportunities and motivations are limited by factors relating to mobility, tenure security, prejudice, and exclusion from building-related governance. The paper concludes by considering the scope for interventions in design, management and governance to enhance opportunities for social connection.

The pursuit of high-quality urban design through the planning process is made challenging by two key problematics. First, control over the decisions that produce or alter the built environment is differentially distributed across numerous public and private agents. Second, there is little agreement about what ‘good’ urban design is and how it is best pursued. Recognizing this, the focus in this paper is on how these two problematics are being tackled through a unique design control initiative in Sydney, Australia. This initiative requires that all major property developments are subject to a design competition before they can be approved. The paper reports the findings of 41 stakeholder interviews and appraisals of 25 projects completed under these provisions. These findings indicate that mandated design competitions have helped force a general raising of urban design quality by re-distributing decision-making control and enabling a broad but non-prescriptive approach to the regulation of design excellence.

The concept of ‘character’ has gained considerable currency in city planning and design, with the impacts of proposed property developments on the character of established urban places now a common consideration in planning decision making. Drawing on the methods of critical discourse analysis, this paper problematises this trend through a case study of Melbourne, Australia. Three critiques of current approaches to the regulation of character in Melbourne are identified: an overemphasis on physical form and disregard for the perceptual and experiential dimensions of place, a failure to acknowledge insider perspectives on character, and the effects of character-based regulations in justifying inequitable and exclusionary planning outcomes. The difficulties associated with the use of character as a planning assessment criterion are then discussed. The paper concludes by arguing for approaches to the regulation of place distinctiveness that attend more fully to the social and experiential aspects of place.

Proposals for the development of affordable housing are frequently opposed by local community members due to concerns about the potential deleterious impacts on host neighbourhoods. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, this paper considers whether there is any empirical basis for this opposition in the Australian context. First, a hedonic regression analysis is used to examine the impacts of 17 affordable housing developments on local property sales values in Brisbane. Second, the qualitative impacts of affordable housing development on neighbours are assessed through a doorstep survey conducted with 141 householders in Sydney. The results of both the hedonic analysis and doorstep survey indicate that the impacts of affordable housing development on host neighbourhoods are likely to be slight in the majority of cases. We found that affordable housing development can have positive or negative impacts on property sales values, but that these impacts are minimal where they exist. Our doorstep survey findings revealed that 78% of people had experienced no negative impacts as a result of affordable housing development in their area. The paper concludes by considering the practical implications of our findings.

Community opposition to locally unwanted development is not inherently problematic, but it can be destructive where conflict between proponents and objectors escalates. This paper relates mixed-methods findings from a Sydney case-study where opposition to planned affordable housing projects was widespread but uneven. Five factors are identified that escalated individual opposition campaigns in this case: public notification procedures; sense of injustice; prejudice; strong campaign leadership; and the involvement of politicians. We argue that these factors will likely also escalate opposition to the planned development of other forms of critical social infrastructure, and that an understanding of them can help minimise destructive conflicts between proponents and host communities.

The construction of social housing in gentrifying neighbourhoods can ignite contestation, revealing tensions between economic imperatives, social policy and neighbourhood change. With a view to understanding how the convergence of these agendas preserve unpopular, but socially critical housing infrastructure, the aim of this paper is to explore how the challenges social housing implementation encounters across these agendas intersect with a broader agenda for local democratic planning. Using social housing as our empirical focus and directing attention to the gentrifying local government area of Port Phillip in Victoria, Australia, this paper reveals how a council’s main asset to support implementation – its policy frameworks – creates an urban narrative of social inclusivity and diversity. Through this case, we illustrate how elected officials and some residents draw from these policies to interject into episodes of community contestation, which we argue presents opportunities to expose and renew commitments to social housing over space and time.

This paper outlines the current Australian policy environment for delivering affordable housing in urban renewal contexts. An increasing shift towards infill development, coupled with a decreasing provision of government-owned social housing, is placing severe pressure on housing affordability. The cumulative effect is to create the need for governments to intervene on urban renewal projects to ensure that affordable housing options are delivered as a part of any new development. Three different approaches to planning for affordable housing in three states are examined: the former Urban Land Development Authority in Queensland, the 15% inclusionary zoning requirement in South Australia and the Affordable Rental Housing State Environmental Planning Policy in New South Wales. Despite significant differences between these approaches, a number of potential roles emerge for government to support delivery of affordable housing by market and not-for-profit housing providers, without adversely affecting development viability. These roles are as the land facilitator, educator, risk taker, subsidiser and long-term planner. Given that one aim of current policy directions is to reduce the role of government in delivering housing and urban growth, the paper concludes by considering the extent to which the approaches across the three states studied can be considered successful.

State governments in Australia increasingly outsource the co-ordination and delivery of ‘difficult’ regeneration projects to state-owned land development agencies (LDAs). These LDAs were originally established in the 1970s with a strong redistributionist agenda, operating mainly to deliver low-cost residential land on greenfield sites. In the last 25 years, however, their roles have been redirected towards brownfield regeneration and they have been required to operate profitably. This paper uses the recent rise and fall of a powerful Queensland LDA to examine the potential of ‘positive planning’ in political contexts where governments wish to both limit their involvement in planning and achieve sustainable brownfield regeneration.

This report investigates the causal roots of local opposition to affordable housing projects in Australia. It shows that planning concerns can mask prejudice against low-income residents. However community opposition can be exacerbated by dismissive attitudes by government.

This report examines decision making, leadership and organisational dynamics in the Australian not-for-profit housing sector, drawing on international studies and experts.

Proposals for higher-density development in established neighbourhoods are frequently opposed by local community members who argue that the existing ‘character’ of a place would be damaged or destroyed. This article considers the use of these community-based understandings of character as a tool for actively shaping processes of urban change. The article relates a case study of the Californian district of Fruitvale, where recent processes of redevelopment were driven by community perceptions of a ‘Latino character’. The article finds that this existing Latino character was used to great effect as a design tool in Fruitvale, but in a way that can be seen as essentialist and socially divisive; a Latino character here was deployed at the expense of alternative conceptions of Fruitvale as ‘multicultural’. Reflecting on the case through theories of place and social difference, the article raises questions about the politics of character, and the uses and abuses of the term in urban planning and design practice.

This report examines how planning and housing policy domains have successfully worked more closely together to deliver increased affordable housing supply in urban renewal areas in Sydney, Adelaide & Brisbane.

This report focuses on the role of housing policies and programs in meeting the challenges presented by spatial concentrations of disadvantage.

Policies for achieving compact cities have long faced resident resistance on the basis that intensified development would be out of character. Yet resident response depends on the role of image and imagination in planning discourse. This paper seeks to test urban design imagery for transformations of specific one- to two-storey Melbourne streetscapes, via two representational modes: first, abstracted images of bulk and height scenarios for two different places; second, fully developed urban design visions for four different places. The urban experiences these images evoked and their levels of acceptability were explored through interviews with resident activists. One key finding is, as the bulk and height scenarios change from four to six storeys, from setback to no setback, or from 20 to 60% take-up, the average acceptability reduces by a factor of more than three. The detailed streetscape visions are more acceptable despite greater bulk and height but can produce cynicism. We suggest that such levels of acceptability to resident activists may be predictive of local politics, and levels of acceptability in the wider community may be higher. We conclude with commentary on the role of imagery within planning discourse, where it circulates in a highly contested political field, its accuracy rarely tested.

Planning policy in Australian cities currently favours a more compact urban form, but proposals for higher-density development are frequently resisted by residents who argue that the ‘character’ of a place would be damaged or destroyed. This paper explores the factors underlying this resistance and assesses the extent to which character can be designed for. The paper relates a case study of the Perth suburb of Subiaco, where the design of a major redevelopment project was shaped by the form of surrounding areas, but where long-standing residents claim that it is ‘out of character’ nonetheless. Reflecting on the case through theories of place, urban design and ‘affordances’, it is suggested that this rejection of the project owes much to the way that urban designers focused on replicating certain physical features of Subiaco's character, while neglecting a host of everyday social and experiential meanings that were of equal significance to residents.

Urban intensification is a key planning strategy in the UK, but one that is frequently resisted by local residents objecting to transformations of urban character. This paper is concerned with the factors that underlie such resistance, and with the opportunities for addressing them through the planning process. The paper relates a case-study of the East London district of Dalston where a mixed-use redevelopment project, strongly supported by local authorities, was fiercely resisted by residents who claimed that the existing character of the locality was being violated. Reflecting on the case through theories of place, gentrification, and planning process, we argue that resident resistance was not simply a case of self-interested NIMBYism, but a product of important differences in the ways that character was variously constructed and valued by local authorities and community members.

This report examines the sustainability outcomes of new affordable housing projects. By considering eight case study projects, it shows how limited public funding is best used to leverage desirable financial, environmental and social outcomes.

Urban intensification is a key planning strategy for all major Australian cities, but proposals for higher density buildings in established neighbourhoods are frequently opposed by local residents on the basis that they would be ‘out of character’. In this article, the opportunities for urban intensification to reinforce and enhance the existing character of a place are explored through a case study of a Vancouver neighbourhood where a proposed high-rise project was initially resisted by community members, but has subsequently been embraced by them. It is argued that in this case, through a participatory and debate-centred planning process, urban intensification and neighbourhood character became mutually dependent in an unlikely form of urban symbiosis.