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In 2014, the Hazelwood mine fire burned for 45 days. Local communities were impacted by smoke and ash, and there were reports of raised carbon monoxide levels. Local news and social media reported residents experiencing numerous physical symptoms of smoke inhalation, including bleeding noses, coughing, wheezing and chest tightness. Paper masks to filter particulate matter were made available to residents to wear outside. The dust and ash constantly seeped into homes and offices, which required cleaning daily and sometimes multiple times during the day. Smoke was free to move across physical and bodily boundaries while those most vulnerable were hampered by lack of movement: pregnant women, the elderly and children were advised to leave the area. However, this suggestion to 'simply' move ignored the context of a community disproportionately impacted through years of economic decline and societal change. This paper explores the unequal mobilities of smoke and people that arose as a result of this event and draws on concepts of mobility justice (Sheller 2018) and emergency mobilities (Adey 2016) to reflect on the political dimensions of uneven mobility in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art clusters in cities are welcomed by planners, residents and business. In respect to an urban economy, art clusters are viewed as beneficial because of their contribution to neighbourhood ambience in ways likely to attract young professionals who possess, it is said, higher propensity for innovation and creativity. Clusters of art activity are also seen as place-makers that enhance liveability, an important asset in the contemporary spatial economy. Yet there is little empirical work which examines the forces that drive the location of these places of art and their connection to the urban economy. This paper takes art galleries in Sydney, Australia, as a case study. Using data from a comprehensive survey, interviews and direct observation, the study finds a peculiar story of art clustering. Sydney's galleries are found to be concentrated in exclusive locations. The study finds powerful agglomeration forces, including opportunities for stable property tenure, adjacency to the city's cultural institutions, input of government funding and the presence of wealthy buyers among local residents. Certainly, the agglomerations identified meet criteria for recognition as cultural districts, yet in ways different to the images of edgy neighbourhoods presented in the literature as the substance of art in a post-industrial city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we chart the changing character of Australian geographical research based on trends in publications in the Australian Geographer. Using data starting from the journal's inception in 1928 until 2018, we document changes in geographical research reflecting broader trends in the evolution of the discipline. We argue that a long-term perspective, harnessing an empirical approach to data produced over a 90-year publication history, enables geographers to better understand the discipline. Accordingly, we track 'who' is doing geography and 'where' these studies take place. We also ask 'how' geography is being done vis-à-vis physical/human and combined studies. Our analysis of the publication history of the Australian Geographer over the last 90 years aims to provoke broader reflection on the progression of geographical research and the discipline's identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the launch of the annual "Geographical Society of NSW Award" by the publisher of the periodical "Australian Geographer" Taylor & Francis Group LLC. It informs that the award will be given to the best paper by an early career researcher in the periodical and the best paper in the periodical. It adds that the prize will be 750 U.S. dollars worth of books from the publisher and a complimentary one-year subscription to the periodical.

The Anthropocene is a contested notion yet has taken hold as a term to describe the current state of global human-induced environmental changes, including biodiversity loss and climate change. Despite this fact, in the New South Wales Kindergarten to Year 10 Geography syllabus, ‘the Anthropocene’ is not explicitly mentioned. When a syllabus avoids engaging with such a key environmental concept, and this is combined with a high proportion of geography being taught by non-specialist teachers, missed opportunities emerge. This Thinking Space paper showcases how an academic geographer, post-graduate students, and a geography education academic in New South Wales collaborated to mitigate an absence of ‘the Anthropocene’ in syllabus content. We bring visibility to invisible content around ‘the Anthropocene’ by examining syllabus content and working through possible solutions. In doing so, we argue that the Anthropocene is explicitly absent yet implicitly present. We hope that this paper provides some pathways for teachers who may choose to include an important, yet seemingly absent, area of geographical content. It is also a call to foster collaborative opportunities between Geographers and Geography educators to support content development amongst school-based teachers of Geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing scholarship on footpaths, sidewalks, streets, and pavements integrates laudable discussions about legal and regulatory concerns alongside debates about safety and place-making. Yet there are fewer debates about diasporic encounters and place-making processes in this everyday space. Accordingly, this paper examines encounters that occur on footpaths and outside adjoining shops by the Sri Lankan diaspora in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. The footpaths fall within the semi-public realm; they are public spaces connected to privately owned shops. I draw from a critical autoethnography and in-depth interviews conducted with Sri Lankans living in Australia to better understand how their place-making processes are entrenched in the semi-public realm. This paper provides a fresh case study to highlight the importance of warm and convivial encounters in everyday spaces that strengthen feelings of familiarity and belonging in host communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is largely considered an immigrant-receiving country, however, it is estimated that over one million Australians are living overseas at any given time. Despite this, diaspora relations have never been particularly robust, the consequences of which have become particularly visible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Australia used a strict closed-border approach in handling the pandemic and, although effective at reducing the spread of the virus, it will be argued that this isolationist approach was at the detriment of diaspora relations. This paper uses the findings from in-depth interviews with Australians living overseas to demonstrate that the country's response to the Covid-19 pandemic created an intergroup divide between Australia and its expatriates. Social identity theory and the theory of intergroup threat will be used to support the findings that Australian expatriates became the 'outgroup', perceived as a realistic threat by the resident national 'ingroup'. Public fear of the virus and Australia's strict isolationist stance created a divide between those within the border, and those trying to get in. This paper provides the first-hand experiences and sentiments of Australian expatriates, while further research exploring the perspective of resident nationals is recommended to facilitate a more robust understanding of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia's major cities the new apartment approvals and number of apartment residents has increased over recent years. However, there remain concerns regarding the poor design quality of apartments and the living experiences of families with children. This paper examines the floor plan of 368 apartments in Sydney, including floor areas and number of bedrooms. Different typologies of spatial layout were determined using space syntax. Separate interviews were undertaken with (1) architects and developers to explore their strategies for apartment development and (2) families with children to examine their needs and whether these are met in recently delivered apartment layouts. Results show that two-bedroom apartments dominate the Sydney market, as do layouts without a hall/corridor. The reason is developers are focussed on meeting the needs of investor-purchasers, as opposed to the desires of families with children. This results in developers preferring one-and-two-bedroom apartments and standardised layouts. In contrast, parents desired a more diverse range of apartment layouts, in terms of privacy, supervision and shared spaces, notably influenced by the age of children. The paper concludes by examining the opportunities for flexible layouts as a mechanism to both meet developers' needs, whilst also addressing the diverse desires of families with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times there has been a population turnaround in the island state of Tasmania sparked by an increase in in-migration of mainland urban dwellers. This paper argues that one of the major driving factors of this change is the quest for a new lifestyle in regional/rural life, that incorporates a desire for a temperate climate. As literature in lifestyle migration shows, this quest for a new life does not end once migration is over. Rather, the migration experience continues well after the move. In this paper, it will be shown how weather not only attracts migrants into Tasmania, but then encourages/discourages certain activities allowing the individual to engage in new ways of living. The paper suggests that while we need to be careful about romanticising this, we can potentially view this shift as emblematic of people's relationship to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many motives for undertaking a counter-urban move appear to be associated with a search for a sense of 'home', such as moving for a sense of community, for affordable or larger housing, perceptions of a 'safer' area for children, or moving to a childhood hometown. However, rarely is counter-urban migration directly linked to the concept of home. In this paper, I make the direct link between counter-urban moves and the search for a sense of home using biographies of four (4) counter-urban movers to the Sunshine Coast, Australia. The participants each moved to the area in a search for a sense of home related to four key themes: housing, family, stability and familiarity, however they varied in their pre-move experiences and expectations of how the Sunshine Coast would improve their sense of home. These differences impacted their post-move experiences, as those participants with prior familiarity with the Sunshine Coast felt a greater sense of home post-move. This paper provides an important conceptual link between the search for a sense of home and counterurbanisation, to add further critical insight into motivations and experiences of counter-urban migrants, and the perceptions of a sense of home being better achieved outside of major cities.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus in this paper is on the shifting optimum location for a newsprint mill in Australia, factors influencing this shift, and the implications for a particular manufacturing site that is becoming increasingly outdated and out-of-place. Shipping times and schedules for high-volume, high-density tonnages of commodities such as newsprint have altered insufficiently over the last 60 years to affect competitive relations among various newsprint manufacturers around the world. With sea transport held roughly constant, changes in other aspects of the international newsprint industry can be investigated as part of unpacking the concept of globalisation. Globalisation for the former Australian Newsprint Mills Ltd meant becoming more open to new and closer competition, as well as becoming more exposed to acquisition by increasingly transnational enterprises. In the global newsprint industry at least, the world is less a smaller place than a more open one, with tonnes of newsprint moving at similar speeds to 60 years ago but among different and changing locations in terms of geography, ownership and market preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Places outside the city have continuously been characterised by received knowledge about decline, youth outmigration, lifestyle discourses and a lack of opportunities for young people. This paper argues that greater clarification of young people's place-making practices counteracts received knowledge about the decline of the regions, discourses about the 'idyllic' communities and lack of access commonly understood to impact young people beyond the city. This paper further seeks to contribute to the academic discussion about non-urban spaces by focusing on regional places specifically, a key geography in the discussion about place. A focus group study with 62 individuals aged 16–28 years was designed to capture young people's place-making practices. Using Harris, A., and J. Wyn. (2009. "Young People's Politics and the Micro-Territories of the Local." Australian Journal of Political Science 44 (2): 327–344) concept 'micro-territories of the local' as a framework, the analysis draws on gender and social class to interrogate young people's place-making projects. The findings indicate that regional towns represent a unique constellation of people, resources and history that highlights the specific place-making projects of young people in their teens and into their 20s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent passage of the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Act (2021) (Cth) opened up the potential for Australia to produce renewable energy at unprecedented scale. Six regions have been identified as potential locations for developing offshore wind projects, promising thousands of new local jobs to legacy industrial regions. This paper charts the regulatory framework for Australia's offshore wind industry and how it positions local economic benefits in the licencing of projects. It then draws on interviews with key stakeholders supported by media and policy analysis to examine the early development of offshore wind capability in one of the proposed regions, the Illawarra, in NSW. Here existing steelmaking capacity positions the region to play a key role in supply chains for local and potentially national projects, but considerable structural and geographical constraints in the labour market will need to be addressed. In light of overseas experience indicating that economic benefits often fall short of promises, greater attention by policy makers is required to ensure hosting communities can develop local skills in the industry and facilitate their relative supply chain capabilities. This paper also calls for careful evaluation of early projects to allow for adjustments to policy settings as the industry matures domestically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bowling clubs have been local institutions in Australia for over 150 years. Once a booming pastime, the popularity of lawn bowls has waned and subsequently so has the number of clubs. Sydney has lost nearly half the number of clubs from 1980, many of them in the past decade. Drawing on Ray Oldenburg's concept of the 'third place' as a vital and inclusive local social hub, this paper charts the evolving geography and governance of the bowling club in metropolitan Sydney from the nineteenth century. The focus of this paper is on closures and land use changes between 2005 and 2020 and projected trends. A crucial factor in securing more public-orientated redevelopment outcomes is land ownership. The findings highlight how closure and redevelopment mediated through the NSW planning system impacts the social capital of communities. Bowling clubs as third places constitute important informal social centres. While this legacy persists as they adapt to new societal trends, the decline in the number of traditional clubs suggest that without a wider appreciation of the distinctive character of the Australian 'bowlo', there is a risk of not only losing valued community infrastructure but a centrepiece of the Australian cultural landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores research methods around the generative process of remembering spaces. It discusses a participant's extraordinary lists and drawings, 'maps' of factory layouts, created from memory, of an industrial heritage site, a woollen mill closed in 1971, situated in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. These methods investigate the conditions, and entanglements across time, that enable detailed recall. The paper considers both, methods in the present that create an affective resonance with the past; and types of experiences in the past creating detailed memories in the present. The findings offer a combination of ethnographic methods for accessing those memories by being in-situ with participants through interviews, drawings, site walkthroughs, photo-elicitation and a perspective of wayfaring. Thus, the article contributes to geographical methods research exploring the generative, iterative and affective productions of memory and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an empirical case study of the Subiaco town centre in Western Australia. The research method employs geospatial mapping of archival and contemporary data sources to explore the town centre's changing spatial structure and high street morphology at the micro-scale over the past century. Once a thriving retail and business centre, Subiaco's (and possibly the state's), premier retail high street destination is now being compromised as the disruptive influence of online retailing gains further traction in the marketplace. Retail disruption provides the paper's conceptual foundation. Agents of disruption include the processes of creative destruction and innovation diffusion, which together with macro-economic factors help to explain the centre's evolution over time and space. The paper examines changes in the town centre's morphological character including residential gentrification, a growing dominance of fast food outlets, an overabundance of comparison stores and a more gendered offering in retail and personal services establishments. The paper also refers to the potential of the town centre to regain its past residential status as a means of fostering economic growth and renewal and suggests that this will only be achieved with radical intervention at the policy and planning level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts around transport mega-projects, driven by social and environmental impacts, are increasingly prevalent around the world. While environmental impacts have received significant attention, less is known about how the intangible social impacts of these projects stimulate conflict. Assessment of these impacts is crucial; however, the process is often influenced by the underlying power relationships within neoliberal governance. This paper analyses the discursive context of state-community conflicts in transport mega-projects and explores how power dynamics shape the perceptions of both the intensity and extent of its social impacts. Drawing on a case study of the WestConnex project, a controversial motorway development in Sydney, the paper analyses government policy documents and online community submissions to explore the conflicts around the project. Through critical discourse analysis, the paper provides insights into the nature of power relationships that limit the scope of impact assessment and underpin conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Counter-urbanisation' has attracted international attention for decades, as an elusive concept that runs against the overwhelming trend of an urbanising world. In Australia, interest in counter-urbanisation waned after the peak interest from the 1970s until the early 2000s, however a recent resurgence of interest has grown due to anecdotal evidence of rising migration out of major cities. Advances in the ability to telecommute, the impacts of COVID-19 and lockdowns in major cities, and the impact of climate change on migration movements are some contemporary changes prompting the need for a renewed critical and theoretical analysis of counter-urbanisation. This editorial introduces the special issue that offers renewed insights to counter-urbanisation in Australia. We present three arguments to ground the elusive concept of 'counter-urbanisation' that underpins this special issue. We argue (1) that the contemporary examples of counter-urbanisation we are witnessing presently in Australia involve migration from major cities to regional spaces; (2) counter-urbanisation is determined by geographical context, in this case Australia and places within, and (3) Australian counter-urban movements are strongly linked to amenity and lifestyle migration. This editorial then introduces the special issue papers which together define and challenge the concept of counter-urbanisation within the Australian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to scholarship that conceptualises housing, particularly social housing, as an infrastructure of care. Care for people with housing needs that cannot be met in the private market is shaped through the provision of social housing, and social housing can also be a site for caring (and careless) practices and relations. Using qualitative data gathered in interviews with tenancy managers at one of the largest social housing providers in Victoria, I argue that tenancy management must be understood as an integral pillar of the caring infrastructure social housing can provide. Tenancy managers who participated in this study understood tenancy management in social housing as a caring practice. They described their role as oriented around sustaining the tenancies of people with high and complex support needs who would otherwise be at high risk of homelessness. However, tenancy managers also faced consistent barriers to the enactment of tenancy-sustainment-as-care, which emerged when caring relationships between the actors involved in sustaining a tenancy broke down. This paper focuses on their experiences of overcoming barriers, resolving conflicts, and successfully sustaining tenancies. The analysis shows that ‘caring-with’ – i.e., working relationally to build collaborative networks of care-givers and care-receivers – can support tenancy sustainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most cities across the globe are embarking on various ‘smart’-based initiatives that seek to use technological developments to enhance people’s lives and make society more productive. Within such smart cities, citizens are often expected to become active ‘collaborators’ in producing smartness. Such technocratic forms of collaboration maintain entrenched forms of hierarchical power, with citizens usually figured as passive ‘consumers’ or ‘users’ of smart technologies rather than as real transformative participants. In this paper, I explore how ‘collaboration’ in the smart city might be thought of differently in ways that challenge the more utilitarian senses that dominate much political and academic discussion. I do this through an engagement with Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation and technology. In particular, I explore the distinction he draws between ‘interindividual’ and ‘transindividual’ modes of relation and how they entail different political senses of what collaboration between humans and technologies might entail. I flesh this out by drawing on interview research with stakeholders and citizens in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I highlight how stakeholders and citizens imagine collaboration and how these imaginaries explore alternate ways of living in and relating to smart urbanism and smart mobilities today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the number of working-age migrants to Australia, their ageing parents may intend to move to Australia to join their adult children. The paper examines the determinants of later-life transnational migration for Chinese parents to live with their adult children who have already migrated to Australia. The later-life transnational migration decision is an interplay between the characteristics of Chinese parents and their adult children, and the nature of Australia's migration system. This paper is the first to investigate the transnational migration decisions of Chinese parents by examining how their adult children in Australia perceived a family reunion and intergenerational trade-off in Australia as a collective family decision. This exploratory study used a multinominal logit model to identify the factors of later-life transnational migration decisions with a sample of adult children living in Sydney, Australia. The results show that the adult children's perception of living with their parents in Australia and the mediating role of the mother, not the father, significantly affects the Chinese parents' transnational migration. The intergenerational transfer of wealth and household support is also crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cavendish banana is Australia's most popular fruit and marketed as emblematic of Australian nationalisms. In July 2017, the disease-causing fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense was confirmed present on Australia's largest Cavendish banana farm, in the worst disease incursion that Northern Queensland Cavendish monocrop plantations have yet faced. Confronted with the potential collapse of the industry, banana growers and Biosecurity Queensland officials have deployed a biosecurity response centred on measures of border control and containment. This paper examines the othering of the disease vector Panama Tropical Race 4, revealing biosecurity attempts as embroiled in cultural preoccupations with invasion. In so doing, this paper establishes that the biosecurity concerns regarding Northern Queensland bananas are not just with the economic and biological productivity of nature, but entangled in post-colonial anxieties over who belongs within the landscape. Following the entangled relations between the disease and Cavendish bananas reveals cultural nuances and multispecies relations. These shape and are shaped by industry and government efforts as experts attempt to maintain governance over entities as they appear to slip from human control. This paper finds that the anxieties and narratives of Australian post-colonial politics are deeply imbricated with the logics of ecological protection, agricultural productivity and the banality of everyday nationalisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian governments are increasingly enrolling ecological restoration and urban afforestation to address climate change and support the transition towards sustainability. While policymakers warm to these 'nature-based solutions', their successful implementation will depend on the public's capacity to care for trees and spaces of (urban) nature. This underscores the importance of understanding what drives people to voluntarily care for trees and (urban) natures on public and private land. In conversation with existing research on urban forestry and environmental volunteerism, this paper tests the proposition that attention to atmospheres could enrich our knowledge of the forces that mediate care and volunteer motivation. Its novel empirical contribution is a description of the aesthetic, affective and semiotic contours of two arboreal atmospheres called grace and vibrancy. The paper concludes by reflecting on the connection between these atmospheres and participants' capacity to care for the urban forest. It argues atmosphere could be a richly generative concept and offers some provisional conclusions about the empirical, methodological and theoretical value it can bring to geographical-led studies of urban forestry and environmental volunteerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City road verges often represent existing green space and provide opportunities for ecological enhancement. Urban greenspace improvement initiatives at the residential verge scale require genuine community support and engagement for success. We examined a community-based voluntary assisted verge greening program designed to enhance greenspace connectivity using native plants in a local municipality in Perth, Western Australia. A social survey of verge-greening program participants and non-participants was conducted to understand factors associated with community involvement. Results indicated general resident support for the program, where both groups viewed the program objectives positively. However, non-participants were less convinced, than participants, of the likelihood that the verge greening program would achieve its aims and the merits of some aims. This paper provides insight into a voluntary community engagement tool for developing urban green space connectivity and enhancing natural values at the residential roadside verge level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human encounters with waste can trigger reflections on taken-for-granted assumptions about consumption. Taking this observation as its starting point, this paper explores whether and how the introduction of the kitchen caddy and food waste composting at the municipal scale generates new environmental subjectivities in Australian homes. Using visceral research methods, the paper shows that, other than participation in municipal composting, close encounters with food becoming compost do not trigger more experimental or sustainable relationships with food. Rather, they trigger new configurations of cleanliness, tidiness and storage as participants seek to stabilise their home against the disruptive sight, smell and touch of food becoming compost. In unsettling the boundaries between humans and nonhumans, and cleanliness and chaos, food becoming compost produces visceral disgust among residents who are primed through modern home cultures to maintain cleanliness, control and the prevention of nonhuman intrusions at home. The success of municipal composting thus hinges on households' commitment to 'sustainability work' in placing, storing, cleaning and sealing food to reconfigure the modern home for waste recovery. Reconceptualising municipal composting as a co-production of sensory engagement and household practices, we centre a visceral politics of household sustainability at the heart of municipal composting and resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In neoliberalising universities, collegial and collective practices such as reading groups are often positioned by students, staff and managers as less important than meeting individual KPIs (such as producing research publications, seeking research grants, or meeting the increasing demands of producing quality teaching outcomes.) However, reading groups can be vital for cultivating caring collectives and spaces of collegiality. In this paper we use assemblage thinking to explore 25 years of a Geography reading group at the University of Newcastle. The paper addresses two questions: what does reading together do and make possible; and how might we think about the labours of reading together as a way of building caring collectives. The paper draws on reflections from 24 past and present members of reading group to explore how these kinds of academic practices nourish our working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISE) offer supported work environments for people experiencing disadvantage, including people with disability. This paper reflects on a research project that is mapping the ways in which social enterprises in regional Australian cities produce wellbeing for their employees. Through supported employment programs, these organisations are transforming individual lives, helping to build a sense of self-worth and purpose, and increase individuals' social skills and capacities. Many of the perceived benefits are associated with a belief in the innate good of paid work. Based upon interviews with employees in the social enterprises, it is apparent that the hopes attached to providing 'meaningful work' are considerable. At the same time social enterprises are taking on social responsibilities that were once provided by the state, while also selling their services as employers of disabled and disadvantaged members of society and maintaining commercial viability of the enterprise. Using feminist political economy alongside discussion of the distributive economy, this paper explores how contemporary policy conditions, productivist biases and normative discourses about the value of wage work inflect the forms of wellbeing that can be experienced by WISE workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban greening is a buzz term in urban policy and research settings in Australia and elsewhere. In a context of settler colonial urbanism, like Australia, a first fact becomes clear: urban greening is always being practiced on unceded Indigenous lands. Recognising this requires some honest reckoning with how this latest urban policy response perpetuates dispossessory settler-colonial structures. In this paper, we listen to the place-based ontologies of the peoples and lands from where we write to inform understanding the city as an always already Indigenous place – a sovereign Aboriginal City. In so doing, the paper tries to practice a way of creating more truthful and response-able urban knowledge practices. We analyse three distinct areas of scholarly research that are present in the contemporary literature: urban greening and green infrastructure; urban political ecology; and more-than-human cities. When placed in relationship of learning with the sovereign Aboriginal City, our analysis finds that these scholarly domains of urban greening work to re-organise colonial power relations. The paper considers what work the practice and scholarship of 'urban greening' might need to do in order to become response-able and learn to learn with Indigenous sovereignties and ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban spaces have long been places to think through human relationships with nature. The recent shift in thinking from urban green space as outcome to urban greening as a process provides an opportunity to consider more explicitly how we engage with more-than-human worlds in urban spaces, in more differentiated ways, and for what ends. In this paper we contribute to growing interest in improved urban sustainability and well-being by bringing human geography perspectives on more-than-human worlds into conversation with the literature on urban greening. Drawing on key examples oriented around urban trees, we consider two main themes: sensibilities and belonging. We argue for an understanding of urban places as collective achievements that not only involve knowing and living with diverse humans and non-humans but also involve the re/making of sensibilities and belongings. Through this paper, we aim to open dialogue about how more-than-human geographies might help us to differently understand urban trees, contemporary urban greening, and people–plant relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning with things other-than-human and exploring the more-than-human dimensions of cities has failed to ignite within the discipline of planning. Humans and the human perspective remain privileged throughout both planning theory and practice. However, slowly over the course of the past two decades there has been a trickle of Actor Network Theory-based planning studies allowing the discipline to dip its toes into the more-than-human realm. This paper uses empirical evidence to demonstrate the role and influence of particular nonhumans as active mediators in the politics of planning processes and the production of more-than-human urban spaces. In doing so, the paper raises ethical questions around the existing anthropocentric approach to the assessment and deliberation of planned development where living nonhumans are affected. Utilising the case study of the proposed Mangles Bay Marina, in the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, the paper will illustrate the influence of three types of nonhuman actors: living nonhuman species; discursive text and talk; and technical artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of wetlands as places worthy of protection has been recognised since at least 1975, with the passage of the global wetland treaty, the Ramsar Convention (officially the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat). However, over the past 50 years wetlands have declined and at least 35% of natural wetlands have been lost with more at risk of extinction. Unfortunately, wetland habitats continue to suffer, despite the existence of protection regimes. In this context, this paper invites us to push the way we think about current wetland regulation and protection. Contemporary conceptions of wetlands that underpin dominant protection and management regimes tend to characterise wetlands in a way that overlooks all essential elements of the ecosystem. Our concern is to illuminate the plight of wetland ecosystems as interconnected waterscapes requiring more than a selective or partial regulative protection effort. We argue for a ‘rights of wetlands’ framing for a more holistic approach to regulate the management of these key ecosystems. We situate our argument using a Ramsar-listed wetland example, the Towra Point Nature Reserve, located in Botany Bay (Kamay), Sydney, Australia. Ultimately, we invite a recalibration of regulatory efforts for wetland conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of more resilient and sustainable food systems depends on the integration of ecological and sustainability concepts into agricultural systems. One proposed way to achieve this is to shift to 'agroecology'. This concept appears promising, but there is a need to translate it in specific socio-ecological contexts, given that agroecological innovations develop locally and are responsive to local conditions. The objective of this paper is to examine the relevance of an Agroecological Transition for the Special Region of Yogyakarta (SRY), Indonesia, with an emphasis on farmers' perspectives and experiences. Data were gathered from policy documents, field observations and 34 semi-structured interviews with farmers. Findings indicate that although there is limited discourse about agroecology in current policies, some farmers and NGOs have developed agroecological niche innovations. It may be possible to up-scale these niches to a broader context, with planning policies having a potential role in supporting this transition. Furthermore, farmers identify that the planning system can contribute to food sovereignty and Agroecological Transition by preserving agricultural land, managing regional cropping patterns and supporting the development of urban agriculture. These insights broaden existing knowledge around the potential of sustainable food planning through agroecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customers' hotel location evaluations are critical to hotel location decisions, future investment, visitor experience and urban tourism development. In this paper, spatial autocorrelation analysis, GeoDetection and geographically weighted models are used to explore the characteristics of the location satisfaction pattern of 1126 hotels in Wuhan and its causes.The findings suggest that there are obvious spatial clustering distribution characteristics of hotel location satisfaction in Wuhan. Distance from highway entrances/exit, scenic spot accessibility, and free parking services have the strongest positive influence on the spatial differentiation pattern of hotel location satisfaction, while hotel transportation services, the percentage of water area, and the number of universities have significant spatial differentiation characteristics on the influence of hotel location satisfaction. This study contributes to a better understanding of hotel location satisfaction pattern and its causes through multi-source data and spatial analysis techniques. The results of the study are of practical significance to the planning and development of urban hotels in Wuhan, as well as to other cities similar to Wuhan in terms of city scale, spatial layout of hotels, and tourism development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become common to attribute the growing frequency and severity of floods to climate change. But the factors behind flooding are many, and climate change often disappears from the equation at the local level. This study draws on interviews with key informants and community members and focus group discussions to explore the increasing incidence of flooding in two sub-districts in Eastern Thailand. To our surprise, there was little sense of community anger: flood risk had increased; the causes rooted in maladaptation linked to land conversion were recognised and uncontested; and injustice was palpable. But anger and resistance were muted. The paper seeks to make sense of this situation. Villagers accepted their complicity in creating the conditions for heightened flood risk through their willingness to sell their land for conversion. The disconnection between the identification of causality and the allocation of blame raises questions about how notions of environmental justice play out in places like Ban Thapma and Ban Nhonglalok, where justice and injustice do not fall equally across space and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) has offered opportunities for Timorese citizens to engage in farm labour and hospitality jobs in rural Australia for periods of six months. Savings and remittance from this work offers a powerful and self-directing development tool that could improve living standards for participating households. In this paper, we argue that remittances invested in social relationships through ceremonies and customary exchange are beneficial for building enhanced social and financial capital in Timorese society. Cash contributions to support household consumption, purchase domestic appliances, education costs of siblings, house construction, ceremony costs and bridewealth (barlake) demands, are all important aspects of contemporary social life in Timor-Leste that are sustained by labour migration remittances. Social networking is thus crucial for enabling access to better resources and opportunities in Timor-Leste and remittances that focus on social relationship maintenance are therefore highly significant. Potentially they provide the ability for some return workers to afford higher bridewealth demands and in the process facilitate social mobility for seasonal workers while advancing a broader quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is one of the most migratory countries in the world, yet as internal migrants typically represent only a small proportion of the population, the impact of stayers and transient populations need to be considered to create a fuller picture of regional population dynamics. To that end, this paper analyses net migration, population turnover, and population retention for 69 Australian regions from 1976 to 2016. Applying sequence analysis to a temporally-consistent framework, we find that regions follow four ideal-typical trajectories: 1) escalator regions with transient populations, 2) amenity destinations with fading attractiveness, 3) regions at risk of terminal decline, and 4) sticky regions. This classification in part follows the urban hierarchy while unveiling some important regional differences, highlighting the utility of the long-term multi-dimensional framework developed in this paper. This approach offers policymakers a new capacity to measure and monitor changes in internal migration and population dynamics to design and deploy more targeted regional policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent neo-liberal policy frameworks in Australia advocate economic development opportunities for Aboriginal Australians as a viable strategy to redress the marginalisation and social disadvantage that appear to characterise many Aboriginal communities. In New South Wales (NSW), Aboriginal peoples are currently negotiating with industry for the chance to participate in coal seam gas (CSG) development opportunities. Based upon research focusing on CSG development in the Northern NSW region, this paper argues that certain constructions of Aboriginality inhibit successful Aboriginal engagement with the economic opportunities provided by CSG. This paper illuminates the role of the media in facilitating dominant discourse about Aboriginality and the implications of those constructions for Aboriginal engagement with the mainstream economy. Findings demonstrate that the media are complicit in constructing Aboriginal peoples in a way that could prejudice their attempts to engage in economic opportunities that do not align with the dominant constructions of Aboriginality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a novel spatial approach to compare population density change across cities and over time. It examines spatio-temporal change in Australia’s five most populated capital cities from 1981 to 2011, and documents the established and emerging patterns of population distribution. The settlement patterns of Australian cities have changed substantially in the last 30 years. From the doughnut cities of the 1980s, programs of consolidation, renewal and densification have changed and concentrated population in our cities. Australian cities in the 1980s were characterised by sparsely populated, low density centres with growth concentrated to the suburban fringes. ‘Smart Growth’ and the ‘New Urbanism’ movements in the 1990s advocated higher dwelling density living and the inner cities re-emerged, inner areas were redeveloped, and the population distribution shifted towards increased inner city population densities. Policies aimed at re-populating the inner city dominated and the resultant changes are now visible in Australia’s five most populated capital cities. While this pattern has been reported in a number of studies, questions remain regarding the extent of these changes and how to analyse and visualise them across urban space. This paper reports on a spatial method which addresses the limitations of changing statistical boundaries to identify the changing patterns in Australian cities over time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Immigration quotas in Australia are guided primarily by economic policy—the needs of the nation are quite rightly the principal concern of policymakers. Using data from a mixed-methods study, this article engages in a dialogue between labour geography and population and migration studies through an examination of the lived experiences of migrating workers and their families. The paper examines a number of cases where policy and practice have detrimentally affected the migration experience of Irish migrants who came to Australia under the Temporary Work (Skilled) (subclass 457) visa. The case study focuses on interviews with secondary 457 visa applicants, namely the wives of former 457 workers. These interviews highlight the problems faced by newcomers to Australia who arrive under this visa. The experiences relayed by these women demonstrate how ill-considered policy relating to qualification transferability makes entering the workplace and, therefore, transition to life in Australia more difficult than it needs to be. While the cases that underpin this paper ended in migration failure (the families involved returned to Ireland), the core issues of qualification transferability and skill comparison were replicated in the wider study dataset (of 1022 survey responses and 80 qualitative interviews). While acknowledging that citizens generally have more freedom and more civil rights than non-citizens, the findings of this study indicate that further review of Australia’s 457 visa is needed, particularly with respect to the limitations placed on the agency of migrant workers. Greater awareness amongst prospective migrants as to the purpose and limits of the 457 visa is also necessary, in order to avoid misinterpretation and the extreme personal repercussions outlined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The brumby (or feral horse) is an icon of colonial settler Australian culture in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. 2018 saw the introduction of the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill 2018 (NSW), known as the Brumbies Bill, which cast heritage protections over brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park (KNP). The Brumbies Bill prioritised feral horses over the protection of Alpine Australia, an area which contains a unique ecosystem only present on 0.3% of the Australian landmass. The Bill was highly controversial and directly undermined decades of research into feral horse damage by overturning the pre-existing KNP Horse Management Plan. In this paper we explain the change of policy, an undertaking especially important in the context of debates about the need for more biodiversity protection. We apply a critical legal geography lens, focused on the need to understand how law/s shape places, draw on ideas from ecological justice and introduce the principle of non-regression to this controversial policy reversal. We are especially interested in exposing the processes behind such environmental policy reversals and in unpacking competing perspectives regarding policy formation. We suggest abrupt policy changes are not prudent for a precautionary approach to environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gardens enact memories of our lives, tell of cultural traditions, create and reproduce narratives and contain the memory of the land on which they are constructed. Gardens in fiction work to reflect and construct ecological imaginaries that value certain kinds of nature/culture relationships which gardens themselves enact. However, fiction might also be employed to reimagine the relationships between humans and non-human others. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of research that led to developing new environmental imaginaries through fiction. I take Hamilton Gardens as a site for research-creation, employing a critical walking methodology for arts-based practice. I undertook three walks, informed by a posthumanist perspective, that engaged in ecocritical analysis and ethnographic reflections of selected garden narratives. These methods allowed me to examine the relationships between memories, narrative geographies and gardens in order to develop my own 'environmental imaginary' of gardens. The value of this approach is that it allows geographic knowledges of gardens to be situated and embodied. This knowledge can question dominant garden imaginaries that reproduce bias towards temperate gardens and Global North gardening practices and can produce narratives that tell marginalised stories of gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploitation of natural resources has long been a flashpoint for contention in Australia. This is clear in the case of forest management, where groups advocating protection have faced off against state and industry actors. The move towards multifunctionalism that recognises different values in the management of natural resources has led to a search for alternative solutions. In the case of forestry, introduction of Regional Forest Agreements (RFA) in the 1990s sought to devolve responsibility to the States, while striking a balance between economic and environmental considerations. The aim of this paper is to identify how forest activism has developed since the RFA process began and its significance in relation to changes in land use. The paper draws on a protest event catalogue of forest-related events over the 1997–2017 period to identify the intensity, tactics and location of such actions. The findings suggest that state action has reduced the intensity of contention, in line with changes in resource management practices. However, they also point to the importance of identity and its link to the social construction of resources in determining the ability of actors to de-escalate and find solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]