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This paper examines the adjustments made to include people with intellectual disabilities in mainstream services. Drawing on in-depth interviews with both people with intellectual disabilities and mainstream service managers in four urban regions in Australia, the paper points to three modes of practice that are operationalised, to different degrees, when people with intellectual disabilities seek access to mainstream services: a commitment and adjustments to support inclusion of a wide range of marginalised people (diversity and inclusion ethos); adjustments to support inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities more specifically (differentiated adjustments); and, personal support for service users with intellectual disabilities. We argue that these three modes, at the service level, correspond in complex ways with three broader approaches to social inclusion: mainstreaming, differentiation and individualisation. Rather than contradictory modes of inclusion, our analysis suggests these approaches should be understood as complementary. Some mainstream services that value 'inclusion' make adjustments to their service in order to better include people from different marginalised groups. Such adjustments have mixed outcomes for people with intellectual disability, whose specific needs are not always met. Some mainstream services operate separate activities for users with intellectual disability. This helps them manage behavioural and communication challenges, and can help people with intellectual disability experience a sense of belonging. But separate activities also limit opportunities for full inclusion in the mainstream. Often people with intellectual disability require their own personal support to be able to use mainstream services. Some mainstream services rely on such personal support as their main strategy to include people with intellectual disability. Other mainstream services work collaboratively with personal supporters to promote inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban governance in Melbourne is a relative outlier compared to the recent experience of austerity politics in many European and North American cities, which has produced extreme programmatic reductions linked to deepening social crises, such as worsening health outcomes. Instead, the Australian experience post the global financial crisis (GFC) demonstrates the enduring normalization of fiscal conservatism and targeted social protectionism in the national political economy but also illustrates the power of urban contexts to generate policy positions and collaborative institutions in support of local conditions in this case study of cultural pluralism. The article brings a singular perspective to comparative international scholarship on austerity urbanism by illustrating how commitment to these principles in one Australian city center combined with the adoption of collaborative governance and attention to multiculturalism can forge a distinctive approach to urban revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NDIS will directly affect the lives of close to half a million people with a disability as well as significantly wider impacts on Australian cities. This review paper examines the urban policy and practice context for the NDIS, focusing specifically on housing, employment, governance, mainstream services (particularly health and education) and multiculturalism. Although the current Australian urban condition is hardly ideal for the implementation of such an ambitious scheme, the funding provided by the NDIS, coupled with appropriate adjustments to mainstream urban policy, can make important contributions to the social, cultural and economic thriving of Australian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary aims at a better understanding of academic disagreement through an introspective analysis of its nature within the Australian urban research community. The academic debate on urban consolidation was used as a case study. The analysis shows that the force with which urban scholars promulgate their opposing standpoints is strengthened by a broad set of subjective value judgements. Academic disagreements are further enhanced by the social interactions of researchers and the heterogeneous social processes and circuits of scientific activity. The commentary concludes by discussing how a reflexive embrace of academic disagreement by urban scholars could give rise to more constructive and impactful debate and policy application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins by sharing practical insights and learnings from tiny house builders, highlighting some promising approaches to construction, as well as some challenges faced by the emerging tiny house movement. The article also offers a conceptually driven appraisal of this potentially important new housing form that raises serious questions about planning and urban policy. The aim is to present a grounded review of the tiny house movement, and its wider policy resonances, rooted in an empirical review of current practice. After the empirical practice notes are presented, the article concludes by going beyond building, construction, and regulatory issues and offers some critical reflections on the promise and limitations of the tiny house movement. These intricacies and potential difficulties include frictions with wider housing and urban policies in Australia, especially those that have favoured transition to higher residential densities and which are themselves fraught with challenges especially around social equity. In offering a sympathetic critique of tiny houses and asking some hard questions, this review and analysis seeks to present a richer and fuller understanding of the tiny house movement in a way that helps the movement progress and avoid unnecessary pitfalls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of Iris Marion Young's work on the field of geography. We discuss two matters that were elucidated by Iris Marion Young, and that have been taken up, repeatedly and as foundational insights, by urban and social geographers and urban planning scholars. These are (1) Young's conception of justice and its central relationship to social difference and (2) Young's attention to the city as a particular kind of social formation which has the potential to realize a form of social justice premised on a politics of difference, if traditional ideas of community are jettisoned in favour of ideas of the being together of strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review examines two new socio-ecological imperatives that have the potential to reshape planning practice and policy: urban climate governance and governance for resilience. The roots of the new imperatives lie in international city collaborative networks funded by philanthropy organisations that operate at city scale. City networks operating at the metropolitan scale raise issues for Australian cities with distributed governance. This practice review considers the early manifestation of both imperatives in what might be termed ‘policy experiments’ in Australia’s two largest cities: the new climate governance framework emerging through the City of Sydney’s collaboration with the C40 network and the resilience regime being shaped by the City of Melbourne’s partnership with Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient 100 program. Whilst our early analysis has accentuated the positive to some degree, pointing to different, if preliminary, forms of success in both Sydney and Melbourne, the limits and frustrations that present in both contexts cannot be discounted. Urban planners in many world cities and regions will need to consider and possibly absorb these new agendas of urban climate governance and governing for resilience driven by international city collaborative networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of the way that practice-based strategic planning in terms of disaster risk reduction occurs, highlighting the drivers and facilitators of change. It documents these in the context of other governmental systems. Examination the changes to wildfire planning policy in Victoria, Australia, following the 2009 Bushfire Season, provides an explanation of the realpolitik of policy formation, management and change, as well as inter-governmental interactions. The findings document and discuss the conditions and reasons for strategic change occurring in the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper applies an urban political ecology approach to interrogating the use of sustainability constructs by key international governance agencies. We draw on political economy of urban sustainability to identify central themes in the reports to reveal limitations and contradictions in the deployment of the environmental sustainability construct. We argue that the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Bank offer little towards the development of a new vision for future cities, only affirmation of neoliberal urbanism. Promisingly, some of ‘key trends’ identified by UN-Habitat will enhance the democratic content of socio-environmental construction. This will achieve a more equitable distribution of social power and inclusive mode of environmental production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on critical securitisation theory to explore different constructions of housing risk within the Australian context. In particular, it is interested in how housing regulation has been variously constructed as an issue of national importance. To this end the paper has three key parts. First, the salience of securitisation framing theory is reviewed as a critical analytical lens that might have utility within the urban housing context. Second, key national housing narratives are identified and discussed in relation to the role of regulation at the risk management/securitisation nexus. Third, the national securitisation of Australian housing as part of the broader political economic 'great risk shift' is discussed. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications of this approach to the national securitisation of housing risk in a climate-constrained future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian cities currently face high levels of oil vulnerability, which is often unevenly distributed, particularly within the middle and outer suburbs of the greater metropolitan areas (Dodson and Sipe, 2006). New urban policies and planning practices are needed to avoid, remedy or mitigate the impacts of oil price rises and create urban resilience (Newman et al. 2009). Whilst the lack of scholarship around oil vulnerability is slowly beginning to be addressed within the Australian urban planning context, an emphasis on the links between urban governance and urban resilience is still largely marginalised despite its acknowledged central role in the quest of urban resilience. Our main point of departure is the re-conceptualisation of oil vulnerability as a planning and governance deficit within Australian cities. We identify a number of gaps that combine to inhibit the capacity for the development of urban resilience in the face of oil vulnerability and depletion scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban consolidation has transformed Australian cities. This transformation seems likely to continue, with consolidation embedded in current metropolitan plans. One justification of consolidation is that it eases unsustainable levels of household greenhouse emissions. Here, we review this claim, and find warning signs that 'actually existing' consolidation does not achieve this outcome. While there is a clear need for further research, action on unsustainable household consumption cannot wait for a definitive study. We outline an immediate policy response, focusing on the role of land-use planning. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a prolonged period of Australian prosperity ends, attention has now begun to turn to the likely impacts of a severe economic downturn. The pain of recession is unlikely to be evenly distributed across the population or across space. Not that the previous economic good fortune was evenly spread across society. It is, therefore, expected that a new layer of socio-economic stress will be laid over existing patterns of social and spatial disparity. In this context, questions of deprivation and social exclusion are an important ongoing concern. Deprivation and social exclusion are operative at a number of levels of society. Neo-liberal thought and policy has been directed at the level of the individual. However, space and place are also important, as spatially concentrated disadvantage has structural consequences for both individual fortunes and the broader social fabric. This article considers the spatial distribution of disadvantage across our major metropolitan regions and considers potential approaches to address social exclusion in our suburban heartlands. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent public debates about Australia's children and young people have begun to acknowledge the direct impact of urban development on their health and well-being. This paper reviews a broad range of trans-disciplinary literature addressing child-friendliness in contemporary Australian cities, drawing particular attention to the fact that even some of the most recognised texts on children and young people in Australia still make few references in their analysis to the issue of place and neighbourhood. More specifically, the paper points to two particular research challenges confronting the ongoing study of young people's well-being in urban areas, including (a) the need for a more thorough analysis, both conceptual and applied, about how children and young people's well-being is affected by different urban forms and by the social and ecological variations that occur throughout cities; and (b) the focus on younger children needs to be complemented by a focus on adolescents and young adults who in turn need to be actively involved in confronting these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of public land agencies in Australia has ebbed and flowed over the past few decades broadly reflecting political cycles. Initially, in the early 1970s, the Land Commission Program (LCP) was established under the Whitlam government on a rationale with two broad bases: to create more efficient and fairer land markets; and to produce higher quality design outcomes. At the end of the Whitlam era - partly resulting from objections from the private sector, government-sponsored critiques of the land program and the ideologies of conservative governments - the influence of government in land development was substantially reduced. Today, although the variety of activities of public land developers is considerably wider, there remains significant scope for increased government involvement in land development, based on the emergence of new imperatives arising from complex shifts in social conditions, community preferences and scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the imperatives that led to the establishment of the LCP in 1972 are still relevant today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the second of two papers that review the field of spatially sensitive social scientific research into the links between social status and transport disadvantage. The first paper undertook a comprehensive review of the social scientific and transport planning literature to mark the level of development in the field and identify conceptual and methodological issues and constraints in this field of inquiry. The present article supports the advancement of socially and geographically sensitive transport research by opportunities for the development of more sophisticated spatial analytical methodologies. The approach we present is able to account for factors not previously addressed in either social or transport planning research, in particular the temporal dimensions of transport service accessibility. The article articulates the methodology through an empirical case study of socio-spatial transport disadvantage within the Gold Coast City. The article demonstrates that there are important theoretical and practical lessons to be gained for researchers and policy makers in addressing the social dimensions of transport and infrastructure provision. Further, the article argues that an attentiveness to new ways of combining and representing social and transport data-sets can promote policy relevant empirical social inquiry. The article also contributes in a productive way to the empirical knowledge of Australia's sixth-largest metropolitan area, which is often overlooked by urban scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low density suburban development and excessive use of automobiles are associated with serious urban and environmental problems. Master planned development suggests itself as a possible palliative for these ills. This study examines the patterns and dynamics of movement in a selection of master planned estates in Australia with the aim of developing new approaches for assessing the containment of travel within planned development. A geographical information systems methodology is used to determine regional journey-to-work patterns and travel containment rates. Factors that influence self-containment patterns are estimated with a regression model. The findings of the pilot study demonstrate that the proposed model is a useful starting point for a systematic and detailed analysis of self-containment in master planned estates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researchers have sought to address the connection between social disadvantage and access to transport. The article critically assesses the relative merits of various spatial analytical methodologies in illuminating social–transport links. The study finds that there is a need for greater sophistication in the use of analytical methods in transport research as well as an imperative for greater sensitivity to social differentiation within urban areas and relative to infrastructure and services. The article concludes by developing a method for combining spatial social and transport service data that is then deployed in the empirical case study reported in the second paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the public realm and considers its contemporary context in an important Australian region, Western Sydney. Although problematized by social theory in recent years, my base position is the Habermasian premise that a public realm is critical to the healthy functioning of liberal democracies, such as Australia. This paper has three specific aims. First, I note the erosion of the public realm in an important Australian region, Western Sydney, and the obfuscation of its presence and role by new institutional arrangements emerging principally but not exclusively from federal policy settings. I then consider the consequences of this ‘desocialization of space’ for democracy and equity in a socially and culturally diverse urban region such as Western Sydney. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It seems certain that achieving the scale of change in the production of the built environment necessary to save the world from the threat of rapid global warming, and consequent climate shocks, will require profound institutional change over a range of policy domains. Such change must encompass more than organizational structures, and includes a change in assumptive worlds and embedded funding programmes. The institutional momentum behind existing policies is strong. Policies are produced in a manner that can be described as ‘path dependent’. In this paper, we argue for a multivalent conception of path dependence containing three interwoven strands: technical, institutional, and discursive path dependence. The empirical focus of this paper is the discursive aspect of path dependence in transport planning with reference to research in Melbourne, Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the response of planning to the challenges highlighted by current governance and sustainability discourses. To this end, an archaeology of the contested and shifting aims and objects of planning is employed to inform the analytic interrogation of five Australian metropolitan planning strategies. Analysis of the conceptual heritage of planning along with the emergent preoccupations with the planning governance and urban sustainability yields five key themes: policy, space, planning governance, finance and democracy. We deploy these in a critical review of contemporary Australian metropolitan strategies. The resulting empirical analysis suggests that an integrated planning paradigm, centrally concerned with urban sustainability, is coalescing within contemporary strategic planning systems. We argue that this strategic reorientation of growth management around broad sustainability and democratic concerns has the potential to reanimate planning and resecure its socio-political footings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stresses that a flourishing public realm is a keystone for any balanced community. Response of the government to the communal yearning of Australians; Information on masterplanning, a technique for delivering community commodities; Importance of community planning.

The main focus of this paper is the complex of 'storylines' justifying transport infrastructure policy. We use the term 'discourse network' to describe the specific set of storylines and arguments that coordinate action in a particular policy domain. The 'knots' in the network are the related discursive threads of argument, the 'nodes' are institutional structures binding people together, sometimes in particular places, for close communication. Our empirical frame compares the transport policy domains of Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, in the past four decades. We find that transport storylines in both cities -- whilst hardly conducive to sustainability -- have by no means constituted a unified ideology. The evidence is that discourse networks in both contexts have been loosely woven nets comprised of strands of part truth, part fiction and quasi-arguments generated from different professional sources with different and in some ways conflicting ideologies. There are significant variations in the knots of storylines found in Sydney and Melbourne, particularly as they confront the opposing discourse of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of a continuing 'fiscal crisis of the state' this article addresses how land taxation might be reformed to better fund the demands on urban management. Our premise is that land tax initiatives offer governments a means for increasing the funds available for urban management without significantly compromising the assumed political boundaries of public fiscal restraint. The specific focus in the article is on the bridge provided by land taxation in the form of 'betterment' or the interchangeable notion of 'value capture'. The article recommends a new form of betterment tax that would operate alongside existing or future charges for infrastructure levied by local government. Importantly, the tax would be applied to value increments across the city, and not just in fringe areas which have been the traditional targets of betterment levies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on suburban segregation in Australia. Elements of the geography of suburban segregation; Increase in qualitative divergences between the private and public spheres in market societies; Culture of anxiety about public facilities and services.

The processes of urban consolidation are described, detailed and reviewed in three local government areas in Sydney since 1980. This provides an integrated account and analysis of how market forces and planning policies have actually delivered dwelling stock on the ground. Distinctive aspects of urban consolidation in each local government area are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the findings of a study that was prepared for the New South Wales Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, which focused on how urban planning might respond to the problem of social disadvantage in Western Sydney. Causes and forms of social disadvantage; Patterns of urban disadvantage and of the complex causal mechanisms; Problems associated with transport poverty in western Sydney; Concept of social town planning; Recommended principles for metropolitan governance.

This paper explores Australia's multi-level system of governance and considers its implications for urban and regional policy. The paper addresses four main questions about Australian urban governance. In what ways can Australia's federal system of urban governance be contrasted with models in other developed countries? How have shifts in recent decades within Australia's federal system affected urban governance? What have been the main characteristics of change within Australia's state/territory planning systems in recent decades, and to what extent have these affected multi-level governance of space? Finally, what lessons about the strengths and weaknesses of a federal system of urban governance can be drawn from the Australian experience? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For at least three decades, the issue of physical accessibility has been a focus of analysis amongst some spatial scientists, including geographers, urban planners and architects. Whilst such 'conventional' access studies have assumed an important role as policy evaluation/ critique, their theoretical significance has been extremely limited. The understanding of accessibility, and the highly contested set of policy fields that regulates this, would be deepened if a wider range of socio-political theory was used to examine these issues. This paper contributes to the social theorisation of access by critically exploring how the 'reflexive modernisation' thesis of Ulrich Beck might be applied to the geographical understanding of disablement. The paper demonstrates how Beck's theoretical framework can be used to enrich understanding of the genesis and mediation of inaccessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the modern state and its institutions - including planning - have been the subjects of sustained and ultimately destabilizing critique by post-modernists. More recently, a new perspective on the 'crisis of modernity' has emerged. The theory of 'reflexive modernisation' has sought to renew both understanding of, and support for, the radical political-ethical vision of the Enlightenment. Whilst the perspective seems to have generated a vigorous debate in sociology, its impact on geography and urban planning has been much more limited, especially in Australia. This paper argues that theories of reflexive modernization are directly relevant to the concerns of the spatial sciences. In particular, I aim to show that the notion of reflexive modernization and its subsidiary concepts (e.g., risk society) can provide a powerful theoretical frame within which to place and understand the recent transformations of western urban and environmental planning systems. I draw upon the reflexive modernization thesis to describe and explain the broad changes and reform pressures that have emerged within planning in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the recent and contemporary neoliberal reform agendas that have sought a reduced role for planning in Australia. Our aim is to describe these reform paths and to theorise their broader implications for urban governance in Australia. Our analysis focuses on two initiatives: first, the broad reform framework embodied in National Competition Policy that is now affecting planning regulation at the state level; and second, the new vision for a standardised development control system that has been put forward by the Property Council of Australia. As we will show, neoliberal reforms have the potential both to reduce the possibility for spatial regulation and also to undermine the other recent reform agendas that have sought a positive transformation of planning; namely, community democratic movements and environmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses the findings of a research project which investigated the `not-in-my-backyard' phenomenon in New Zealand within the context of important changes to planning law and social policy in that country. Deinstitutionalization of planning and community care; Urban planning reform; Policy convergence as land-use conflict; Planners nd community care; Zoning for community care.

Presents the results of theoretically informed study of environmental access regulation in Dunedin, New Zealand. How the legislative compliance is likely to be comprised in policy settings; New Zealand's accessibility framework; Analysis of the study.

Examines the notion that technological innovation can overcome the social exclusion and poverty that many physically disabled people experience in Western societies. Interrelations between technological change and the socio-spatial construction of human difference, notably disability; Opposition to the idea that technology dictates social development, which sometimes characterizes the analysis of disability in Western social sciences and public policy realms.

The recent tragic fire in Melbourne's Kew Cottages has thrown into sharp relief the problems facing the process of deinstitutionalisation in Australia. In April of this year, national attention was focused on the disaster which took the lives of nine intellectually disabled residents of the Kew institution; in the days following the fire many articles and editorials in the major metropolitan newspapers were devoted to the broader policy difficulties – notably, funding and service quality – which have plagued the nation's attempts to improve its care of the socially dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Resource management Act 1991 provides a new statutory framework for environmental planning in New Zealand. This Act replaces a plethora of former environmental planning and management statutes including the town and country planning legislation. The paper has three main parts. First, the reform process which culminated in the new Act is described. The discussion highlights the influence of business and environmental alliances in the reform process. Next, an overview of the Resource Management Act is presented, followed by a discussion of the implications of the new legislation for planning practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author reflects on the superannuation of urban studies. He cites the many faces of contemporary urbanisation which range from incremental planned expansion in developed nations to the explosive growth of mega and meso city regions in the developing world. He mentions new literature on urban studies. He also elaborates on the dominance of positivism in urbanisation.

Editorial. Assesses urban consolidation policies in Australia. Discussion on the structural problem of the country; Importance of national leadership on the urban governance; Establishments of program on urban restructuring.

Editorial. Discusses the missions and goals of the periodical 'Social and Cultural Geography.' Reasons for publishing a journal dedicated to social and cultural geography; Comparison with similar periodicals; Scope of the publication.

In many countries around the world, individualised budgets are replacing ‘block funding’ as the primary way in which disability service provision is funded. These models assume that dynamics of competition improve services for people with disabilities. This article presents the findings of research on the accessibility and inclusiveness of mainstream services for people with intellectual disabilities in four Australian cities in the wake of the rollout of individual support budgets. We use the concept of ‘repair’ and the conceptual framework of ‘landscapes of care and support’ to analyse interviews with mainstream service managers. Our findings reveal that not-for-profit organisations perform crucial tasks in persuading for-profit service providers to collaborate with them to improve their accessibility and inclusion. When these services collaborate to repair service access, not-for-profit organisations often take on associated responsibility, costs and risk to encourage reparative adjustments in for-profit services. Not-for-profit organisations are also more likely to be tasked with the relational and interpersonal work that is crucial for successful service repair. Our findings challenge assumptions that free-market competition is the main driver of more accessible and inclusive service delivery and suggest how policy can support more equitable collaborative repair work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundMethodResultsConclusionsDespite growing recognition of their right for inclusion in society, people with intellectual disabilities are often excluded from mainstream services, or experience poor service outcomes.Taking a relational approach that considers the interpersonal relations and interactions that occur in mainstream service settings in Australia, this paper examines the features of services that research participants considered more inclusive.Relations between service users with and without intellectual disabilities, mainstream service staff and disability support workers in inclusive mainstream services were characterised by; respect; warm, welcoming and convivial interpersonal engagement; active listening; proactive assistance; flexibility; mediation to create a safe environment; and collaboration and shared responsibility by both mainstream staff and disability support workers in supporting a service user with intellectual disability.Building on these results, we put forward a set of principles for facilitating inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in mainstream services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an obituary for urbanist Paul Mees.