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Purpose Humanity has a weakness in how we approach the “challenge” of using outer space. This paper aims to show how the global and national frameworks that address our planetary activities and crises are inadequate for the opportunities and challenges of life in outer space. Design/methodology/approach The authors draw on multidisciplinary perspectives to refine an organising governance framework that better showcases the challenges and pathways needed for living and thriving in space-age. The authors prioritise two key pillars and overview the practical and social implications that space-age humanity must address. Findings Social sciences and humanities are vital to problematising post-war colonial legacies of governance by distinguishing the unique and overlooked challenges for thriving and working offworld and identifying progressive research agendas. Research limitations/implications The highlighted agenda has implications for collaborative research institutes and project design. As the vital basis for continuous learning, university-based research institutes span bodies of knowledge, experience, convention and imagination that can support vibrant and overdue debate on good governance that is out of this world. Practical implications This expansive approach has practical implications for the decision-making processes and subjects of spacescape, from reconciling the space commons with prospecting and human occupation to potential governance regimes that capitalise on the zeal for moving beyond merely “existing” off-world. Social implications Examining the governance deficit as we pursue developing spacescape frontiers is an enriching (not reductionist) agenda that deliberately troubles the existing and emerging regime for governing our scientific and imagined off-world society. Originality/value This framework appeals to humanity’s highest evolution in co-producing a fair and flourishing off-world governance framework (beyond replicating planetary regimes).

The conditions for studentification are changing with increasing numbers of students living in high-rise – and high-quality – micro-apartment-style accommodation provided through purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) blocks. This ‘verticalisation’ of studentification is a global phenomenon, with Australia representing a frontier with distinctive geographies that result from its rapid ascension to the second-ranked global destination for international students. Yet, despite rising student numbers being recognised as positively impacting national and state economies, little is understood of how student accommodation development fits within the broader scheme of Australian urban revitalisation. To address this, we combine concepts relating to condo-ism and condo-isation to offer an original analytical framework that examines how PBSA has created new conditions through which vertical studentification can be produced in and of cities. We therefore ask how vertical studentification relates to wider Australian housing and urban development trends in ways that differentiate PBSA development and trajectories from other forms of accommodation. We also question how vertical studentification relates to the realities and regulation expressed as intra-urban geographies of Australian university cities and their resident-host communities. We argue that deliberately recognising and dovetailing several self-reinforcing and contradicting urban development dimensions invites a foundation for further interrogating vertical studentification in existing and emerging sites in Australia and beyond.

The continuous rescaling of metropolitan governance has been a prominent feature of the neoliberal state. Metropolitan coalitions are one variant of governance in which disparate actors are brought together around a common agenda or platform. Drawing upon the example of Australia’s Committees for Cities and Regions (CCRs), this article applies urban governance theory to better understand the effectiveness of networked metropolitan governance coalitions. We find that such coalitions derive political legitimacy from the externalities produced by their network relations, which we theorize as a three-dimensional nexus of vertical (between levels of government), horizontal (between local actors), and diagonal (with CCR counterparts) components. Although the CCR model is distinctive to Australia and New Zealand, it reflects similar networked and multiscalar processes at work elsewhere, serving as a template for political landscapes in which in-built legacy political arrangements largely preclude metropolitan-scale issues from being addressed.

Within cities, vegetation along road corridors (variously referred to as nature strips, street verges or easements) can play a key role in providing habitat for wildlife and green space benefits for urban dwellers. In the city of Perth, Australia, many local government authorities (LGAs) now permit residents to convert the publicly owned land along the street in front of their dwelling from ‘traditional’ (yet exotic) turf to low growing, native gardens. ‘Verge gardens’ are perceived to require less water and better reflect a local sense of place by using plants endemic to the biodiversity hotspot in which Perth is situated. While interest in native verge gardens is growing rapidly within the community, there is relatively little supporting, spatially-based information for residents. The uncertainty of not knowing where to start is keenly felt by those residents for whom verge gardening is their first foray into gardening with native Western Australian plants in the sandy, nutrient-poor soils of Perth’s Swan Coastal Plain.Two LGAs in the city of Perth, Western Australia, were the focus of this research, both of which have deployed incentive programs to encourage residents to plant native verge gardens over many years. We conducted detailed semi-structured interviews and participatory verge garden mapping with 22 households who had converted their verges to native gardens over the last ten years, gauging residents’ views on verge gardening, nature, wildlife, community and sense of belonging. A small number of respondents were already highly knowledgeable on the topic of native plants before planting their gardens, while the majority of the respondents had increased their knowledge of native plants from a low initial level through the process of verge gardening. Verge gardens were mapped to highlight plant species diversity, age of garden and garden design style. Some residents had already drawn their own maps by hand, and shared these with us. Others kept detailed records of water usage, maintenance, plant growth and turnover, and insect and bird visitors to the gardens.A consistent theme that emerged from interviews with the majority of residents who claimed limited familiarity with native plants was a desire for more readily available information to help support their efforts. Information needs included: environmental data on soils, landforms, flora and fauna; knowledge of which plants would grow well in their soil type; where to source locally endemic plants; the most appropriate water and nutrient regime to care for the plants; and nearby examples of successful gardens from which to draw inspiration. Drawing on the results of interviews and participatory mapping, we present a prototype design for a public participatory mobile application that can provide geospatial and ecological information to help support residents, allow for initial planning and progressive micro-scale mapping of verge gardens, and provide the possibility for sharing information on exemplar gardens. Our research feeds into larger conversations among local-level policy makers and planners on urban greening, increasing social cohesion within suburban areas, and providing habitat for wildlife under conditions of environmental change and increasing population density.

Purpose – This paper aims to advance best practice by gaining insights into key multi-owned property (MOP) issues challenging policymakers and communities. Ontario (Canada) and Victoria (Australia) are internationally recognised for best practice in MOP living and law. Yet, both jurisdictions struggle with the emerging urbanism related to condominium MOP. Design/methodology/approach – Different ways of recognising community in MOP urbanism will be examined against public policy and political theory perspectives promoting social sustainability. A rich mixed-data and content analysis method is relied upon which synthesises three pillars of MOP community governance: harmonious high-rise living; residential-neighbourhood interface; and metropolitan community engagement. The article cross-examines Canadian policy and law reform documents and Australian dispute case law from the state of Victoria to explore and showcase critical MOP management, residential and policy issues. Findings – A theory-building typology formally recognises “community” as an affective performance across MOP governance contexts: cosmopolitan, civic-citizen and neighbourly. These ideal types differentiate community affects in and beyond (case) law and land-use planning: from determining alternative dispute resolution remedies; addressing neighbourhood and metropolitan NIMBY-ism in urban consolidation to bridging the critical policy and civic gap between the limits and aims of socially sustainable MOP vertical-tenured community affects. Research limitations/implications – Strong cross-jurisdictional MOP community lessons exist, as other cities follow best practice in legal and governance structures to effect change at the frontiers of twenty-first century urbanism. Originality/value – Past studies emphasise classifying dispute issues, single-issue concerns or historical and life cycle evaluations. This theory-building article advances why and how community must be better understood holistically across community contexts to inform cutting-edge governance practices.

Digital urbanism recasts suburban and regional geographies within national and global urban systems by transforming communities and workplaces. This paper explores the planning and policy implications of activating smart work hubs across South-East Queensland during 2012–2014. It demonstrates key evidence of the nature, approach and priorities of smart work hub projects previously untested in Australia and pioneered by Regional Development Australia. The paper reorientates attention to the networked interplay of agglomeration, collaborative consumption and coworking towards urban revitalisation challenges for suburban and regional development that strengthen local communities: specifically potential demand assessment; commuter and knowledge worker patterns; and assessing public–private benefits of smart work hubs. Importantly the paper concludes with critical factors needed to advance research and the extensive engagement undertaken into wider and sustainable practice. By outlining a research agenda and p...

Planning practice requires ongoing interaction between regulatory “facts” and deliberative “norms”. Played out in local and strategic developments, “norms” are the agreed values and positions developed by advancing deliberative engagement of residents; while “facts” are the more rigid statutory procedures through which planning decisions are typically made. However, conflict arises between residents' groups and local government decision-makers when deliberative norms, now a key tenet of strategic planning processes, struggle to gain traction in the factual spaces provided by statutory planning regulations. A contentious planning process in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia (concerning the redevelopment of a car park into a commercial and public space) highlights the challenges to deliberative engagement in highly-regulatory planning systems. Drawing on this contested case, this paper examines how the broader formal and relatively fixed framework of regulatory-based decision-making fails to support participat...

Healthy community engagement must acknowledge conflict as a permanent and necessary part of collaborative planning. Using agonistic conflict in debating and deciding about site-specific projects and strategies offers new ways of reviewing and practising community engagement. Agonistic planning is conceived as a mechanism whereby interested parties might engage with planning decision-making that promotes on-going trust and buy-in for contested site-specific decisions and strategic directions. Disputes may produce opportunities for meaningful disagreement that may, if harnessed productively, avoid unproductive or even intractable disputes. Specifically, an agonistic approach offers an ability to modify and recast the initial ‘problems’ that urban projects are intended to address, and facilitates ‘better’ solutions sensitive to locally particular processes and contexts. The article tests key elements of agonistic theory using a high-profile planning dispute in Victoria, Australia. We show how an agonistic re...

Super city amalgamations are cast as a contemporary solution to the challenges of planning across borders. In 2010, Auckland was 'super-sized' into a unitary metropolitan authority to govern, plan, and manage the metropolitan city region. We argue that this super-sizing comprises a mode of 'governance by re-bordering', in which urban problems are framed and solved through techniques of territorial restructuring and strategic coordination. This article examines the re-bordering of local government municipalities into super cities and analyses the subsequent implications for planning, policy, and community drawing on the cases of Auckland, Brisbane/SEQ, and Vancouver. Due attention is given to the planning challenges arising from super amalgamations that rescale central-local government relationships; reassert local government roles in promoting efficient and coordinated spatial planning; and reform the collaborative urbanism in a regional mode of political action.

Urban development can often seem an irresistible force. The imperatives of development are deeply inscribed in the DNA of liberal capitalist societies. As well as realising profit-making opportunit...

This article conceptualizes two interrelated constellations of effects produced by practices of power in New Zealand planning. These are symbolic violence and institutional victimization. This article contends that acts of submission and obedience become symbols of violence when the state’s planning regimes allow no elements of choice, or freedom to resist, for those acted upon. This is compounded further into institutional victimization when the oppressors are also the final practicable, or actual, arbiters of appeal. We provide evidence that suggests this is a regular occurrence in New Zealand and, further, is indicative of a wider ranging consequence of modern governance that Foucault called governmentality. In New Zealand, the provision of a theoretically consultative statutory planning process obscures the actual rationality of exclusion underlining many of its planning practices.

Planning across borders in a climate of change and yawning fiscal austerity lends significant pause to considering border permanence and value, and the challenges of sustaining wellbeing in re-bordered domains. The historic and contemporary actions of cities to reorder metropolitan city-regional borders have ecological, economic, socio-political, and cultural resonance warranting closer local and comparative attention. As part of a book addressing the present and future implications of planning across borders and public policy repercussions, this chapter examines re-bordering local government municipalities into super-cities, and analyses key implications for planning, policy and community especially as the super-city solution is more widely adopted. Accordingly, attention is given first to the typology of generational super-amalgamations that rescale and rewrite globally-circulating best practice in re-bordering urban governance.