Assembly and disassembly of temporary public spaces : establishing the theoretical needs

Contemporary cities no longer offer the same types of permanent environments that we planned for in the latter part of the twentieth century. Our public spaces are increasingly temporary, transient, and ephemeral. The theories, principles and tactics with which we designed these spaces in the past are no longer appropriate. We need a new theory for understanding the creation, use, and reuse of temporary public space. Moe than a theory, we need new architectural tactics or strategies that can be reliably employed to create successful temporary public spaces. This paper will present ongoing research that starts that process through critical review and technical analysis of existing and historic temporary public spaces. Through the analysis of a number of public spaces, that were either designed for temporary use or became temporary through changing social conditions, this research identifies the tactics and heuristics used in such projects. These tactics and heuristics are then analysed to extract some broader principles for the design of temporary public space. The theories of time related building layers, a model of environmental sustainability, and the recycling of social meaning, are all explored. The paper will go on to identify a number of key questions that need to be explored and addressed by a theory for such developments: How can we retain social meaning in the fabric of the city and its public spaces while we disassemble it and recycle it into new purposes? What role will preservation have in the rapidly changing future; will exemplary temporary spaces be preserved and thereby become no longer temporary? Does the environmental advantage of recycling materials, components and spaces outweigh the removal or social loss of temporary public space? This research starts to identify the knowledge gaps and proposes a number of strategies for making public space in the age of temporary, recyclable, and repurposing of our urban infrastructure; a way of creating lighter, cheaper, quicker, and temporary interventions.

Brighter lights on Capital Hill? Speculations upon federal framing and policy analysis of Indigenous issues

Postwar Australian social policy has occurred within neoliberal, social-conservative and social democratic ideational frameworks. Recent perceptions vary from concern about high levels of public spending, through disquiet about cultural change, to fear that government inaction is ignoring community needs and creating fractious and unhealthy social conditions. this paper examines these alternate ideological influences as they could affect Indigenous Australians with a focus on the values and approaches that might lead logically to desirable outcomes. effective policy requires clarity and compatibility between government thinking and the social values of Indigenous people. At issue is how the objectives of policy for Indigenous citizens might be determined.

EUTOPIA 75+ : exploratory futures scenarios for baby boomers’ preferred living spaces

Australia is experiencing the global phenomenon of an ageing population with the baby boomer generation starting to reach retirement age in large numbers. As a result, there is a growing need for appropriate accommodation and this will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. However, the needs of the fit, mobile and techno savvy baby boomers are likely to be far different from those of previous generations of older people, but are as yet unknown and unanticipated. This paper reports on the findings of a Futuring research project to explore the preferred housing futures for the baby boomer generation in the city of Brisbane, an aspiring creative city in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia. Their future home design and service needs are predicted by firstly employing a global environmental scan of related and associated ageing futures issues. This was followed by a micro-Futuring workshop, based on Inayatullah’s Futures Triangle Analysis, to identify a range of scenarios. The key aspects of the workshop culminated in the development of a Transformational Scenario – EUTOPIA 75+. From this, a suite of six design recommendations for seniors’ housing design and smart services provision are synthesised to give a sense of direction of preferred living styles, especially in terms of physical housing spaces, with a view to identifying new house design opportunities for the allied industries and research organisations. The issues identified are also of concern for aged care service providers, retirement living developers, and for academics involved in the social and physical design of living spaces for older people.

Learning Chinese as a heritage language in Australia and beyond : the role of capital

The benefits of learning and retaining heritage languages are well documented in the literature. Chinese heritage language learners’ commitment to their heritage language learning has gained significant research ground in social psychological and post-structural schools, with empirical evidence predominantly emerging from the North American contexts. There is scant sociological examination of similar problems conducted outside North America. The current study aims to make a contribution in this regard. The use of Bourdieu's sociological notion of capital in the Australian context complements the social psychological and post-structural work predominantly produced in the North American contexts. The initial quantitative sub-study analyses the impacts of various resources on the Chinese heritage language proficiency of 230 snowball-sampled Chinese Australian respondents to an online survey. The subsequent qualitative sub-study explores the profits of learning Chinese heritage language through interviews with a subset of the survey sample. Findings indicate that cultural, social, and symbolic capital significantly positively contributes to Chinese Australians’ Chinese heritage language proficiency, which, in return, produces profits in different forms of capital. The study suggests a reciprocal relationship between ‘capital’ and Chinese heritage language proficiency.

Rural dispositions of floating children within the field of Beijing schools: can disadvantaged rural habitus turn into recognised cultural capital?

The rapid pace of urbanisation in China has seen a massive increase in the movement of the rural population to work and live in urban regions. In this large-scale migration context, the educational, health, and psychological problems of floating children are becoming increasingly visible. Different from extant studies, we focus our investigation on the rural dispositions of floating children through interviews with leaders, teachers, and students in four schools in Beijing. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key notions of habitus, capital, and field, our study indicates that the rural habitus of floating children can differentiate these children from their urban peers. This habitus can be marginalised and stigmatised in certain fields but can be recognised and valued as capital in other fields. Our paper offers some implications for research and practice in relation to the schooling of floating children.

Community environment education centers : Facilitating community created ecoscapes

This study focuses on designing a community environment education center (CEEC) for Chillingham, as a hub for community transition to sustainability, redressing social fragmentation, youth unemployment, a high eco-footprint and economic rural decline due to globalisation. The ecologically sustainable development framework was delivered by integrating environment education and community development through project-based experiential learning. The development of Chillingham Community Centre involved case study research and incorporated participatory design charrettes, transformative learning, eco-positive development and community-public-private partnerships. This process evolved from community strategic planning in a small rural village buffering world heritage rainforests impacted by a rapidly expanding urban conurbation on Australia’s east coast. This community space encompasses socio-environmental flows connecting people to each other and the ecoscape to grow natural capital, community cohesion and empower eco-governance. Modelling passive solar design, on-site renewable energy/water/nutrient cycling, community garden/market and environment education programs sowed the seeds for a green local economy, demonstrating community capacity to participate in transition to sustainability. A small rural community can demonstrate to other communities that a CEEC enables people to meet their socio-environmental and economic needs locally and sustainably. The ecologically sustainable solution is holistic, all settlements need to be richly biodiverse, locally specific and globally wise.

Teaching young queers a lesson: How police teach lessons about non-heteronormativity in public spaces

This paper analyses qualitative data with LGBT young people to think about police-LGBT youth interactions, and the outcomes of these interactions, as pedagogical moments for LGBT young people, police, and public onlookers. Although the data in this paper could be interpreted in line with dominant ways of thinking about LGBT young people and police, as criminalization for instance, the data suggested something more complex. This paper employs a theoretical framework informed by poststructural theories, queer theories, and pedagogical theories, to theorise LGBT youth-police interactions as instruction about managing police relationships in public spaces. The analysis shows how LGBT young people are learning from police encounters about the need to avoid ‘looking queer’ to minimise police harm.

‘It’s about finding a way’ : children, sites of opportunity, and building everyday peace in Colombia

The multiple forms of violence associated with protracted conflict disproportionately affect young people. Literature on conflict-affected children often focuses on the need to provide stability and security through institutions such as schools but rarely considers how young people themselves see these sites as part of their everyday lives. The enduring, pervasive, and complex nature of Colombia’s conflict means many young Colombians face the challenges of poverty, persistent social exclusion, and violence. Such conditions are exacerbated in ‘informal’ barrio communities such as los Altos de Cazucá, just south of the capital Bogotá. Drawing on field research in this community, particularly through interviews conducted with young people aged 10 to 17 this article explores how young people themselves understand the roles of the local school and ngo in their personal conceptualisations of the violence in their everyday lives. The evidence indicates that children use spaces available to them opportunistically and that these actions can and should be read as contributing to local, everyday forms of peacebuilding. The ways in which institutional spaces are understood and used by young people as ‘sites of opportunity’ challenges the assumed illegitimacy of young people’s voices and experiences in these environments.

Contesting spaces for Indigenous knowledge in university teaching and learning

Teaching and learning indigenous knowledge (as opposed to “modern” knowledge) is inherently a political and moral act. Indigenous Australian knowledges areas are as diverse as its geographical landscape. Making space for Indigenous knowledges in academia should not merely be a question of social justice or equity; the focus needs to shift to restoring pedagogical justice. This chapter provides insights for possible frameworks for embedding Indigenous knowledges and draws from experiences of teaching critical Indigenous Studies at one Australian university.

The potential for utilising the collaborative learning spaces approach in the delivery of résumé development education

This study investigated the potential for using collaborative learning spaces for the development of résumé writing knowledge and skills in higher education students. Utilising a collaborative learning environment, 227 students from a mix of programmes and year levels participated in one of 24 workshops centering on a technology supported, shared review and reflection approach to résumé construction. It was concluded that use of technology supported collaborative learning spaces has the potential to be a valuable, innovative approach for the delivery of career management related skills in higher education.

Professional spaces for pre-service teachers: sites of reality, imagination and resistance

Questions about the practicum within teacher education tend to focus on the amount of time allocated to it in programs. In this research, we were interested in the quality of the experience rather than assuming ‘more is better’. To understand what is going on and where, this study focussed on the school and specially the departmental office of room as a site for workplace learning. Using qualitative methods we constructed narratives from the data provided by a cohort of four-year bachelor degree pre-service teachers during and following their final major (10 week)practicum experience. Using theories of spatiality to make sense of the data, we found that the narratives revealed stories of spaces where compliance, disappointment were the key features of the practicum, and where resistance through absence (from the departmental office) was an important strategy to manage the experience. This research challenges the ‘more is better’ argument.

Renewable energy distribution in public spaces: Analyzing the case of Ballast Point Park in Sydney, using a triple bottom line approach

As cities are rapidly developing new interventions against climate change, embedding renewable energy in public spaces is an important strategy. However, most interventions primarily include environmental sustainability while neglecting the social and economic interrelationships of electricity production. Although there is a growing interest in sustainability within environmental design and landscape architecture, public spaces are still awaiting viable energy-conscious design and assessment interventions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue in a renowned public space—Ballast Point Park in Sydney—using a triple bottom line (TBL) case study approach. The emerging factors and relationships of each component of TBL, within the context of public open space, are identified and discussed. With specific focus on renewable energy distribution in and around Ballast Point Park, the paper concludes with a general design framework, which conceptualizes an optimal distribution of onsite electricity produced from renewable sources embedded in public open spaces.

Improving the identification of fatigue-related crashes in the Australian Capital Territory

It has been well established nationally and internationally that fatigue-related driving is an important contributory factor in fatal and serious injury crashes. The purpose of this report was to survey a large, representative sample of residents living in both the NSW and ACT to ask about their experience of fatigue and their involvement in fatigue-related crashes and incidents. This will provide valuable data about the number and characteristics of fatigue-related crashes and incidents of ACT residents. Specifically this study assessed the prevalence of incidents of fatigue-related driving for residents of NSW and the ACT, the characteristics surrounding the incident, if the report would fit within the NSW, QLD, or ATSB proxy definition or if it would fall outside of the proxy definition...