Sustainable suburbs : the developer’s challenge

As our cities expand, developers are transforming more and more land to create our suburbs of the future. Developers and government bodies have a golden opportunity to design suburbs that are not only great places to live, but also are environmentally sensitive and sustainable. This is a unique opportunity, as significant changes after development are constrained by the configuration of the subdivision, and then by the construction of the dwellings. This paper explores some of these issues by presenting initial findings from the CRCCI, Sustainable Subdivisions Project. The Project examines the drivers and barriers that land developers face when trying to achieve sustainable subdivisions. This paper will review the results from a series of industry interviews and workshops and explore possible ways forward. In addition, the possible effect on the way future land subdivision is managed and planned as a result of recent changes in the energy efficiency provisions of the Building Code of Australia will be explored. This paper highlights problems that both builders and land developers may face through poor subdivision design. Finally an innovative program being driven by a major land developer will be introduced. The program aims to deliver over 400 energy and water efficient homes through a series of compulsory and voluntary schemes that the developer is designing, funding and implementing. This program is the first large-scale development in Australia that demonstrates how developers can help achieve environmentally sensitive and sustainable suburbs of the future.

Re-Presenting/Representing Melbourne: A literary and cultural analysis of Melbourne’s inner city and outer suburbs in contemporary fiction

This article provides an overview of a research project investigating contemporary literary representations of Melbourne’s inner and outer suburban spaces. It will argue that the city represented by local writers is an often more complex way of envisioning the city than the one presented in public policy and cultural discourses. In this view, the writer’s vision of a city does not necessarily override or provide a “truer’ account but it is in the fictional city where the complexity of the everyday life of a city is most accurately portrayed. The article will also provide an overview of the theoretical framework for reading the fictional texts in this way, examining how Soja’s concept of Thirdspace (2006) provides a place to engage “critically with theoretical issues, while simultaneously being that space where the debate occurs” (Mole 2008: 3).

Seeing the outer suburbs : addressing the urban bias in creative place thinking

Seeing the outer suburbs: addressing the urban bias in creative place thinking, Regional Studies. This paper draws upon quantitative and qualitative research into Australian cities to question the assumption that creative industries workers inherently seek to cluster in inner-urban areas. It challenges this foundational assumption by combining a critical application of the location quotient analysis of major Australian cities with qualitative research drawn from interviews with creative workers based in suburban Melbourne and Brisbane. The findings provide analyses as to why many creative industries workers prefer to locate themselves in outer suburban places. There is also discussion of the implications of these findings for future work on the cultural geography and policies of creative industries.

Melbourne and Brisbane: The Claims of Suburbs

This chapter critiques the imagined geography of creative cities and the creative industries, which presumes that inner cities are densely clustered hubs of urban culture and creativity while suburbs are dull, homogeneous dormitories from which creative people must escape in order to realize their potential. Drawing upon a study on creative industries workers in Melbourne and Brisbane, the authors argue that these workers are as likely to be located in the suburbs as in the inner city, and that they clearly identify advantages to being in outer suburban locations. Their findings provide a corrective to dominant urban cultural policy narratives that stress cultural amenity in the inner cities.

Creativity and the Australian suburbs : the appeal of suburban localities for the creative industries workforce

The locus of creative inspiration and production is commonly associated with either the dynamism of the inner city or with the natural landscape, with its Arcadian transformative associations. This article considers the spatiality of creative work in an in-between site: the outer suburbs in Australia. The outer suburbs occupy a conflicted status in the national imaginary: frequently regarded as the locus of consumption and materialism, they are localities which few associate with creativity or creative industries. Creative city discourse further instils the idea that all things creative occur only in the inner city. Yet Australia is a highly suburbanised country: the middle and outer suburbs are where most Australians live and work. This article challenges the perception that creativity is spatially clustered in the inner city. It is based on empirical and qualitative research that maps and investigates the experience of creative industries workers in outer-suburban localities of Brisbane and Melbourne. One of the key findings is the significance of the relationship between work and place for creative workers located in outer-suburban localities, rupturing assumptions about suburbia and “creative” inner-city enclaves.

Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalising the Arab Other

This book examines public worrying over 'ethnic crime' and what it tells us about Australia today. How, for instance, can the blame for a series of brutal group sexual assaults in Sydney be so widely attributed to whole ethnic communities? How is it that the arrival of a foundering boatload of asylum-seekers mostly seeking refuge from despotic regimes in 'the Middle East' can be manipulated to characterise complete cohorts of applicants for refuge 'and their immigrant compatriots' as dangerous, dishonest, criminally inclined and inhuman? How did the airborne terror attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 exacerbate existing tendencies in Australia to stereotype Arabs and Muslims as backward, inassimilable, without respect for Western laws and values, and complicit with barbarism and terrorism? Bin Laden in the Suburbs argues that we are witnessing the emergence of the 'Arab Other' as the pre-eminent 'folk devil' of our time. This Arab Other functions in the national imaginary to prop up the project of national belonging. It has little to do with the lived experiences of Arab, Middle Eastern or Muslim Australians, and everything to do with a host of social anxieties which overlap in a series of moral panics. Bin Laden in the Suburbs analyses a decisive moment in the history of multiculturalism in Australia. 'Unlike most migrants, the Arab migrant is a subversive will ... They invade our shores, take over our neighbourhood and rape our women. They are all little bin Ladens and they are everywhere: Explicit bin Ladens and closet bin Ladens; Conscious bin Ladens and unconscious bin Ladens; bin Ladens on the beach and bin Ladens in the suburbs, as this book is aptly titled. Within this register ... even a single Arab is a threat. Contain the Arab or exterminate the Arab? A 'tolerable' presence in the suburbs, or caged in a concentration camp? ... The politics of the Western post-colonial state is constantly and dangerously oscillating between these tendencies today. It is this dangerous oscillation that is so lucidly exposed in this book'.

Working in the Australian suburbs: Creative industries workers’ adaptation of traditional work spaces

The cultural and creative industries contribution to the economic and social sustainability of cities is a well acknowledged phenomenon which has accelerated in the era of urban renewal since the late twentieth century. The second-tier city of Brisbane, Australia was for many years considered a cultural backwater in the national context, yet its recent urban development within a short period of time has produced a city that now has all the hallmarks of a ‘creative city’. Brisbane’s transformation has been shaped by urban and cultural policies that are largely focussed around its inner-metropolitan localities, producing a growth in cultural infrastructure and the aestheticisation of inner-city precincts. However, like most Australian cities, the majority of Brisbane’s population live, and increasingly work in the suburbs. This article is based on a large research project that shows that creative industries workers are well represented across suburban localities. The article examines the policy and planning implications for creative industries located in Australian outer suburbs and the communities in which they are located.

Sex and the virtual suburbs : the pornosphere and community standards

This chapter looks at the management and zoning of online sexual culture–the web sites which make up the pornosphere (McNair 2013). It explores the concept of ‘community standards’, which has been a central part of the management of sexually explicit materials in the offline world, and asks what it might mean to talk about ‘community standards’ on the Internet. And finally, it uses the concept of virtual-community standards to revisit the question of managing access to sexually explicit materials on the Internet.

New suburbs in the making? Locating master planned estates in a comparative analysis of suburbs in South-East Queensland

In urban scholarship Master Planned Estates (MPEs) are viewed as illustrative of broader changes to the urban environment and characterised as homogenous, affluent enclaves where community life is largely orchestrated by the developer. Yet no study has fully considered if, and to what extent, MPEs can be distinguished from other suburb types in terms of their residential composition and their levels of sociability and community attachment. In this article, we empirically test if MPEs are different from ‘conventional’ suburbs by examining them structurally in terms of their demographic and socio-economic characteristics, as well as in terms of their key community social processes. Using data from a 2008 study of 148 suburbs across Brisbane, Australia (which includes data from two MPEs), we undertake a comparative analysis of suburbs and examine the density of neighbour networks, residents' reports of place attachment and cohesion and neighbourly contact in MPEs compared to other residential suburbs. Our findings suggest that MPEs are not distinct in terms of their degree of homogeneity and socio-economic characteristics, but that connections among residents are lower than other suburbs despite—or perhaps because of—the active interventions of the developer.

A f/oxymoron? : Women, creativity and the suburbs

Donald Horne famously wrote, ‘Australia was born urban and quickly grew suburban’ (1964), an observation that carries a weight of assumptions about suburban living. Historically, the Australian suburbs have been regarded as places of retreat, family life and female activity, and subsequently as a place where not much of interest happens. By contrast, a city's central areas are seen as more dynamic spaces and, with recent creative city thinking and planning, as potential powerhouses of innovation and creativity. This article challenges assumptions about suburban living as passive places of retreat through an examination of women in the creative workforce who are living and working in the suburbs. It draws on historical accounts of creative suburban activity and a research project that mapped and investigated the experience of creative workers in the outer suburbs of Brisbane and Melbourne. The study finds that there is much creative work occurring in suburban localities, but this is not as unusual as might be expected.

Sustainable subdivisions – review of technologies for integrated water services

Water is a current major global, national and local issue. Historic drought and unprecedented restriction levels are now substantially influencing almost all Australia’s major cities. Residential design and adoption of appropriate technologies plays a key role in urban water efficiency. This project, the first of the CRC-CI Sustainable subdivisions program with a focus on water, explores the existing technologies available for sustainable suburbs.

Older patients request more information : a survey of use of written patient education materials in general practice

Objectives: To determine GPs' reported use of written education materials with older patients and older patients' reported receipt of these materials. To determine GPs' and older patients' perceptions of written materials.---------- Method: Using self-report questionnaires, two populations were surveyed; a randomised sample of 50 GPs (29 males and 21 females) practising in Brisbane's southern suburbs and a convenience sample of 188 older community-dwelling people (aged over 64 years).----------- Results: All GPs reported using written materials with patients, although 28% had not given any to the Last 10 patients. This increased to 46% when patients were older. Twenty percent of patients wanted more written information from their GP, while some GPs believed that older patients preferred verbal information and gave out written information only when they perceived patient interest. All GPs reported giving written materials at the time of consultation and over two thirds discussed the content with patients. Just over 50% of patients reported receiving written information from GPs in the Last six months and only hall of these again discussed it directly with their GP. Overall, patients were more positive than GPs about the value of written education materials.---------- Conclusions: Older patients' desire for written information may be better met if they are more assertive in requesting this of GPs and GPs may better serve their patients' needs if they make written information more readily available to them. Better access to materials and more financial incentives to give them out might also increase GPs' use of written materials.

Energy efficient multi storey residential developments

Worldwide, the current pattern of urban development is unsustainable and metropolitan planning and development strategies deliver poor environmental outcomes in relation to energy production. As a result, an increasing number of governments and private sector development companies are initiating projects that aim to deliver enhanced environmental outcomes rather than a ‘business as usual’ approach. This paper will summarise the findings from a study that explored the link between building orientation and energy efficiencies in sub-tropical and tropical climates. The study used a new thermal modelling software tool developed by CSIRO that responds more accurately to residential heating and cooling energy performance in those climate zones. This software tool responds to industry criticisms regarding cold climate modelling systems that do not make sufficient allowance for natural ventilation. The study examined a range of low, medium and high-density dwelling types and investigated the impact of orientation, insulation, ventilation and shading devices on energy efficiencies. This paper will examine the findings from the medium and high-density case study developments as these are relevant to residential developments in many South East Asian countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Finally, the paper will explore the potential benefits that medium and high-density residential developments have in the development of ‘solar cities’ and ‘solar suburbs’.