ID scanning, the media and the politics of urban surveillance in an Australian regional city

Computerised ID scanning technologies have permeated many urban night-time economies in Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. This paper documents how one media organisation’s overt and tacit approval of ID scanners helped to normalise this form of surveillance as a precondition of entry into most licensed venues in the Australian city of Geelong. After outlining how processes of governance “from above” and “from below” interweave to generate distinct political and media demands for strategies to prevent localised crime problems, a chronological reconstruction of media reports over a three-and-a half year period demonstrates how ID scanning became the centrepiece of a holistic reform strategy to combat alcohol-related violence in this nightclub precinct. Several discursive techniques helped to normalise this “technological fix”, while suppressing critical discussion of viable concerns over information privacy, data security and system networking. These
included pairing reports of an initial “signal crime” with examples of “virtual victimhood” to stress the urgency of a radical surveillance-based response, which was supported by anecdotal statements from key “primary definers” highlighting the success of this initiative in targeting a wider population of antisocial “others”. The implications of these reporting practices are discussed in light of the media’s central role in reforming the Geelong night-time economy and broader trends in using novel surveillance technologies to combat urban crime problems at the expense of alternative measures that protect individual liberty.

Obesity in adults: an emerging problem in urban areas of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

OBJECTIVE: To assess the prevalence of overweight, obesity and underweight among Vietnamese adults living in urban areas of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. DESIGN: This cross-sectional survey was conducted in the local health stations of 30 randomly selected wards, which represent all 13 urban districts of HCMC, over a period of 2 months from March to April 2004. SUBJECTS: A total of 1488 participants aged 20-60 years completed the interview, physical examination and venous blood collection. MEASUREMENTS: Anthropometric measurements of body weight, height, waist and hip circumference were taken to construct indicators of adiposity including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and waist-to-height and waist-to-hip ratios. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure and biochemical indicators of cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes risk (lipid profile and fasting blood glucose) were also measured. RESULTS: The age and sex standardized prevalence of overweight and obesity using Asian specific BMI cutoffs of 23.0 and 27.5 kg/m2 was 26.2 and 6.4%, respectively. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was slightly higher in females (33.6%) than males (31.6%), and progressively increased with age. The age and sex-standardized prevalence of underweight (BMI <18.5 kg/m2) among Vietnamese adults living in HCMC was 20.4%. The prevalence was slightly higher in males (22.0%) than in females (18.9%), and there was a much higher prevalence in all underweight categories in younger women than in men but this was reversed for older men. CONCLUSION: The adult population in HCMC Vietnam is in an early 'nutrition transition' with approximately equal prevalence of low and high BMI. The prevalence of overweight and obesity of Vietnamese urban adults was lower than that reported for other east and southeast Asian countries.

The social life of historical neighbourhoods: case study of a Middle Eastern city, Shiraz

Historic neighbourhoods have usually shaped on an organic structure in regard to their residents’ requirements. Due to the limitations in mobility, historical neighbourhoods were usually able to perform as a small city comprising all the elements required for satisfying physical, social, and cultural needs. This paper seeks to explore the patterns of social life in the traditional settlements in Shiraz and investigate the elements that have shaped the social life of these neighbourhoods. Exploring the social structure of historic neighbourhoods may introduce new approaches to the design of contemporary suburbs and neighbourhoods in terms of their vitality and social life. A review of the literature and comparing it to the historical core in Shiraz shows that there are five contributing factors to the social life of historic neighbourhoods in Shiraz, including density, human scale development, walkability, mixed land-use and qualities of public spaces. Exploring the features of public places and communal facilities indicates that the fine social performance of these settlements is rooted in their compatibility and adaptability to the environment, the residents’ requirements and culture.

Liveable Yarra - planning for the city's future using a deliberative process

Community engagement on planning processes is traditionally adversarial,with residents reacting to a development proposal or local amenity impacts.With the significant increase in inner-urban medium-high density developments andsubsequent pressure on physical and social infrastructure, the City of Yarra embarked on anew approach to the rewrite of its Planning Scheme. This paper describes the process by whichthe City of Yarra involved the community to help address some of the dilemmas and trade-offswhich are necessarily part of planning in an inner-urban area.To hear from a broad range of voices and receive informed recommendations, a deliberativeprocess, the Liveable Yarra project was formed. It aimed to have an in-depth two-wayconversation with the community about how Yarra can adapt to the challenges andopportunities brought about by growth and change.A 60 member People’s Panel, comprising a cross section of Yarra’s community, came togetherto learn, debate and provide recommendations to Council on the topics of housing, transport,built form and the local economy. The Panel was supplemented by feedback from a householdbaseline survey, Council’s Advisory Committees and targeted workshops with hard-to-reachcommunities.This was the first time a deliberative approach has been undertaken for a topic as multifacetedand far-reaching as rewriting a Local Government Planning Scheme. It allowed participantsto gain an understanding of the complexity of planning issues and the challenges this presentsto Council decision making. It’s expected that the revised Planning Scheme will moreaccurately reflect community expectations, improve liveability and enhance communityunderstanding of the complex issues faced by Council in planning the city’s future.Furthermore, in describing this approach, along with reflections from those Councillors,planners and community members involved, we hope to provide a model which other councilscould embrace to enhance their existing planning processes.

Simulating urban growth in a developing nation's region using a cellular automata-based model

Urbanization is one of the most evident global changes. Research in the field of urban growth modelling has generated models that explore for drivers and components of the urban growth dynamics. Cellular automata (CA) modeling is one of the recent advances, and a number of CA-based models of urban growth have produced satisfactory simulations of spatial urban expansion over time. Most application and test of CA-based models of urban growth which provide likely and reliable simulations has been developed in urban regions of developed nations; urban regions in the United States, in particular. This is because most of the models were developed in universities and research centers of developed nations, and these regions have the required data, which is extensive. Most of the population growth in the world, however, occurs in the developing world. While some European countries show signs of stabilization of their population, in less developed countries, such as India, population still grows exponentially. And this growth is normally uncoordinated, which results in serious environmental and social problems in urban areas. Therefore, the use of existing dynamic–spatial models of urban growth in regions of developing nations could be a means to assist planners and decision makers of these regions to understand and simulate the process of urban growth and test the results of different development strategies. The pattern of growth of urban regions of developing nations, however, seems to be different of the pattern of developed countries. The former use to be more dense and centralized, normally expanding outwards from consolidated urban areas; while the second is normally more fragmented and sparse. The present paper aims to investigate to how extent existing CA-based urban growth models tested in developed nations can also be applied to a developing country urban area. The urban growth model was applied to Porto Alegre City, Brazil. An expected contiguous expansion from existing urban areas has been obtained as following the historical trends of growth of the region. Moreover, the model was sensitive and able to portray different pattern of growth in the study area by changing the value of its parameters.

Engineering a distributed infrastructure for large-scale cost-effective content dissemination over urban vehicular networks

This paper proposes a practical and cost-effective approach to construct a fully distributed roadside communication infrastructure to facilitate the localized content dissemination to vehicles in the urban area. The proposed infrastructure is composed of distributed lightweight low-cost devices called roadside buffers (RSBs), where each RSB has the limited buffer storage and is able to transmit wirelessly the cached contents to fast-moving vehicles. To enable the distributed RSBs working toward the global optimal performance (e.g., minimal average file download delays), we propose a fully distributed algorithm to determine optimally the content replication strategy at RSBs. Specifically, we first develop a generic analytical model to evaluate the download delay of files, given the probability density of file distribution at RSBs. Then, we formulate the RSB content replication process as an optimization problem and devise a fully distributed content replication scheme accordingly to enable vehicles to recommend intelligently the desirable content files to RSBs. The proposed infrastructure is designed to optimize the global network utility, which accounts for the integrated download experience of users and the download demands of files. Using extensive simulations, we validate the effectiveness of the proposed infrastructure and show that the proposed distributed protocol can approach to the optimal performance and can significantly outperform the traditional heuristics.

The misanthropes, larrikins and mallrats of market square: an enduring public space dilemma in central Geelong

Market Square was a public reserve located in the centre of the Victorian regional city of Geelong. It was established by Governor Sir George Gipps during the initial surveying of the area in 1838. The square later became a produce market, before being progressively built upon for public and commercial purposes. Today, the modern Market Square Shopping Centre occupies a substantial portion of the original site. Opened in 1985 by the City of Geelong, the complex initially drew high rental incomes for the Council. However, by the early 1990s revenue began to decline after the collapse of the Pyramid Building Society and competition from the new Bay City Plaza shopping centre (now Westfield) that was built directly opposite. In 1993 the city council decided to sell the complex. Today it remains privately owned and while it adjoins the Little Malop Street Mall which was also part of the original public square, its connection with the surrounding urban environment is poor. The introverted architectural nature of Geelong’s two large retail shopping complexes has significantly altered the city’s spatial dynamic. The traditional intimate urban structure and streetscape has been fragmented. This has led to a deterioration of the city’s social cohesion, sense of place and economic prosperity. This paper chronicles the myriad errors of judgement by the institution of local government that have contributed to this situation. Heeding past mistakes, it explores ways in which the Council might work with private landowners to improve the permeability of the city’s public urban spaces and internalised retail centres for improved use, integration, functionality and resilience. Achieving a shared culture of concern for the city’s urban fabric presents some significant challenges. How might ‘big box’ shopping centres be reconsidered to make a positive contribution to the city’s urban spatial network while remaining commercially viable? The built environment has an important role to play in addressing the problem by presenting opportunities for these new urban institutions to also benefit from stronger connections between the public and private realm.

Using the historic urban landscape to reimagine Ballarat : the local context

The adoption by UNESCO of the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (2011) aimed to re-position issues of development and urban heritage conservation, and outlined a way forward based on community-centred processes and the recognition of the dynamic character of urban settlements. Achieving these goals will depend on the development of new methods and processes, and implementation to specific urban contexts. This paper highlights the importance of local government as a location where this international dialogue can be operationalized and further advanced. Reflecting on the theoretical and practical dimensions of adopting a landscape approach to urban planning and conservation by the City of Ballarat (Australia) has allowed some significant potential shifts in heritage practice to be anticipated.

Rapid recovery of an urban remnant reptile community following summer wildfire

Reptiles in urban remnants are threatened with extinction by increased fire frequency, habitat fragmentation caused by urban development, and competition and predation from exotic species. Understanding how urban reptiles respond to and recover from such disturbances is key to their conservation. We monitored the recovery of an urban reptile community for five years following a summer wildfire at Kings Park in Perth, Western Australia, using pitfall trapping at five burnt and five unburnt sites. The reptile community recovered rapidly following the fire. Unburnt sites initially had higher species richness and total abundance, but burnt sites rapidly converged, recording a similar total abundance to unburnt areas within two years, and a similar richness within three years. The leaf-litter inhabiting skink Hemiergis quadrilineata was strongly associated with longer unburnt sites and may be responding to the loss of leaf litter following the fire. Six rarely-captured species were also strongly associated with unburnt areas and were rarely or never recorded at burnt sites, whereas two other rarely-captured species were associated with burnt sites. We also found that one lizard species, Ctenotus fallens, had a smaller average body length in burnt sites compared to unburnt sites for four out of the five years of monitoring. Our study indicates that fire management that homogenises large areas of habitat through frequent burning may threaten some species due to their preference for longer unburnt habitat. Careful management of fire may be needed to maximise habitat suitability within the urban landscape.

Security management : modelling critical infrastructure

Secure management of Australia's commercial critical infrastructure presents ongoing challenges to owners and the government. Currently a high-level iriformation sharing collaboration between the government and business manages complex security issues, but critical irifrastructure protection also lacks a scalable model exhibiting the overall structure of critical infrastructure at various levels, sectors and sub-sectors. This research builds on the work of Marasea and Warren (2003) to establish a representative model of Australia's critical irifrastructure; discusses the boundaries between critical infrastructures, and considers the existence andpotential irifluence ofcritical irifrastructure relationships.

Considerations for modelling critical infrastructure systems

The paper commences by reviewing and examining the structure of critical infrastructure systems from a holistic viewpoint, before venturing towards determining what are the necessary considerations required for modelling a specific system within the layered structural context of the larger holistic system.

Cultivating health and wellbeing : members' perceptions of the health benefits of a Port Melbourne community garden

This paper reports on a research project undertaken with members of a community garden in Port Melbourne, Australia, to investigate the ways in which such a facility contributes to the enhancement of health, wellbeing and contact with nature for urban dwellers. Ten members from an urban community garden were interviewed using qualitative semi-structured questions exploring perceptions of health and wellbeing benefits associated with membership. The garden was felt by members to be a sanctuary where people could come together and escape daily pressures, a source of advice and social support, and a place which gave them a sense of worth and involvement. Members also identified spiritual, fitness and nutritional benefits arising from participation in the community garden. It is evident even from this small qualitative study that community gardening offers many health and wellbeing benefits to members. This study provides a basis for the benefits of community gardens in Australia to be taken into account by policy-makers and practitioners to enhance urban community health and wellbeing.

Indigenous climate change adaptation perspectives : understanding urban and peri‐urban indigenous people’s vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change

The National Climate change Adaptation Research Plan: Indigenous Communities (2011) highlighted that research on Indigenous communities and climate change, including the variables of impacts, vulnerability and adaptive capacity and adaptation has been limited. While most research has focused on identifying the biophysical impacts of climate change, a minority of studies have considered the Indigenous knowledge and peoples whom continue to reside in Australia and care for; ‘country’;. The report concluded that “there is a need for research that expands knowledge about these and other dimensions of Indigenous adaptation to climate change.“ This paper reviews work in progress on a NCCARF funded research project that is seeking to investigate select coastal urban and per-urban Indigenous community vulnerability to, and capacity for climate change adaptation. Working collaboratively with Indigenous communities resident in Adelaide, Heywood/Portland, Mornington Peninsula, Stradbroke Island and Brisbane, it seeks to explore and articulate strategies that enhance Indigenous capacity to climate change including possible protocols, frameworks, processes and procedures that may lead directly to a more informed appreciation of what is transpiring around Australia’s coastal per-urban regions for their Indigenous communities who still hold strong bonds and responsibilities to their ‘country’.

The role of local grouping and global orientation contrast in perception of orientation-modulated textures

We explored the contribution to perception of orientation-modulated textures of visual processes selective either for orientation contrast or orientation grouping. To distinguish between these two processes we manipulated the axis of local grouping of texture elements independently of the direction of global orientation modulation. The general question posed was whether visibility of texture structure (measured as threshold for discriminating spatial-frequency of texture structure) is dependent on the magnitude of orientation contrast, strength and direction of local grouping, or some combination of the two. We demonstrated that the factor of primary importance is the amplitude of global orientation contrast rather than the presence of local grouping content. Using orientation-interleaved textures (containing two superimposed textures modulated around orthogonal orientations), we further showed that orientation single-opponent processes are a more likely candidate for detecting orientation contrast than double-opponent processes.

Challenging capacity building : comparative perspectives

The focus of most capacity building programs is poor and disadvantaged communities. However, the appropriateness of capacity building for these groups, whether located in "developing" or "developed" countries, is always presented as self-evident. In much of the discussion of "how to" build capacity, critical questions regarding the determination of whose capacities are to be built, the methods by which capacity will be built and the consequences for wider relationships of those whose capacity is being built (and presumably for those whose capacity is being left to be built at another time!) are not investigated. A deeper understanding of the meaning, practice and potential of capacity building is required. This book challenges capacity building by critically interrogating its central ideas and practices. But it also considers the ways in which capacity building itself can challenge disadvantage and inequality, by offering a self-determining way forward for communities.