Evaluation of a meteorological and three-dimensional chemical transport model for gaseous and particle concentrations in an urban airshed

The Air Pollution Model and Chemical Transport Model (TAPM-CTM) framework has been tested and applied originally in Sydney to quantify particle and gaseous concentration (Cope et al, 2014). However, the model performance had not been tested in the south-eastern Queensland region (SEQR), Australia.

Establishing the conceptual and practical foundations of a new form of theatre for development: Theatre in conversations

This research was developed between Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) over two years investigating ways in which theatre for development could be held accountable for the claims it makes especially in PNG. The motivation to improve theatre for development (TfD) practice was triggered by the desire to enhance the democratic processes of collaboration and co–creativity often lacking in TfD activity in Papua New Guinea. Through creative practice as research and reflective processes, working with established and experienced local community theatre practitioners, a new form of theatre for development, Theatre in Conversations evolved. This form integrated three related genres of TfD including process drama, community theatre and community conversations. The suitability and impact of Theatre in Conversations was tested in three remote villages in PNG. Findings and outputs from the study have the potential to be used by theatre for development practitioners in other countries.

How an urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary health care service improved access to mental health care

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience higher levels of psychological distress and mental ill health than their non-Indigenous counterparts, but underuse mental health services. Interventions are required to address the structural and functional access barriers that cause this underuse. In 2012, the Southern Queensland Centre of Excellence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care employed a psychologist and a social worker to integrate mental health care into its primary health care services. This research study examines the impact of this innovation.

Growing food in the city: A study across interaction design and urban agriculture

The thesis offers the foundation of a design pattern language for urban gardening, as well as a prototype mobile storytelling platform through which urban gardeners can share gardening experiences. This study examined three urban agriculture communities – a city farm, a permaculture movement, and residential gardeners – in order to better understand some of the challenges in their food growing practices. The city is increasingly being rediscovered by gardeners, food activists, and local governments as an under-utilised opportunity space for land cultivation and local food production, and the findings of this research were analysed with a view to consider interactive technology and design interventions in response.

Smart Cities, Social Capital, and Citizens at Play: A Critique and a Way Forward

Digital transformations are not contained within the digital domain but are increasingly spilling over into the physical world. In this chapter, we analyse some of the transformations undergoing in cities today towards becoming smart cities. We offer a critique of smart cities and a way forward, divided into three parts: First, we explore the concept of Smart Citizens in terms of both localities, the move towards a hyperlocal network and also the citizen’s role in the creation and use of data. We use the ‘Smart London’ plan drawn up by the Mayor of London, as a way to illustrate our discussion. Second, we turn to the civic innovations enabled by digital transformations and their potential impact on citizens and citizenship. Specifically, we are interested in the notion of social capital as an alternative form of in-kind currency and its function as an indicator of value, in order to ask, can digital transformations give rise to ‘civic capital,’ and how can such a concept help, for instance, a local government invite more representative residents and community champions to participate in community engagement for better urban planning. Third, we introduce a hybrid, location-based game under development by design agency Preliminal Games in London, UK. This illustrative case critiques and highlights the current challenges to establishing a new economic model that bridges the digital / physical divide. The game provides a vehicle for us to explore how established principles and strategies in game design such as immersive storytelling and goal setting, can be employed to encourage players to think of the interconnections of their hybrid digital / physical environments in new ways.

The links between public tendencies and the urban design framework of Brisbane’s public squares: Mapping urban design frameworks present in Brisbane public squares and the correlating activities of the Australian public

This research seeks to demonstrate the ways in which urban design factors, individually and in various well-considered arrangements, stimulate and encourage social activities in Brisbane’s public squares through the mapping and analysis of user behaviour. No design factors contribute to public space in isolation, so the combinations of different design factors, contextual and social impacts as well as local climate are considered to be highly influential to the way in which Brisbane’s public engages with public space. It is this local distinctiveness that this research seeks to ascertain. The research firstly pinpoints and consolidates the design factors identified and recommended in existing literature and then maps the identified factors as they are observed at case study sites in Brisbane. This is then set against observational mappings of the site’s corresponding user activities and engagement. These mappings identify a number of patterns of behaviour; pertinently that “activated” areas of social gathering actively draw people in, and the busier a space is, both the frequency and duration of people lingering in the space increases. The study finds that simply providing respite from the urban environment (and/or weather conditions) does not adequately encourage social interaction and that people friendly design factors can instigate social activities which, if coexisting in a public space, can themselves draw in further users of the space. One of the primary conclusions drawn from these observations is that members of the public in Brisbane are both actively and passively social and often seek out locations where “people-watching” and being around other members of the public (both categorised as passive social activities) are facilitated and encouraged. Spaces that provide respite from the urban environment but that do not sufficiently accommodate social connections and activities are less favourable and are often left abandoned despite their comparable tranquillity and available space.

Food justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA

As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when increasingly its demands for fair food systems are urban in nature. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice. Overall, however, because of the different histories, geographic contexts, and relations to state and capital, food justice and food sovereignty differ as strategies and approaches. We conclude that the US urban food sovereignty movement is limited by neoliberal structural contexts that dampen its approach and radical framework. Similarly, we see restrictions on urban food justice movements that are also operating within a broader framework of market neoliberalism. However, we find that food justice was reported as an approach more aligned with the socio-historical context in both cities, due to its origins in broader class and race struggles.

On food security and alternative food networks: Understanding and performing food security in the context of urban bias

This paper offers one explanation for the institutional basis of food insecurity in Australia, and argues that while alternative food networks and the food sovereignty movement perform a valuable function in building forms of social solidarity between urban consumers and rural producers, they currently make only a minor contribution to Australia’s food and nutrition security. The paper begins by identifying two key drivers of food security: household incomes (on the demand side) and nutrition-sensitive, ‘fair food’ agriculture (on the supply side). We focus on this second driver and argue that healthy populations require an agricultural sector that delivers dietary diversity via a fair and sustainable food system. In order to understand why nutrition-sensitive, fair food agriculture is not flourishing in Australia we introduce the development economics theory of urban bias. According to this theory, governments support capital intensive rather than labour intensive agriculture in order to deliver cheap food alongside the transfer of public revenues gained from rural agriculture to urban infrastructure, where the majority of the voting public resides. We chart the unfolding of the Urban Bias across the twentieth century and its consolidation through neo-liberal orthodoxy, and argue that agricultural policies do little to sustain, let alone revitalize, rural and regional Australia. We conclude that by observing food system dynamics through a re-spatialized lens, Urban Bias Theory is valuable in highlighting rural–urban socio-economic and political economy tensions, particularly regarding food system sustainability. It also sheds light on the cultural economy tensions for alternative food networks as they move beyond niche markets to simultaneously support urban food security and sustainable rural livelihoods.

Can biophilic urbanism deliver strong economic and social benefits in cities? An economic and policy invetigations into the increased use of natural elements in urban design

Biophilic urbanism, or urban design that reflects humanity’s innate need for nature, stands to make significant contributions to a range of national, state and local government policies related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, by investigating ways in which nature can be integrated into, around and on top of buildings. Potential benefits of such design include reducing the heat island effect, reducing energy consumption for thermal control, enhancing urban biodiversity, improving well being and productivity, improving water cycle management, and assisting in the response to growing needs for densification and revitalisation of cities. This report will give an overview of the concept of biophilia and consider enablers and disablers to its application to urban planning and design. The paper will present findings from stakeholder engagement and a series of detailed case studies, related to a consideration of the economics of the use of biophilic elements (direct and indirect).

Real-time traffic state estimation in urban corridors from heterogeneous data

In recent years, rapid advances in information technology have led to various data collection systems which are enriching the sources of empirical data for use in transport systems. Currently, traffic data are collected through various sensors including loop detectors, probe vehicles, cell-phones, Bluetooth, video cameras, remote sensing and public transport smart cards. It has been argued that combining the complementary information from multiple sources will generally result in better accuracy, increased robustness and reduced ambiguity. Despite the fact that there have been substantial advances in data assimilation techniques to reconstruct and predict the traffic state from multiple data sources, such methods are generally data-driven and do not fully utilize the power of traffic models. Furthermore, the existing methods are still limited to freeway networks and are not yet applicable in the urban context due to the enhanced complexity of the flow behavior. The main traffic phenomena on urban links are generally caused by the boundary conditions at intersections, un-signalized or signalized, at which the switching of the traffic lights and the turning maneuvers of the road users lead to shock-wave phenomena that propagate upstream of the intersections. This paper develops a new model-based methodology to build up a real-time traffic prediction model for arterial corridors using data from multiple sources, particularly from loop detectors and partial observations from Bluetooth and GPS devices.

Direct observations of pedestrian unsafe crossing at urban Australian level crossings

The number of pedestrian victims at Australian and foreign level crossings has remained stable over the past decade and it continues to be a significant problem. To examine the factors contributing to pedestrians’ unsafe crossing behaviours, direct observations were conducted at three black spot urban level crossings in Brisbane for a total of 45 h during morning and afternoon peak. In total, 129 pedestrians transgressed the active controls. More transgressions were observed at the crossings located in more populated suburbs in close proximity to large shopping centres and school zones, whereas the smallest number of transgressions were observed at the least populated locations. In addition to characteristics associated with the larger socio-economic area, the patterns of transgression could be associated with the properties of the existing safety equipment and the design of each level crossing (i.e. location of the platforms, number of rail tracks). Indeed, the largest number of crossed unoccupied but “at risk” rail tracks (where a train could have passed), was observed at the crossing with the least transgressions. Contrary to previous findings, younger adults were the most frequent transgressors. School children and elderly were most likely to transgress in groups. Potential directions for future research and more effective measures are discussed.

Associations between individual socioeconomic position, neighbourhood disadvantage, and transport mode: Baseline results from the HABITAT multilevel study

Background Understanding how different socioeconomic indicators are associated with transport modes provide insight into which interventions might contribute to reducing socioeconomic inequalities in health. The purpose of this study was to examine associations between neighbourhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage, individual-level socioeconomic position (SEP) and usual transport mode. Methods This investigation included 11,036 residents from 200 neighbourhoods in Brisbane, Australia. Respondents self-reported their usual transport mode (car or motorbike, public transport, walking or cycling). Indicators for individual-level SEP were education, occupation, and household income; and neighbourhood disadvantage was measured using a census-derived index. Data were analysed using multilevel multinomial logistic regression. High SEP respondents and residents of the most advantaged neighbourhoods who used a private motor vehicle as their usual form of transport was the reference category. Results Compared with driving a motor vehicle, the odds of using public transport were higher for white collar employees (OR1.68, 95%CrI 1.41-2.01), members of lower income households (OR 1.71 95%CrI 1.25-2.30), and residents of more disadvantaged neighbourhoods (OR 1.93, 95%CrI 1.46-2.54); and lower for respondents with a certificate-level education (OR 0.60, 95%CrI 0.49-0.74) and blue collar workers (OR 0.63, 95%CrI 0.50-0.81). The odds of walking for transport were higher for the least educated (OR 1.58, 95%CrI 1.18-2.11), those not in the labour force (OR 1.94, 95%CrI 1.38-2.72), members of lower income households (OR 2.10, 95%CrI 1.23-3.64), and residents of more disadvantaged neighbourhoods (OR 2.73, 95%CrI 1.46-5.24). The odds of cycling were lower among less educated groups (OR 0.31, 95% CrI 0.19-0.48). Conclusion The relationships between socioeconomic characteristics and transport modes are complex, and provide challenges for those attempting to encourage active forms of transportation. Further work is required exploring the individual- and neighbourhood-level mechanisms behind transport mode choice, and what factors might influence individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds to change to more active transport modes.

Implications for sustainable land use in high-density cities: Evidence from Hong Kong

Sustainable land use policies are concerned with the kind of world we want to live in now, and in future, and therefore inevitably involve some form of community involvement or consultation process. Hong Kong's sustainable land use planning system is well developed, involving considerable community participation and therefore serves as a good model for similarly situated cities. However, although there are several recent studies involving aspects of its land use planning system, none has yet examined the system as a whole from the perspective of sustainability. To correct this, this paper describes the land use conditions of Hong Kong from both demand and supply perspectives, reviewing its statutory and administrative procedures of land development and allocation together with the sustainable urban renewal practices involved. Problems in current sustainable land use planning and management, such as difficulties in urban renewal, the inherent shortage of land and the lengthy time involved due to need for coordination and responsiveness to multiple stakeholders, and outdated and overcomplicated administrative processes were also analyzed.

Urban informatics beyond data: Media architecture, placemaking, and citizen action

Since 2006, we have been conducting urban informatics research that we define as “the study, design, and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures” [1]. Various new research initiatives under the label “urban informatics” have been started since then by universities (e.g., NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress) and industry (e.g., Arup, McKinsey) worldwide. Yet, many of these new initiatives are limited to what Townsend calls, “data-driven approaches to urban improvement” [2]. One of the key challenges is that any quantity of aggregated data does not easily translate directly into quality insights to better understand cities. In this talk, I will raise questions about the purpose of urban informatics research beyond data, and show examples of media architecture, participatory city making, and citizen activism. I argue for (1) broadening the disciplinary foundations that urban science approaches draw on; (2) maintaining a hybrid perspective that considers both the bird’s eye view as well as the citizen’s view, and; (3) employing design research to not be limited to just understanding, but to bring about actionable knowledge that will drive change for good.

Technology-mediated tools for shaping experiences in urban commuter trains

This thesis presents the results of a study into ways that technology can be appropriated and designed to support urban rail commuters in their daily journeys. The study evaluated a mobile application prototype deployed along the Brisbane passenger rail network. This prototype was designed to support social interaction between passengers sharing the same trains. This thesis provides a step forward in showing the relevance of increasingly creating solutions that contribute to a more enjoyable and attractive public transport service.