Generate : Youth Culture and Migration Heritage in Western Sydney

Executive Summary This report is the first in-depth exploration of identity and popular culture among Middle Eastern and Asian youth. It documents preliminary research findings on the contribution of Middle Eastern and Asian youth to Sydney’s cultural life and migration heritage. While young people from these communities, the largest migrant communities in NSW, are often negatively portrayed, this research has focused on their social practices of cultural invention, opening up new and creative means of mobilising cultural difference. These young people’s cultural negotiations between migrant family background and the wider society require real engagement with difference and provide rich resources for invigorating the multicultural fabric of the nation. Their repertoire of cultural skills and their involvement in different cultural worlds are often viewed as evidence of not ‘belonging’ to the mainstream or dominant culture. However, the results of our research reveal that the ‘in-betweenness’ of these young people often enables them to move easily between different social and cultural groupings, embracing cultural diversity as inherent and integral to their everyday experience, that is, ‘normal’ to urban life. In this report, we document the changing nature of friendship networks and family relations, the particular meanings and uses of different languages and expressions, and the patterns of consumption of Middle Eastern and Asian youth. In these everyday activities these young people contribute to a changing migration heritage and are redefining what it means to be Australian.

Are alien fish a reliable indicator of river health?

1. The ability of many introduced fish species to thrive in degraded aquatic habitats and their potential to impact on aquatic ecosystem structure and function suggest that introduced fish may represent both a symptom and a cause of decline in river health and the integrity of native aquatic communities. 2. The varying sensitivities of many commonly introduced fish species to degraded stream conditions, the mechanism and reason for their introduction and the differential susceptibility of local stream habitats to invasion because of the environmental and biological characteristics of the receiving water body, are all confounding factors that may obscure the interpretation of patterns of introduced fish species distribution and abundance and therefore their reliability as indicators of river health. 3. In the present study, we address the question of whether alien fish (i.e. those species introduced from other countries) are a reliable indicator of the health of streams and rivers in south-eastern Queensland, Australia. We examine the relationships of alien fish species distributions and indices of abundance and biomass with the natural environmental features, the biotic characteristics of the local native fish assemblages and indicators of anthropogenic disturbance at a large number of sites subject to varying sources and intensities of human impact. 4. Alien fish species were found to be widespread and often abundant in south-eastern Queensland rivers and streams, and the five species collected were considered to be relatively tolerant to river degradation, making them good candidate indicators of river health. Variation in alien species indices was unrelated to the size of the study sites, the sampling effort expended or natural environmental gradients. The biological resistance of the native fish fauna was not concluded to be an important factor mediating invasion success by alien species. Variation in alien fish indices was, however, strongly related to indicators of disturbance intensity describing local in-stream habitat and riparian degradation, water quality and surrounding land use, particularly the amount of urban development in the catchment. 5. Potential confounding factors that may influence the likelihood of introduction and successful establishment of an alien species and the implications of these factors for river bioassessment are discussed. We conclude that the potentially strong impact that many alien fish species can have on the biological integrity of natural aquatic ecosystems, together with their potential to be used as an initial basis to find out other forms of human disturbance impacts, suggest that some alien species (particularly species from the family Poeciliidae) can represent a reliable 'first cut' indicator of river health.

Resolving the conflicts of sustainable world heritage landscapes in cities : fully open or limited access for visitors?

World Heritage Landscapes (WHLs) are receiving increased attention from researchers, urban planners, managers, and policy makers and many heritage values and resources are becoming irreversibly lost. This phenomenon is especially prominent for WHLs located in cities, where greater development opportunities are involved. Decision making for sustainable urban landscape planning, conservation and management of WHLs often takes place from an economic perspective, especially in developing countries. This, together with the uncertain source of funding to cover WHL operating and maintenance costs, has resulted in many urban managers seeking private sector funding either in the form of visitor access fees or leasing part of the site for high-rental facilities such as five star hotels, clubs and expensive restaurants. For the former, this can result in low-income urban citizens being unable to afford the access fees and hence contradicting the principle of equal access for all; while, for the latter, the principle of open access for all is equally violated. To resolve this conflict, a game model is developed to determine how urban managers should allocate WHL spaces to maximize the combination of economic, social and ecological benefits and cultural values. A case study is provided of the Hangzhou's West Lake Scenic Area, a WHL located at the centre of Hangzhou city, in which several high-rental facilities have recently been closed down by the local authorities due to charges of elitism and misuse of public funds by government officials. The result shows that the best solution is to lease a small space with high rents and leave the remainder of the site to the public. This solution is likely to be applicable only in cities with a strong economy.

Temporal and spatial distribution and habitat associations of an urban population of New Zealand long-tailed bats (Chalinolobus tuberculatus)

Two ultrasound survey methods were used to determine the presence and activity patterns of New Zealand long-tailed bats (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) in the city of Hamilton. First, 13 monthly surveys conducted at 18 green spaces found C. tuberculatus in only one urban forest reserve, Hammond Bush, where they were found consistently throughout the year. Bat activity was strongly related to temperature. Second, twice-yearly citywide surveys conducted over 2 years determined the distribution and habitat associations of C. tuberculatus. Bats were found only in the southern part of the city and were strongly associated with the Waikato River. Bat activity was negatively correlated with housing and street light density and positively correlated with topographical complexity. In Hamilton, topographical complexity indicates the presence of gullies. Gullies probably provide foraging and roosting opportunities and connect the river to distant forest patches. These results suggest that urban habitats can be useful for bats if gullies can link these to distant habitat fragments.

Empirical modelling of the relationship between bus and car speeds on signalised urban networks

Vehicle speed is an important attribute for analysing the utility of a transport mode. The speed relationship between multiple modes of transport is of interest to traffic planners and operators. This paper quantifies the relationship between bus speed and average car speed by integrating Bluetooth data and Transit Signal Priority data from the urban network in Brisbane, Australia. The method proposed in this paper is the first of its kind to relate bus speed and average car speed by integrating multi-source traffic data in a corridor-based method. Three transferable regression models relating not-in-service bus, in-service bus during peak periods, and in-service bus during off-peak periods with average car speed are proposed. The models are cross-validated and the interrelationships are significant.

Interpretation of morphological data to inform design Bridge to Bridge: Ridge to Ridge urban design workshop

The importance of design practice informed by urban morphology has led to intensification in interest, signalled by the formation of the ISUF Research and Practice Task Force and voiced through several recent academic publications cognisant of this current debate, this paper reports on a recent urban design workshop at which morphology was set as one of the key themes. Initially planned to be programmed as a augmented concurrent event to the 2013 20th ISUF conference held in Brisbane, the two day Bridge to Bridge: Ridge to Ridge urban design workshop nevertheless took place the following month, and involved over one hundred design professionals and academics. The workshop sought to develop several key urban design principles and recommendations addressing a major government development proposal sited in the most important heritage precinct of the city. The paper will focus specifically on one of the nine groups, in which the design proposal was purposefully guided by morphological input. The discussion will examine the design outcomes and illicit review and feedback from participants, shedding critical light on the issues that arise from such a design approach.

The impact of retention of heritage places

The movement to protect heritage places has grown enormously in Australia over the past decade. The renewed recognition of the significant roles that heritage places play in the urban environment today is encouraging but has a way to go if the demolition of memorable places and irreversible loss of intangible values seen in previous times is to be discontinued. This study investigated the perceptions of the general public and the professional stakeholders in heritage projects and found that they were very similar, particularly in relation to the reasons for heritage retention. The results indicate that, while there is growing interest in sustaining the reflection of the historic urban landscape by retaining cherished icons for the future, there needs to be better ways to overcome the modern development pressures on heritage sites. The paper concludes that, despite the challenges in heritage retention, they are outweighed by the value that accrues from preserving heritage places and the widespread appreciation of that value.

Middleware for Mobile Sensing Applications in Urban Environments

Sensor networks represent an attractive tool to observe the physical world. Networks of tiny sensors can be used to detect a fire in a forest, to monitor the level of pollution in a river, or to check on the structural integrity of a bridge. Application-specific deployments of static-sensor networks have been widely investigated. Commonly, these networks involve a centralized data-collection point and no sharing of data outside the organization that owns it. Although this approach can accommodate many application scenarios, it significantly deviates from the pervasive computing vision of ubiquitous sensing where user applications seamlessly access anytime, anywhere data produced by sensors embedded in the surroundings. With the ubiquity and ever-increasing capabilities of mobile devices, urban environments can help give substance to the ubiquitous sensing vision through Urbanets, spontaneously created urban networks. Urbanets consist of mobile multi-sensor devices, such as smart phones and vehicular systems, public sensor networks deployed by municipalities, and individual sensors incorporated in buildings, roads, or daily artifacts. My thesis is that "multi-sensor mobile devices can be successfully programmed to become the underpinning elements of an open, infrastructure-less, distributed sensing platform that can bring sensor data out of their traditional close-loop networks into everyday urban applications". Urbanets can support a variety of services ranging from emergency and surveillance to tourist guidance and entertainment. For instance, cars can be used to provide traffic information services to alert drivers to upcoming traffic jams, and phones to provide shopping recommender services to inform users of special offers at the mall. Urbanets cannot be programmed using traditional distributed computing models, which assume underlying networks with functionally homogeneous nodes, stable configurations, and known delays. Conversely, Urbanets have functionally heterogeneous nodes, volatile configurations, and unknown delays. Instead, solutions developed for sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks can be leveraged to provide novel architectures that address Urbanet-specific requirements, while providing useful abstractions that hide the network complexity from the programmer. This dissertation presents two middleware architectures that can support mobile sensing applications in Urbanets. Contory offers a declarative programming model that views Urbanets as a distributed sensor database and exposes an SQL-like interface to developers. Context-aware Migratory Services provides a client-server paradigm, where services are capable of migrating to different nodes in the network in order to maintain a continuous and semantically correct interaction with clients. Compared to previous approaches to supporting mobile sensing urban applications, our architectures are entirely distributed and do not assume constant availability of Internet connectivity. In addition, they allow on-demand collection of sensor data with the accuracy and at the frequency required by every application. These architectures have been implemented in Java and tested on smart phones. They have proved successful in supporting several prototype applications and experimental results obtained in ad hoc networks of phones have demonstrated their feasibility with reasonable performance in terms of latency, memory, and energy consumption.

Invasion of Egeria into the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, Australia

The Hawkesbury-Nepean River in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, is the largest river system in the Sydney metropolitan area, and it drains most of the developing areas to the west. This catchment is under increasing pressure from urban expansion and the river frequently experiences extended periods of low flows due to a combination of extensive river regulation and the Australian temperate climate. Added to this, the river and several of its tributaries receive treated sewage and stormwater from various sources. Habitats and biota within the Hawkesbury-Nepean River catchment have been altered since European settlement and many introduced species have spread throughout the terrestrial and aquatic environment (Recher et al. 1993). Submersed macrophyte assemblages within the river have undergone significant changes in their distribution and abundance due to eutrophication, habitat alteration and changes to river flows (Recher et al 1993). Anecdotal evidence and some early unpublished studies suggest that egeria (Egeria densa Planchon), introduced from South America as an aquarium plant, was present in the Hawkesbury-Nepean River prior to 1980. Sainty (1973) reported a persistent and troublesome infestation over a number of years at Wallacia in the upper Nepean River. Here, as part of a larger study on the ecology of macrophyte and invertebrate assemblages associated with anthropogenic disturbance in the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, we document the rapid spread of egeria since 1994. Significant increases in egeria biomass were also found, and we present preliminary evidence which suggest that the native ribbonweed, vallisneria (Vallisneria americana Michx.) is being displaced.

A survey of river habitats on the River Lune

A survey of the River Lune using River Habitat Survey (RHS) was carried out at 103 sections in February/March 99, to which were added 37 sites surveyed between 1994 -1996. Summary statistics were produced on the distribution and extent of flow features (e.g. riffles, pools, rapids etc.), substrate types, tree and associated features and bank profiles. Information on land-use and management was also included in the analyses. A Habitat Modification Score (HMS) describing the level of habitat modification was derived for each site and compared to the whole reference network and to rivers of similar types in Britain. The HMS shows that more than 70% of the sites on the catchment are predominantly unmodified and very few sites are significantly modified. Highly modified sites are concentrated in the urban areas and on the tributaries.

Report on the 1995 stock assessment of the Douglas catchment

The River Douglas has a long industrial heritage beginning in the early 18th century with its use by boats carrying goods between Wigan and Tarleton. The River and its tributaries have also historically been, and to a certain extent are still, subject to polluting inputs from the urban, agricultural and industrialised areas located within its catchment. During the early stages in the production of the River Douglas Catchment Management Plan, it became apparent that very little data existed on the populations of coarse and salmonid fish species within the River Douglas system. The data that did exist was largely anecdotal, consisting of catch reports from anglers or water bailiffs, or of dead and distressed fish following pollution incidents. This study was initiated to assess the status of coarse and salmonid fish species within the River Douglas system and so address the lack of knowledge. Eighty two sites were surveyed by electric fishing, including 14 sites using an electric fishing punt and up to four anodes. The data was analysed according to a new National Fisheries Classification Scheme. This classified the sites by the fish stock s present and compared the results with a database containing information from sites around the country that have similar habitat types. A stocking experiment was also undertaken in the River Lostock using chub reared at the Leyland Hatchery. These were marked with an identifiable blue spot in the spring of 1995 and then released into three, previously surveyed, locations in the river. These sites were then resurveyed during the summer stock assessment. This report also Site Reports with details on monitored sites, habitat features and fishery classification.

The effect of water quality on coarse fish productivity and movement in the Lower River Irwell and Upper Manchester Ship Canal a watercourse recovering from historical pollution

This is the Effect of water quality on coarse fish productivity and movement in the Lower River Irwell and Upper Manchester Ship Canal: a watercourse recovering from historical pollution report produced by the Environment Agency in 2003. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of water quality upon coarse fish population dynamics in a lowland, urban watercourse. All of the research carried was undertaken in the lower River Irwell and upper Manchester Ship Canal, between February 1998 and December 2001. Of particular interest was the natural sustainability of the urban fishery given recent concern raised in the angling community over an apparent decline in coarse fish populations in lowland rivers. The research described in this report has concentrated upon the role of water quality in determining coarse fish population dynamics, and in particular: The impact of water quality upon fish growth and productivity; The impact of poor water quality and low dissolved oxygen concentrations upon fish distribution and movement; The impact of water quality upon the sexual development of fish.

River habitat survey and geomorphological evaluation of the Glaze Brook Catchment

This is the River habitat survey and geomorphological evaluation of the Glaze Brook Catchment report produced by the Environmental Research and Consultancy of the University of Liverpool in 2002. The major aims of the project were to provide baseline information on river habitats in the Glaze catchment using standard River Habitat Survey (RHS) methods (sampling 25% of the catchment length) and, through the geomorphological audit, to assess the distribution and intensity of geomorphological processes, notably sediment transfer, sources and sinks. This information was then used to develop informed management recommendations. The Glaze catchment is a heavily modified watercourse of generally poor habitat quality. The most important factors contributing to the low quality of the sites are poor bank and channel features; low diversity/absence of channel vegetation; paucity of bankside trees and, to a lesser extent, a lack of channel substrate diversity. The high degree of modification relates principally to extensively resectioned banks and channels plus extensive culverting in the urban parts of the catchment.

The influence of topography and land use on water quality of Xiangxi River in Three Gorges Reservoir region

A self-organizing map (SOM) was used to cluster the water quality data of Xiangxi River in the Three Gorges Reservoir region. The results showed that 81 sampling sites could be divided into several groups representing different land use types. The forest dominated region had low concentrations of most nutrient variables except COD, whereas the agricultural region had high concentrations of NO3N, TN, Alkalinity, and Hardness. The sites downstream of an urban area were high in NH3N, NO2N, PO4P and TP. Redundancy analysis was used to identify the individual effects of topography and land use on river water quality. The results revealed that the watershed factors accounted for 61.7% variations of water quality in the Xiangxi River. Specifically, topographical characteristics explained 26.0% variations of water quality, land use explained 10.2%, and topography and land use together explained 25.5%. More than 50% of the variation in most water quality variables was explained by watershed characteristics. However, water quality variables which are strongly influenced by urban and industrial point source pollution (NH3N, NO2N, PO4P and TP) were not as well correlated with watershed characteristics.

The accumulation of alkylphenols in submersed plants in spring in urban lake, China

The concentrations of alkylphenols (APs) were investigated in water, sediments and submersed macrophytes from the Moon Lake, Wuhan city, China. The water samples contained APs, ranging up to 26.4 mu g l(-1) for nonylphenol (NP) and 0.68 mu g l(-1) for octylphenol (OP). APs were found in the sediment samples with concentrations ranging from 4.08 to 14.8 for NP and from 0.22 to 1.25 mu g l(-1) dry weight for OP. The samples from the site near former sewage inlet showed the highest concentrations of APs in both water and sediments. The results of distribution pattern and dynamics of NP and OP in submersed macrophytes of the Moon Lake showed that the two pollutants were all found in Myriophyllum verticillatum, Elodea nuttallii, Ceratophyllum oryzetorum, and Potamageton crispus collected from the Moon Lake. For NP, M. verticillatum had the highest capacity of accumulation, followed by E. nuttallii, C. oryzetorum and P. crispus. However the distribution pattern of OP differed from that of NP, and the highest amount of accumulation was observed in E. nuttallii, followed by M. verticillatum, P. crispus, and C. oryzetorum. The temporal pattern of APs was also observed in submersed macrophytes from March to May, and the highest accumulation period was in May. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.