Elizabeth Taylor

Burying Indigeneity: The Spatial Construction of Reality and Aboriginal Australia

In this article we argue that spatial distance and historic socio-ethnic boundaries play a critical role in determining the relative priority given to groups that are marginally placed. These priorities are materialized through law. We utilize theories that understand ‘reality’ as something socially constructed: our impressions of the structure of everyday life are mediated in large part by our primary social group interactions. We profile the spatial distribution and relative segregation of Indigenous Australians, from urban to remote regional contexts. Our data highlights how even a predominantly urban Indigenous population remains out of the sight and mind of social and political actors due to its small numerical size and perceived social difference. We move to explain public policy formulation in terms of orientations that are influenced by the spatiality of social affiliations. We suggest that the spatially-bounded patterning of black and white lives supports the continued burial of Indigenous life. The socio-spatial construction of Indigenous life for white and other Australians has enabled both aggressive and neglectful policy instruments in which Aboriginal life appears as something that is politically, legally and spatially marginal.

Do House Values Influence Resistance to Development?—A Spatial Analysis of Planning Objection and Appeals in Melbourne

Critical perspectives, largely in American literature, point to the historical influence of affluent homeowners on planning and argue that because of its role in housing markets, planning can reflect and reinforce patterns of socio-economic difference. Although institutional contexts vary, the article hypothesises that similar patterns may be evident in Victoria, where an important facet of the planning system is that third-party objection and appeal rights (TPOAR) in planning are comparatively strong. The author uses planning application and tribunal data for local governments to model spatial and temporal variations in rates of planning objection and appeal, in relation to measures of housing prices and socio-economic advantage. Objection and appeal is found to be more likely in relation to higher density housing, but much more likely again where existing housing values are higher. There is evidence that communities with greater economic interests in, and resources to engage with, the planning system make disproportionate use of opposition channels.

Urban Land Supply, Governance and the Pricing of Land

This article examines the relationships between regulatory urban policy and land prices concentrating on the claimed impacts of urban growth boundaries (UGBs) using Melbourne, Australia, as a case study. Claims about these relationships have influenced the development of urban strategic policy internationally. The article finds no clear evidence that the introduction of a legislated UGB in Melbourne in 2003 has led to price increases of urban or rural land on the metropolitan fringe and evaluates factors which complicate claims about UGB policy influences on land price.

“Not a Lot of People Read the Stuff”: Australian Urban Research in Planning Practice

At the 2013 State of Australian Cities (SOAC) Conference, a dedicated plenary session examined the blunt prospect of “Who cares about Australian Urban Research?” One group apparently not reading, or not making extensive use of, urban research is Australian urban planners. Drawing on interviews and focus groups undertaken for a recent research project, in this paper we examine the nature of the research-practice Relationship in an Australian urban planning context. We explore the limited extent to which practitioners engage with research outputs; and the entrenched barriers to research to practice information exchange. While our interviews indicate planners are concerned about the lack of a solid research base with which to underpin many policies, assumptions and decisions; we find that time-poor professionals largely rely on popular media, industry publications and practice networks to inform decision making. Further, the political and reactive environment of planning practice means the role for evidence in consensus-driven decision-making is fraught and far from clearly defined. Ultimately the project highlights the extent to which the resources required to digest research, interpret its local significance, and apply it to practice can be underestimated.

Do objections count? Estimating the influence of residents on housing development assessment in Melbourne

Abstract This paper explores relationships between community opposition, planning assessments and local political processes. While resident opposition to development proposals is thought to delay housing supply, the nature, extent and pathways of influence have not been quantitatively established. In Victoria the number of third party objections has no direct legal weight, but in practice, development applications involve multiple decision makers. Community expectations that objection numbers “count” may reflect suspicion that refusals are more likely from elected local decision makers. This paper tests for relationships between procedural and political pathways in planning. It uses descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression models based on one year (15 676) of Melbourne residential development assessments. It is found that objection numbers increase significantly with local socio-economic status and that, as applications receive more objections, elected representatives more often intervene. Assessments by elected councilors are significantly more likely to be refused, and have relative odds more than seven times higher of resulting in appeal. The paper argues that local contestation of housing, particularly from better-resourced groups, is highly adaptable to reforms seeking to overcome or rationalise it. Reducing or shifting opportunities for third party opposition may less reduce planning uncertainty, than increase its variation, complexity, and spatial concentration.

Fast food planning conflicts in Victoria 1969–2012: is every unhappy family restaurant unhappy in its own way?

In 2012, a planning application for a McDonalds ‘convenience restaurant’ in Tecoma, Melbournes Dandenong Ranges region, was approved at Victorias planning tribunal. Although generating a high-profile backlash, the Tecoma McDonalds was far from being Australias, Victorias, or even the immediate regions first to encounter a campaign of place-protective opposition. The Tolstoy truism holds that ‘every happy family is alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Franchised ‘family restaurants’ are premised on and perhaps defined by being recognisable alike. Yet as Massey argues, seemingly aspatial phenomena are always mediated by local context. This paper argues that local statutory planning has been central to the expansion of fast food chains, with globalisation tending to be accompanied by increasingly defensive legal boundaries. To demonstrate this, the paper explores a group of fast food outlets that experienced some form of local ‘unhappiness’ – 37 planning appeals involving opposition to fast food outlets in Victoria over 1969–2012. The paper explores how planning provisions applicable to fast food developments have shifted and how these shifts, in turn, have determined the permissible boundaries of planning decisions around them. Hall once reported finding himself describing the containment of urban England in ‘terminology appropriate to boxing or all-in wrestling’ (90). Here I borrow Halls boxing analogy by suggesting six boxing-inspired rules, codified over time, applicable to the Tecoma McDonalds. These statutory details resemble the legal and physical boundaries within which, in boxing, blows are landed – but always by the book.

Urban Growth Boundaries and their Impact on Land Prices

Undeveloped land transactions at the urban fringe of the Melbourne metropolitan area in Australia are recorded in a dataset that enables exploration of the impact of its urban growth boundary (UGB) on residential land prices. Estimation can take account of a wide range of factors, while controlling for policy anticipation effects and other potential influences on land prices. Modelling estimates indicate that land prices rose substantially inside the UGB after its enactment in 2003, but did not rise much outside of it. These results suggest that the urban growth boundary has had a significant upward effect on the trajectory of the urban regions house prices.

Making the Blood Broil: Conflicts Over Imagined Rurality in Peri-Urban Australia

A key challenge for planning the peri-urban internationally derives from the ability of land-use change to outstrip the development of new concepts and understandings. There are few places where this is more apparent than in the peri-urban areas of Melbourne, Australia, where applications to develop technologically sophisticated broiler or poultry farms are fiercely opposed by local residents and amenity migrants with attendant imaginaries of local community and extensive rural agricultural production. This paper presents the results of an analysis of development application appeals to show how the poultry industry negotiates with the planning system and manages community expectations in a broad swath of Melbournes exurbia. In particular, we question the relevance of the rural–urban duality for planning this space and argue the need for new concepts to lessen the conflict in these hybridized spaces of third nature.

Australian early career planning researchers and the barriers to research–practice exchange

ABSTRACT Given the scale and complexity of challenges facing urban environments, urban research has a potentially significant role to play in informing policy responses and decision-making processes in practice. Yet the nexus between urban research and planning practice in Australia could be characterised as weak at best. In this paper we focus on the role of researchers in the research–practice nexus, and in particular on Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and PhD candidates. We examine the institutional contexts and differing career trajectories of Australian ECRs and the relationship to professional practice, drawing on interviews, secondary data sources and our own ‘early career’ experiences. We argue that ERCs are rarely effectively prepared to engage in the contemporary urban policy realm; and that the discipline needs to explore opportunities for capacity building for future researchers and research leaders.

Environmental Justice in Australia: Measuring the Relationship Between Industrial Odour Exposure and Community Disadvantage

Community impact and environmental justice issues are examined across metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, using 2008–2011 self-reported odour complaint data as a direct measure of odour pollution exposure. Differences in pollution exposure and indicators of socio-economic disadvantage were compared across areas using spatial clustering and statistical analyses. Results found that odour affected areas have greater socio-economic disadvantage supporting the existence of environmental justice issues in metropolitan Melbourne. Commonly used buffers of 1 km surrounding polluting facilities under-represent odour affected areas. Findings have implications for urban planning and policy in establishing separation distances between residential and industrial zones in new and existing developments where guidelines are lacking.