Hazel Easthope

Governing the Compact City: The Challenges of Apartment Living in Sydney, Australia

This paper addresses the challenges facing the strata sector in Sydney in the context of current Australian metropolitan planning strategies promoting increased urban consolidation. It argues that the current focus on higher density development is vulnerable to challenges of regulation, representation and termination in strata developments. Furthermore, the increasing size and complexity of strata schemes as well as the existence of ageing strata stock are placing pressure on the strata title system in NSW and these problems are likely to escalate as an increasing proportion of the population move into strata. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend the issues facing strata developments if they are to be effectively tackled. The concept of ‘governance’ provides one mechanism for improving this understanding.

Making a Rental Property Home

English-language literature on the relationship between home and dwelling has largely focused on the benefits of homeownership and (to a lesser extent) social rental in facilitating ontological security. Less consideration has been given to the experiences of private tenants. This paper draws on findings of a study on security of occupancy to discuss the ability of private renters to exercise control over their dwellings in Australia. The paper discusses the limitations of Australian legislation, within its policy, market and cultural context, in enabling private tenants to exercise control over their dwellings, and compares the Australian situation with Germany to demonstrate that alternative approaches that afford more control to private tenants are possible in rental systems dominated by private rental. The paper concludes with a call for a wider debate about the importance of home and the impact of social norms regarding the purpose of different types of tenure on housing policy and thus on the rights and well-being of tenants.

Children in Apartments: Implications for the Compact City

Apartments are often portrayed as the domain of young singles, couples and ‘empty nesters’. This article focuses on research undertaken in Sydney (Australia) where a disparity exists between identified planning assumptions regarding apartment residents and the actual apartment population. This article presents an innovative analysis of Australian Census data that identifies lower income households with children as a significant sub-sector of the resident apartment population, geographically concentrated in the lower value middle-ring suburbs of Sydney. An examination of one middle-ring urban renewal site (the Sydney Olympic Park site) provides evidence to suggest that new residential developments adjacent to areas dominated by an apartment market with a significant proportion of lower income families with children are themselves likely to see an influx of these households. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for planners and developers, as well as for service provision at a local council level.

How Property Title Impacts Urban Consolidation: A Life Cycle Examination of Multi-title Developments

Continuing urbanisation is triggering an increase in multi-titled housing internationally. This trend has given rise to a substantial research interest in the social consequences of higher density living. Fewer enquiries have been directed to examining how property title subdivisions generate social issues in multi-titled housing. This is a significant gap in the literature, as the tensions inherent in multi-title developments have significant implications for individuals, developments and entire metropolitan areas. This article employs a life cycle framework to examine the profound operational and governance challenges that are associated with the fusion of private lot ownership with common property ownership. The article calls for a more explicit recognition of these challenges by academics, policymakers, practitioners and the broader community.

Urban renewal and strata scheme termination: balancing communal management and individual property rights

A debate is taking place in Australia regarding potential changes to the legislation governing what proportion of owners must agree before apartment buildings can be redeveloped and whether a collective sale model should be adopted in order to facilitate urban renewal. To date, urban renewal has proven challenging because of difficulties of coordinating renewal within a planning system that relies on the market to deliver housing. This challenge is amplified by the governance framework created to promote multiunit housing—strata title—and associated tensions between communal management and individual property rights. This paper makes particular reference to the implications of this debate in the greater Sydney metropolitan area, which raises universal issues regarding tensions between the government and the market and between individual rights and the collective good. This paper argues that there is a case for changing the legislation, with government involvement required to respond to the significant social issues raised, to guarantee the needs of existing owners and tenants are met, and to ensure that high-quality, economically viable, buildings result.

‘It depends what you mean by the term rights’: strata termination and housing rights

Abstract Strata title was introduced in Australia over 50 years ago and offered a legal mechanism for space to be vertically subdivided and traded. Importantly, it allowed individualised property rights to be applied to multi-unit housing. In New South Wales, recent changes to the Strata Scheme Development Act allow termination of strata schemes with less than unanimous support of owners. A central feature of the discussion surrounding the implementation of these changes was to question the rights associated with ownership of strata. This paper presents findings from key-informant interviews undertaken in the lead up to the reforms to the NSW legislation governing strata termination. Analysis of these interviews demonstrates the complex ways in which property rights are understood in relation to strata termination within the broader context of housing. This paper argues that successful implementation of the new legislation impacting upon property rights in strata will require concerted engagement with wider social concepts and understanding of housing within the Australian community.

Feeling at Home in a Multigenerational Household: The Importance of Control

Abstract The importance of property ownership for feelings of control and ontological security has received significant academic attention. Yet tenure may not be the only indicator of control over one’s dwelling. This paper considers the importance of control within the household in relation to household members’ feelings of home and highlights the importance of one’s relationship with other household members and their relative control over decision-making and the use of space. It draws upon research on multigenerational households in Australian cities, including a survey (n = 392), diaries (n = 21) and interviews (n = 21). Individuals’ feelings of home were influenced by their sense of control over their dwellings, which varied for different household members. This has significant implications for research on the meaning of home, and suggests that important synergies are possible between researchers concerned with the form and nature of social interactions within the family and housing researchers concerned with the meaning of home.

The decline of 'advantageous disadvantage' in gateway suburbs in Australia: the challenge of private housing market settlement for newly-arrived migrants

The spatial concentration of recently arrived immigrants in gateway cities and suburbs is usually seen as undesirable by urban academics and policy makers. This paper presents a counter-argument that the concentration of disadvantaged new immigrants in the form of humanitarian refugees and their families can, and does, result in positive outcomes for those groups. In part, our argument is based on making a distinction between people-based disadvantage and place-based disadvantage. The paper examines the changing nature of place-based ‘advantage’ for immigrants in Australian gateway cities through a focus on two metropolitan locations, Auburn (Sydney) and Springvale (Melbourne), known as popular destination suburbs for recent immigrants. While these two cases validate the benefits of such gateway suburbs, they also demonstrate that the capacity of recent migrants to emulate concentrated settlement patterns is now significantly undermined by changes in the labour market and affordability problems in the housing market. The paper concludes with a discussion on the possible future of gateway suburbs and the implications of this shift for the wellbeing of particular groups of disadvantaged residents.

Changing perceptions of family: A study of multigenerational households in Australia:

Many people around the world live in households with multiple generations of related adults (multigenerational households). While more prominent in certain cultures, multigenerational living is also an important part of the lives of millions in societies where this arrangement has not been seen as ‘the norm’. Australia is one such case, where one in five people live in a multigenerational household. This article presents findings of a research project on multigenerational households in Australia, including a survey of 392 people, 21 diaries and 21 follow-up interviews to explore how multigenerational household members understand their own experiences of living together. It focuses particularly on whether they feel multigenerational living is a socially accepted living arrangement. The article concludes with a discussion about how these experiences and understandings of multigenerational family members may reflect changing social norms regarding the form and role of families in Australian society.

Managing the transition to a more compact city in Australia

ABSTRACT This paper explores the transition towards the compact city model in Australia, which has become the orthodoxy of metropolitan planning in the last two decades. This transition is aligned with neoliberal policies through which private investment and the marketplace have become dominant in driving urban growth and change. However, an intensive review of the experience of Sydney and Perth shows that a metanarrative of transition from a social-democratic to a neoliberal form in metropolitan planning is an oversimplification, and blurs the redeployment of state powers, processes and institutions to address new challenges. The paper explores two related points. First, it demonstrates how a methodical examination of the eclectic mixture of policies designed to drive the compact city transition can enable the identification and analysis of shared policy trends across the two cities. These trends relate to metropolitan strategies, transport planning, infrastructure funding, centralization and local input. Second, it demonstrates how such a review can also provide broader insights into the contours of the political economy of the compact city, and the potential significance for its citizenry. Key insights relate to who has a say in development control, growing executive power, increased government engagement with lobby groups and growing inequality.