Jago Robert Dodson

Shocking the Suburbs: Urban Location, Homeownership and Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City

Energy security is receiving increasing attention from governments and scholars at the global and national scale. Petroleum security and rising fuel prices are a challenge for cities whose housing systems are highly dependent on automobile transport. This study assesses transport and socio-tenurial patterns within Australian cities to identify how the combined present and future effects of rising fuel costs, mortgage interest rates and general inflation will be spatially distributed. Using an ‘oil vulnerability’ assessment methodology based on Australian Census data, the study reveals broad-scale mortgage and oil vulnerability across the outer suburbs of Australian cities. The paper concludes with some observations about spatially equitable policy responses to ameliorate the housing and urban impacts of rising petroleum costs.

The ‘Infrastructure Turn’ in Australian Metropolitan Spatial Planning

This paper argues that a recent resurgence in Australian spatial planning has been superseded by a resort to infrastructure to address urban problems. The paper uses case studies of the Melbourne and South East Queensland (Brisbane) metropolitan regions to chart the renewal of new spatial planning, after a period of neglect. This paper then shows this spatial planning renewal has given way to a new emphasis on urban infrastructure planning as the primary mode of intervention in these cities. The infrastructure turn raises important questions about the spatial planning and infrastructure of cities within a new era of global strategic challenges.

Rolling the State: Government, neoliberalism and housing assistance in four advanced economies

The neoliberal restructuring of government policies in developed nations since the 1970s has stimulated many observers to observe the “roll back” of the state from social assistance, including housing. Some suggest that the “roll out” of new forms of state activity are occurring. This paper argues that perceptions of “roll back” and “roll out” arise from a particular conception of the capacity of the state that focuses on apparent state action over discursive production. A modified version of governmentality theory is deployed to demonstrate that despite perceptions of a weakening state housing assistance presence in Australia, the UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand, the conceptive and discursive role of the state has remained strong. The paper concludes by arguing that greater appreciation of the persistent pragmatic capacity of the state to define the objects, subjects and relationships of housing policy fruitfully illuminates the condition of the state under neoliberalism.

Investigating the social dimensions of transport disadvantage: I. Towards new concepts and methods

This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researchers have sought to address the connection between social disadvantage and access to transport. The article critically assesses the relative merits of various spatial analytical methodologies in illuminating social–transport links. The study finds that there is a need for greater sophistication in the use of analytical methods in transport research as well as an imperative for greater sensitivity to social differentiation within urban areas and relative to infrastructure and services. The article concludes by developing a method for combining spatial social and transport service data that is then deployed in the empirical case study reported in the second paper.

Travel Self-Containment in Master Planned Estates: Analysis of Recent Australian Trends

Low density suburban development and excessive use of automobiles are associated with serious urban and environmental problems. Master planned development suggests itself as a possible palliative for these ills. This study examines the patterns and dynamics of movement in a selection of master planned estates in Australia with the aim of developing new approaches for assessing the containment of travel within planned development. A geographical information systems methodology is used to determine regional journey-to-work patterns and travel containment rates. Factors that influence self-containment patterns are estimated with a regression model. The findings of the pilot study demonstrate that the proposed model is a useful starting point for a systematic and detailed analysis of self-containment in master planned estates.

Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage II: From Concepts to Methods through an Empirical Case Study

This article is the second of two papers that review the field of spatially sensitive social scientific research into the links between social status and transport disadvantage. The first paper undertook a comprehensive review of the social scientific and transport planning literature to mark the level of development in the field and identify conceptual and methodological issues and constraints in this field of inquiry. The present article supports the advancement of socially and geographically sensitive transport research by opportunities for the development of more sophisticated spatial analytical methodologies. The approach we present is able to account for factors not previously addressed in either social or transport planning research, in particular the temporal dimensions of transport service accessibility. The article articulates the methodology through an empirical case study of socio-spatial transport disadvantage within the Gold Coast City. The article demonstrates that there are important theoretical and practical lessons to be gained for researchers and policy makers in addressing the social dimensions of transport and infrastructure provision. Further, the article argues that an attentiveness to new ways of combining and representing social and transport data-sets can promote policy relevant empirical social inquiry. The article also contributes in a productive way to the empirical knowledge of Australias sixth-largest metropolitan area, which is often overlooked by urban scholars.

Backtracking Auckland?: Technical and Communicative Reason in Metropolitan Transport Planning

Abstract Communicative planning has helped to illuminate the role of technical reason in planning processes. Transport planning has had little exposure to the communicative perspective. This paper examines transport planning in Auckland, New Zealand, from a communicative planning perspective. The paper argues that the historical dominance of technical reason has biased strategic transport policy towards supporting automobiles over more sustainable modes. The paper demonstrates the dominance of technical rationality in transport strategy-making processes and institutions in contrast to expressed public preferences. The paper concludes by arguing that the achievement of greater sustainability in Aucklands transport, and elsewhere, depends on a greater communicative emphasis in regional planning and transport strategy making.

Investigating private motorised travel and vehicle fleet efficiency: using new data and methods to reveal socio-spatial patterns in Brisbane, Australia

Australian cities have seen continued growth in car travel that has imposed increasing vehicle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper investigates the spatial patterns of vehicle energy consumption on urban areas through an analysis of vehicle travel and efficiency of the vehicle fleet in Brisbane. This is achieved through by combining motor vehicle registration records and Australian government’s ‘Green Vehicle’ fuel efficiency data. Through a spatial analysis of the vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) derived from journey to work (JTW) data and fuel energy consumption associated with the private-owned vehicles decomposed to local areas, the results show that vehicle energy use per VKT tends to be greater with increasing distance from the city centre (e.g. CBD). This analysis demonstrates that not only VKT levels but also the lower frequency of highly efficient vehicles in the outer suburbs aggravates vehicle energy consumption in those locations. The paper then compares vehicle energy intensity results for Brisbane against spatial patterns of suburban socio-economic disadvantage. The paper demonstrates that vehicle fleet technology may compound other forms of socio-economic disadvantage and vulnerability.

Suburbia under an Energy Transition: A Socio-technical Perspective

This paper assesses the effects on suburbia of an energy transition to less carbon- or petroleum-intensive energy urban forms using a socio-technical theoretical perspective. The paper argues that while suburbia is the predominant form of urbanisation in advanced nations, especially North America and Australia, its socio-technical composition is insufficiently understood by urban scholars. Using a socio-technical theoretical perspective, the paper argues that suburbia should be seen a complex ‘assemblage’ that is configured through socio-material relations of land use, transport technology, energy and money credit. This system is also differentiated by social status and infrastructure access deficits. The paper argues that suburbia faces a number of socio-technical challenges from an energy transition principally due to heavy mobility reliance on motor vehicles. The paper sets out some potential trajectories of transformation for suburbia under an energy transition.

The economic 'revolution' in Melbourne's west

Historically, Melbournes western suburbs were known as industrial areas suffering from relative disadvantage when compared to the rest of the metropolitan area. But economic commentators have claimed that a resurgence has occurred in the west, in terms of industrial investment and employment generation, since the mid‐1990s, due to increasingly globalised economic connections which have reversed the regions previous disadvantages. This article engages with these ‘western resurgence’ claims in three ways. First, it examines the recent economic history of the western region, relative to global economic processes. Second the article examines the empirical basis for the reported recent economic resurgence in the west. Finally, the article concludes with some observations concerning regional economic development under contemporary global processes.