Kath Phelan

‘A fantasy to get employment around the area’: long commutes and resident health in an outer urban master-planned estate

Abstract The Selandra Rise master-planned estate (MPE) in Melbourne’s south-east growth corridor was designed to create a “healthy and engaged community” through the provision of parks, physical activity opportunities and community facilities. A 5 year longitudinal study researched the impact on residents. Over one third of residents spent 2 to 3 h per day commuting and high levels of dissatisfaction with commutes were found. Longer commute times were associated with poor physical activity and weight outcomes. The paper concludes that provisions for health and wellbeing within an MPE are insufficient when opportunities for local employment are limited and broader locational, connectivity and transport disadvantages are not addressed.

Planning for community: understanding diversity in resident experiences and expectations of social connections in a new urban fringe housing estate, Australia

ABSTRACT Master-planned estates are a major source of new housing for growing cities. Much research finds these residential developments lack genuine social connections between residents despite marketing of ‘close-knit’ community. Selandra Rise is a new residential development on the urban fringe of Melbourne, Australia. The estate was planned with a focus on community infrastructure and resident well-being. The resident population was younger and more culturally diverse than most other master-planned community case studies. A longitudinal research design was used to explore resident understanding, experiences and needs relating to place-based community. Interviews were conducted with residents before moving to the estate and 9–18 months after moving. Some residents considered community as an amenity provided by the master-planned environment that did not require their social participation. Others aspired to make social connections with neighbours but had varying levels of success. Past experiences which contributed to aspirations for connecting with local community, and the ways that these aims were realised or hindered, are discussed. Understanding diverse resident expectations of community and insights from their lived experience are used to make recommendations for planning new neighbourhoods and designing community development programmes.

Land-Use Planning’s Role in Urban Forest Strategies: Recent Local Government Approaches in Australia

ABSTRACT Many urban development processes, supported by land-use planning, negatively impact urban trees. Urban forest strategies are one approach local governments take to protect and increase urban trees. We evaluate connections between urban forest strategies and land-use planning to achieve tree cover on private property, through a review of 18 Australian local government strategies. We highlight the importance of state-level policies for local land-use planning, and conclude that if state-level land-use planning is to aid the protection and enhancement of urban trees, more active engagement with and explicit links to urban forest strategies at both local and state levels is needed.

Collaboration with Caveats: Research–Practice Exchange in Planning

Abstract Researcher and practitioner collaboration in urban planning is both critical to good outcomes and problematic to achieve in reality. Collaboration has the potential for new partnerships, better research problem definition, improved research design and greater impact on practice and policy. However, politics, stakeholder agendas and funding bodies bring pressures and constraints, for which research professionals require a broader set of skills to manage. We examine researcher–practitioner collaboration as part of an action research project on urban greening in Australia. Focusing on a stakeholder engagement workshop, we examine the mechanisms used to overcome barriers to research-practice exchange. We find overt consideration of common barriers to access and use of research when planning collaboration exercises can help facilitate more productive engagement, creating spaces for mutual understanding and generating shared objectives. However, we also find that efforts at collaboration challenge traditional research practices, involve tensions and caveats, and require a different mode of researcher engagement.

The Role of Peri-Urban Land Use Planning in Resilient Urban Agriculture: A Case Study of Melbourne, Australia

Peri-urban agricultural production remains important globally and its value will increase as the impacts of climate change, energy costs, rising world population and changing patterns of food consumption are felt. Maintaining the natural resource base for food production around cities will become an increasingly important part of city planning. Yet peri-urban areas continue to undergo radical change over much of the world, displacing traditional agriculture and reducing the capacity of cities to adapt to non-linear change. Urban resilience is best maintained through a regional approach which connects urban and peri-urban systems. Such system relationships are examined in a case study focused on the city of Melbourne in South-East Australia. Peri-urban Melbourne produces a significant proportion of the fruit and vegetables grown in the state of Victoria, but agricultural production on the city’s outer fringe is under pressure from rapid urban development. This case study examines three scenarios which relate rural and urban land supply and demand, and explore land use planning techniques for limiting rural land development and transferring demand for rural land to regional settlements. It argues that stronger statutory planning measures are required to stem the loss of peri-urban agricultural land and that these will need to be accompanied in future by a range of other strategies to strengthen the resilience of city food systems.