Kathleen J. Mee

“I Ain't Been to Heaven Yet? Living Here, This is Heaven to Me”: Public Housing and the Making of Home in Inner Newcastle

Home in Australia is strongly associated with the tenure of home ownership and living in a detached house. This paper explores the ways in which public housing functions as home for a group of public housing tenants from inner Newcastle, Australia. Most public housing in inner Newcastle is medium density and consists of apartments and terraces. The experiences of home for these tenants are mediated by a number of factors, including their age and family circumstances; the type of dwelling in which they reside; their interactions with and perceptions of neighbours; and the neighbourhood in which they live. For some tenants living in public housing is “heaven”, and for most the experience is a positive one. However, the experience of these tenants also highlights that home can be simultaneously experienced as positive and negative, for example as secure and threatening.

Home and Homemaking in Contemporary Australia

This collection of papers addresses a theme familiar to readers of this journal: that houses are not just physical structures, but also homes: sites of emotional, cultural and social significance. Home, in contrast to a house, is saturated with the meanings, memories, emotions, experiences and relationships of everyday life (see Blunt & Dowling 2006). It is ambiguous and multi-faceted. For many people, home is a place of belonging, intimacy, security, relationship and selfhood. Through their investments in their home people develop their sense of self and their identity. Others experience alienation, rejection, hostility, danger and fear ‘‘at home’’. Houses are the material structures that provide the scaffolding for emotional investments, social relations and meanings of everyday life. These papers move these familiar understandings of house and home in a number of new directions. They place emphasis on home as an ongoing process, on the multiple social relations of home, on the changing nature of home in contemporary Australia and on the importance of processes operating at a variety of scales to the experience of home in a particular dwelling. In this editorial introduction, we elaborate each of these themes in more detail and introduce the papers. All authors bring to their papers the perspective that a house is not automatically a home, but is made so through homemaking practices. Home is as much a process as it is a thing. Houses and the objects within them are arranged and rearranged to suit the lifestyles of their inhabitants and make them feel more comfortable and ‘‘at home’’. Relations between family members, and practices such as cooking, cleaning, decorating and watching television create home. Sometimes these practices establish feelings of security and comfort, sometimes alienation. Homemaking practices, such as welcoming visitors, also entail the production and maintenance of symbolic and

Prosperity and the Suburban Dream: Quality of life and affordability in western Sydney

Over the past 10 years Sydney has experienced a remarkable wave of economic prosperity and growth, partly due to its developing role as a regionally significant global city. Through this period, maintaining the quality of life in the city has been regarded as particularly important. Yet traditional accounts of the global city have stressed quality-of-life features of the inner city. In this paper I examine the implications of the prosperity of global Sydney for the quality of life of western Sydney, paying particular attention to environmental amenity and the affordability of housing. The paper argues, first, that growth in the Sydney region has depended upon continued growth in western Sydney. It highlights key instances in which residents have resisted developments associated with this growth and regarded as major threats to the environmental amenity of the region. Second, the paper argues that the prosperity of Sydney, combined with changes to government policy, have impacted upon the supply of affordable rental housing in western Sydney. This is particularly significant in the case of public housing. Managing growth in the city will require attention to managing quality-of-life issues in the metropolis as a whole.

‘Any place to raise children is a good place’: children, housing and neighbourhoods in inner Newcastle, Australia

Neighbourhoods are important spaces of interaction for children. This paper explores the perceptions of residents from seven suburbs in the inner area of Newcastle, Australia concerning what makes a good neighbourhood for children. Key factors identified by residents include the types of dwellings found in the neighbourhood (with detached houses being seen as preferable for children) and the quality of neighbourhood resources. Another important feature was social interactions within the neighbourhood, including interactions between children and adults and interactions between groups of children. The paper examines how different features of neighbourhoods interact to create adult perceptions about whether a neighbourhood is appropriate for children. The paper also points to the ways that children are seen to actively produce the neighbourhood in which they live.

Renting Over Troubled Waters: An Urban Political Ecology of Rental Housing

Urban political ecology emphasises the hybrid nature of cities and the flows of people and materials that constitute the built environment. Climate change introduces a profound dimension of uncertainty in the socio-material relations of urban life, raising questions for urban residents of how to act, what sort of actions might make a ‘difference’ and ‘matter’. For renters this uncertainty is amplified by limited access to ‘resources for adaption’ such as gardens, water efficiency and alternative energy, and exacerbated by poor communication and unresponsiveness from landlords. The built environment, and housing in particular, is recognized as both a significant site of greenhouse gas emissions and a site where adaptation to climate change will need to occur. However, the capacity of urban residents to make changes to their housing is uneven. This paper draws on a case study of rental property managers and tenants in Newcastle, NSW to explore social and cultural processes that are both shaped by and shape rental housing provision. In this paper we explore the urban political ecologies of rental housing through the lens of water, revealing a suite of practices, materials and discourses that assemble to make resources for adaptation, and simultaneously render water as useful, troubled and troublesome. The socionatural relations of tenure are shaped by regulatory practices including leases, insurance and capital investment alongside human and non-human actors. In particular the paper draws attention to the different conditions of access to ‘resources for adaptation’ in the material relations of public and private rental housing provision.

Editorial: Culture matters

(2003). Editorial: Culture matters. Social & Cultural Geography: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 131-138.

Social mix and the problematisation of social housing

ABSTRACT Social housing in Australia is at a significant juncture. High levels of housing stress, increasing levels of socio-spatial polarisation and reduced government funding are posing complex policy challenges. Social mix policies are one response to these challenges, arising from the problematisation of social housing estates as socially excluded. This problematisation is examined through case studies of two Sydney social housing renewal projects: Telopea and Riverwood North. Drawing on interviews with government, private-sector and not-for-profit housing practitioners, the paper identifies two distinct discourses of social exclusion within this problematisation—culture of poverty discourse and equity discourse—that shape the implementation of social mix. These discourses reveal that implementing social mix is more complex than simply managing the cohabitation of residents in different tenures. Rather, the practice of social mix is embedded within discourses about the nature and causes of social exclusion. These discourses, in their turn, inform the multiple and sometimes conflicting aspirations pursued through social mix policies.

Welcome to Woodside: Inverbrackie Alternative Place of Detention and performances of belonging in Woodside, South Australia, and Australia

ABSTRACT Alternative Places of Detention (APODs) are a new way of detaining asylum seekers in Australia. The establishment of APODs creates a new formal structure of belonging in Australia which challenges everyday practices of belonging and senses of belonging at the local and national scale. This paper examines practices of belonging which emerged following the establishment of the Inverbrackie APOD in Woodside, South Australia. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, informed by the insights of theories of performativity, this research explores the competing stories of two broadly defined groups (opponents and supporters of Inverbrackie) engaged in a dialogue about asylum seekers, refugees, immigration detention and belonging. While opposition to the APOD was vocal and frequent in the lead-up to the establishment of the detention centre, once the Inverbrackie APOD became operational opponents’ voices began to fade. On the other hand, supporters continued to say things—and more importantly continued to do things—to nurture belonging for asylum seekers in Inverbrackie, Woodside, and Australia.

Reading Idiot Box : Film reviews intertwining the social and cultural

Geographical analyses of film have previously relied on reading films as texts. We extend these analyses by discussing the role of film reviewers as important cultural intermediaries who provide both an initial audience and a framing of the film for a more general audience. We argue that film reviews provide an important window into the intertwined nature of the cultural and the social and the possible obstacles faced by those producing cultural interventions into social problems. We make this argument through a case study of an Australian film called Idiot Box , a film that was designed to both entertain and highlight the problematic nature of cultural stereotypes. Reviewers, however, represented the film within a stereotypical working-class suburban dystopia that effectively emptied the film of its potential for social commentary.

Effective Practices for Interagency Data Sharing: Insights from Collaborative Research in a Regional Intervention

Data sharing adds considerable value to interagency programs that seek to tackle complex social problems. Yet data sharing is not easily enacted either technically or as a governance practice, especially considering the multiple forms of risk involved. This article presents insights from a successful data sharing project in a major region in east coast Australia involving a federally funded research partnership between two universities and a number of human services agencies. The Spatial Data Analysis Project sought to establish a community of practice for devising data sharing protocols and embedding data sharing into agency practices. Close dialogue between the project partners and mobilizing the authority of extant regulatory and legal frameworks proved effective in confronting risks and barriers. The article reveals effective practices for data sharing and derives lessons for other policy and governance contexts.