Laura Crommelin

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.

As compact city planning rolls on, a look back: lessons from Sydney and Perth

ABSTRACT This paper categorises and compares the policy frameworks that have encouraged higher density urban renewal in Sydney and Perth since the mid-2000s, which reflect the ‘compact city’ model that has become international urban planning orthodoxy. The policies can be grouped into four broad categories: (i) metropolitan strategies; (ii) transport and infrastructure plans; (iii) legislation creating development corporations; and (iv) planning system reforms. By comparing these policies, the paper identifies some key similarities and differences in how the compact city model has been adopted in Sydney and Perth. The most significant similarities are the changing power relationships reshaping urban planning and governance, and the ongoing challenges of integrating land-use and transport planning. The paper concludes with some brief commentary on the challenge these two issues pose for the next decade of compact planning, particularly for strategic planning bodies like the Greater Sydney Commission and the Western Australian Planning Commission.

Is Airbnb a sharing economy superstar? Evidence from five global cities

Abstract The “sharing economy” concept has been embraced by governments, entrepreneurs and commentators as delivering new forms of opportunity for local and national economies. Accommodation-sharing platform Airbnb is often considered a sharing economy exemplar, and has promoted itself as helping middle-class residents to gain and retain a foothold in expensive housing markets. This narrative is particularly salient in “global cities”, where poor housing affordability and high tourist demand inevitably coexist. However, critics claim many Airbnb listings are actually permanent short-term rentals. Thus, instead of enabling new efficiencies in the use of housing assets and providing financial security for existing residents, Airbnb may be a variation on an old theme: removing properties from the market for long-term rental or purchase. This paper has three aims: it critically interrogates the sharing economy concept in relation to Airbnb; it reviews the regulatory responses to Airbnb in five global cities; and it examines Airbnb listing data in each city. Ultimately, the paper argues that while some Airbnb listings do fit the sharing economy narrative, others are part of the traditional economy of short term letting. Policy makers need to recognise the different impacts of these uses in their responses to Airbnb and the sharing economy.

Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective

regenerated the inner city and breathed new life into the political left. Tenant history is palpable in the political culture of community and housing rights that makes New York distinct and supports the survival of its large public housing stock. Gold’s account of the lasting achievements of New York tenants is highly topical not only in its implications for a more socially just private rented sector, but in what it says about the losses and gains of homeownership as the dominant model of citizenship. The notion of neighbourhood diversity that motivates so much of contemporary housing and planning policy was forged by a movement that celebrated the inner city at a time when everyone else was flocking to the supposed ideal life in the suburbs. Tenant activism posited a model of residential citizenship that was successful in championing the rights of renters to community life and in originating a captivating image of urban neighbourliness that was distinctive in its multi-racial appeal and in its resistance to the forces of property speculation. This claim to community was rooted in feminist thought and shaped by anti-racist struggle, and Gold’s analysis situates the diverse urban neighbourhood, so beloved of urban designers and politicians, as the outcome of tenant collective action. She recovers a radical history of neighbourhood selfmanagement and community control that provides a critical reflection on the discourses of localism in planning and urban regeneration, and illuminates the conflicts of presentday gentrification. In situating the movement within its political traditions and connections, Gold reminds us that affordable and secure housing is the basis of just social policy and its denial is a recipe for unending conflict and discord. Segregation on income, class and ethnicity is tolerated, and actually celebrated, once again in urban policy. The displacement of urban populations through gentrification is positively encouraged as a strategy of regeneration. Rationalities of government give unfettered rein to the uneven development of market forces and the provision of public and affordable housing is almost everywhere reduced and denigrated. While the achievements of the New York tenants’ movement represent a rare exemption from this trend, they also show that campaigns for housing justice can survive political repression and ideological downturns; that they continue generation after generation, and will emerge again, perhaps more vividly and effectively. Gold’s account shows that the struggle for decent housing is integral to our understandings of citizenship and community; and it is a struggle that will not go away.