Peter Phibbs

When Tourists Move In: How Should Urban Planners Respond to Airbnb?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The online accommodation platform Airbnb has expanded globally, raising substantial planning and regulatory concerns. We ask whether Airbnb rentals generate significant neighborhood impacts like noise, congestion, and competition for parking; reduce the permanent rental housing supply and increase rental prices; or provide income opportunities that help “hosts” afford their own housing. We focus on Sydney, the largest region in Australia with 4.4 million people in 28 individual municipalities, which has experienced both rapidly rising housing costs and exponential growth in Airbnb listings since 2011. Airbnb’s growth has raised concerns serious enough to result in a formal Parliamentary Inquiry by the state of New South Wales. We analyze stakeholder submissions to this inquiry and review local planning regulations, Airbnb listings data, and housing market and census statistics. We find that online homesharing platforms for visitor accommodations blur traditional boundaries between residential and tourist areas so Airbnb listings may fall outside of existing land use regulations or evade detection until neighbors complain. Our findings are constrained by the difficulties of monitoring online operations and the rapid changes in the industry. Takeaway for practice: Planners and policymakers in cities with increasing numbers of Airbnb rentals need to review how well local planning controls manage the neighborhood nuisances, traffic, and parking problems that may be associated with them while acting to protect the permanent rental housing supply. Local planners need to ensure that zoning and residential development controls distinguish between different forms of short-term Airbnb accommodation listings and their potential impacts on neighborhoods and housing markets.

Housing supply and urban planning reform: the recent Australian experience, 2003--2012

This paper examines the emergence in Australia of housing supply as a key consideration in urban policy and reform. Australia has experienced declining housing affordability over the past decade, and sluggish housing construction since the GFC. As in many other nations, there has been a growing emphasis on land use planning as the major supply constraint, resonating with theoretical debates about the legitimacy of planning and development control in the context of an ongoing neo-liberal campaign for deregulation across the Australian public sector. Through a detailed analysis of Australian government and industry discourse between 2003 and 2012, this paper finds the arguments for planning as the chief cause of housing market problems weak and contradictory, and heavily reflect the views of industry lobby groups. While not absolving planning as a potential supply side constraint, ongoing change to the planning system itself creates uncertainty and distracts from the range of positive policy levers that might be used to promote housing supply and affordable homes for low- and moderate-income groups.

Are Governments Really Interested in Fixing the Housing Problem? Policy Capture and Busy Work in Australia

This article applies theories of policy capture to explain why Australian governments appear unable to ameliorate the nations chronic affordability pressures, drawing on discourses produced by government, industry lobby groups and the media, between 2003 and 2013. We focus on key episodes of policy activity surrounding a series of national-level inquiries on housing affordability, and affordable housing and planning reforms in the state of NSW over this time, to highlight the political strategies and tactics that have enabled key interests and the status quo, to prevail.

Beyond the Normative: Low Income Private Renters' Perspectives of Housing Affordability and Need for Housing Assistance

Housing need in Australia has typically been measured using a normative measure of the percentage of income spent on housing costs. However, this normative measure has tended not to correspond with the level of need as measured by the applications for housing assistance. This article reports on a research project commissioned by the Queensland Department of Housing in 2001, examining how low income private renters view their housing situation, with a particular focus on affordability. The Department wanted to better understand the reasons for why people apply for assistance, and how helpful normative affordability analyses are in describing and finding responses to housing need. The findings challenge the conventional wisdoms, dominant discourses and research standards which are commonly used and applied about affordability and housing need. In particular, the research raises serious questions about relying on quantitative analysis alone to appreciate the complexity of housing needs and the potential demand for assistance.

Integrating social impacts into cost-benefit analysis: a participative method: case study: the NSW area assistance scheme

The authors have developed a participative method for completing a cost-benefit matrix that integrates quantifiable and difficult-to-quantify costs and benefits. The matrix gives social issues equal standing with financial considerations. Working with a wide range of stakeholders, the matrix is completed by incorporating stakeholder views as well as research findings. The balance of costs and benefits is assessed discursively rather than being reduced by a formula to a ratio. Many benefits of this approach are identified and its application to an evaluation of a grants program is described.

Sustainable development control? Zoning and land use regulations for urban form, biodiversity conservation and green design in Australia

This paper examines how Australian land use plans incorporate provisions for sustainable urban form, design, biodiversity conservation, and climate change. Despite the long-standing sustainability objectives in state policy frameworks, a survey of 291 comprehensive plans finds implementation within local instruments is far from universal. Differences in patterns of policy adoption, as well as potential explanations for these differences, including geographical location, patterns of residential growth, the socio-economic composition of local communities, political forces, and policy evolution over time, are explored. Overall, areas experiencing more intensive growth tend to have newer plans, which in turn, contain more sustainability provisions, suggesting a responsive rather than repressive relationship between development pressures and regulatory development control.

Evidence-free zone? Examining claims about planning performance and reform in New South Wales

Many different claims about the planning system and its impact on development and the wider economy are made by different interest groups, particularly in the context of planning system reform. This paper uses discourse analysis to examine claims made by New South Wales (NSW) Treasury in response to proposals for a new planning system in NSW. The analysis shows that many claims are based on questionable evidence consistent with a wider ideological critique of the planning system, rather than examining which specific aspects of the planning system are generating particular problems, or whether previous reforms enacted over the past decade in NSW have proved effective. Instead, the tendency is to present generalised criticism of planning supported by tenuous links to development trends, undermining prospects for effective and positive planning system reform.

Employment Loss in a Steel City — did we get it Wrong?

Abstract In an earlier paper in this journal, Mangan and Guest (1983) used standard input-output analysis to predict job losses in Wollongong following the restructuring of the steel industry. Events have shown that these estimates were biased upwards. In this paper, given the benefit of hindsight, we re-examine our previous study and highlight one particular deficiency in input-output analysis which may have helped produce the inflated estimates. Our conclusions have significance for input-output modelling in general.

Population Targets and Urban Consolidation – The NSW Experience

For a period in the early 1980s informal dwelling targets were used in an endeavour to increase dwelling production in existing urban areas. These targets were for the number of dwellings to be produced annually, for each LG A in the Sydney Region. To some extent the targets complemented projections for development in release areas included in the Urban Development Program, which had become a key instrument of housing and urban development policy by the early 1980s

Employment Loss in a Steel City: The Final Part of the Trilogy

This paper reports the final chapter in a trilogy of papers on the employment loss in Wollongong, NSW. Itreports the development of a comprehensive demographic -economic model, called DECON. The model attempts to describe the interaction between economic and demographic variables in a regional economy.