Peter Walters

Co-operation or Co-presence? The Comforting Ideal of Community in a Master Planned Estate

Given the long and well-documented decline in the existence and relevance of place-dependent urban community, we explore the use of an idealised version of community of place in the marketing and implementation of a new suburban master planned estate (MPE) in Australia. In a social policy environment where strong communities of place are idealised, we find residents lack the resources or inclination to devote to the establishment of civic norms or durable social networks within the boundaries of the development and, for the most part, they are content to leave the establishment of the symbols of community to the property developer. It is the idea, rather than the reality, of community that is important, but in order to generate that idea, the developer needs to go to some lengths to create an ‘illusion’, or ‘sense’ of strong local community in the estate through marketing, the creation of nostalgic physical reminders, and selected community interventions such as cyclical events and celebrations. These all play an important role in the establishment of subjective ontological security for residents; to the benefit of both resident and developer.

Impacts of Urban Consolidation on Urban Liveability: Comparing an Inner and Outer Suburb in Brisbane, Australia

Abstract Urban consolidation involving increasing densification around existing nodes of urban infrastructure is a strategy pursued by all levels of government for addressing rapid population growth in urban regions. This has both positive and negative impacts on the everyday lives of residents (or their urban liveability as perceived by them), even though urban consolidation is commonly resisted by residents. This paper aims to better understand impacts of urban consolidation on liveability by comparing similarities and differences in impacts between two Brisbane suburbs: an outer fringe suburb (Wynnum) and an inner city suburb (West End). Wynnum residents generally expressed less resistance to urban consolidation, with some residents willing to trade additional densification for additional amenities. Two issues concerning residents in both suburbs were aesthetics of high-rise development and traffic congestion. Building heights more than a few storeys above surrounding buildings were commonly seen as detracting from urban liveability, though buildings up to 30 stories were accepted by some if close to the Commercial Business District. Traffic congestion was seen as a problem in both suburbs reflecting widespread car dependency. Other impacts differed between suburbs, reflecting their different values and ways of living. For example, most West End residents were concerned about losing social diversity with declining housing affordability while many Wynnum residents were concerned about gaining more public or social housing and disadvantaged residents. The impacts of urban consolidation on liveability differ between suburbs, and local neighbourhood plans should be sensitive to local notions of urban liveability because residents often stay after urban consolidation, even if they perceive negative impacts on their liveability. These interviews reinforce liveability as primary focus for urban planning, and thus urban consolidation at the expense of liveability is a poor outcome for both local residents and urban planning.

The Politics of Housing Consumption: Renters as Flawed Consumers on a Master Planned Estate

Master planned estates offer package dreams of homeownership to those wanting to live among others who share their lifestyle aspirations. Yet we show in this paper how divisions can arise between housing tenure types, with owner-occupiers constructing private rental tenants as a problem. Extending Bauman’s concept of the flawed consumer using Rose’s writings on ethopolitics, we show how renters are viewed as failing in three domains of social life: aesthetics, ethics and community by undermining the aesthetic value of the neighbourhood and by failing to demonstrate an ethic of care for themselves and others. As a result, the homeowners in this study try to avoid living among rental properties and are disappointed to find that, contrary to expectations, moving to a master planned estate does not guarantee this.

The Governmentality of Master Planning: Housing Consumption, Aesthetics and Community on a New Estate

The emergence of advanced liberalism as a political rationality has been accompanied by a trend towards more privatized forms of governing, in which market actors assume many of the responsibilities that were formerly state-provided. As a result, the problems of rule regarding who or what to govern and by what means are increasingly preoccupying private actors. This paper examines the privatized governmentalities of rules posed by a property developer of a master planned estate, as it seeks to govern the ethical conduct of local residents by governing through community so that they voluntarily maintain the aesthetic standards of the estate, not only for their own benefit, but also out of a sense of commitment to others.

Privatisation, Security and Community: How Master Planned Estates are Changing Suburban Australia

The master planned residential estate (MPE) is now an established form of place-making on the Australian cityscape. Examples of this form of development are generally accepted to share several characteristics: a comprehensive master plan accounting for all or most of the lived space within a development; a single developer or consortium responsible for delivering the plan; distinct physical boundaries; uniform design features and some sort of appeal to a communitarian ethic. Master or single vision planning of new residential developments is not a new practice but can be traced back, in modernity at least, to the UK in the late 1800s by the so-called ‘bourgeois philanthropists’ (Bounds, 2004) as a means to rescue workers from the squalor, crime and moral degradation of large industrial cities. These ‘new towns’ combined the pillars of church, work and community in an attempt to improve the spiritual and physical well-being of workers. This tradition was continued by visionaries such as Ebenezer Howard (1965 [1898]) whose Garden City Movement was realised in the early 20th century in cities such as Letchworth and Welwyn in the UK and a number of cities in the USA. Once again, these cities were conceived with the utopian vision of health, peace and community: the site of a contented and stable population to provide labour to integrated industrial parks. After the Second World War, fully planned suburban estates were taking shape in the USA to fulfil strong post-war housing demand. The development of large-scale fully planned estates such as Levittown in New York and Irvine in California paved the way for the shape of late 20th-century suburban modernity in the USA. Like their predecessors, these estates were shaped by a vision of sanctuary and community, combined with a far more clearly articulated objective of returns on real estate investment. Master planning in

A Limit to Reflexivity: The Challenge for Working Women of Negotiating Sharing of Household Labor

Unpaid household labor is still predominantly performed by women, despite dramatic increases in female labor force participation over the past 50 years. For this article, interviews with 76 highly skilled women who had returned to the workforce following the birth of children were analyzed to capture reflexive understandings of the balance of paid and unpaid work in households. Alongside a need to work for selfhood was a reflexive awareness of inequity in sharing household labor and dissatisfaction with the ways in which male partners contributed around the home. However, in parallel with this discourse of inequity was one of control, manifest in perceptions of male partners’ inability to competently complete household tasks. Although the discursive aspects of women’s understandings of inequality in the home can be understood as manifestations of reflexive modernization, participants’ general incapacity to effect everyday changes is better explained by the more fully socialized feminist reading of Bourdieu’s conception of embodied practice.

Growing old in a new estate: establishing new social networks in retirement

ABSTRACT The benefits of a strong proximal social network for people as they advance in age are well documented, but the continuation or development of social networks may be challenged when people relocate to a new home on retirement. This paper explores the personal network development of older residents who have moved to a new suburban (but not age-specific) residential development in a general urban setting. Drawing on a case study of a new outer-suburban ‘master planned estate’ in Brisbane, Queensland, the findings from interviews with 51 older residents and participant observations of a community group are presented. The study suggests that a traditional ideal of unreflexive community of place was an unreliable source of durable social bonds in contemporary fragmented and mobile social conditions, where the proximity of family members, durability of tenure and strong neighbourly ties are not inevitable. One successful resolution was found in a group of older residents who through exercising agency had joined a group the sole focus of which was social companionship. The theoretical bases of this type of group are discussed and its relevance is examined for retirees who have chosen to live in a residential environment for lifestyle and amenity reasons, away from their lifelong social networks.

Early Gentrification and the Public Realm: A Case Study of West End in Brisbane, Australia

West End is an inner-city neighbourhood in Brisbane, Australia, about to experience profound change. In the next two decades the population of West End is planned to increase fourfold as the result of local and state government urban consolidation policies, with little planning for services and amenity to cater for this increase. Interviews with 50 residents of West End are used to describe the nature and qualities of a strong existing public realm in West End, intimately tied to place and closely associated with West End’s early gentrification status. It is argued that early gentrification, because of the change it brings, has been consistent with the maintenance and protection of this public realm. As West End is the last neighbourhood of its type in the city (and one of the last in the country), it is also argued that in the absence of any state-led policies to foster diversity, for the benefit of the wider metropolis, these neighbourhoods are worth protecting from the parochialising effects of insensitive developer-led ‘second-wave’ gentrification.

Young people's lived experience of the ‘street’ in North Lakes master planned estate

This article explores young peoples lived experience of the ‘street’, defined as outdoor public/private spaces, such as streets, shopping centres, corner stores within a Master Planned Estate in Australia. A strong market-based planning rationale has significantly constrained young peoples access to, and use of, public space and the public realm. Young people are often left with little option but to occupy spaces through paths of least resistance or subversive use of space. Private developers require stronger regulatory oversight and a shared vision with planning authorities for the creation of appropriate spaces for young people.

The Role of Faith-based Organizations in Environmental Governance: the Case of Forestry in Solomon Islands

Abstract Faith-based organizations (FBOs) have played a significant role in environment-related forms of development and governance in Melanesia, including the Solomon Islands. Yet despite their centrality, there remain significant gaps in understandings of processes and outcomes associated with FBO engagement in environment-related development interventions. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the place of the Christian Fellowship Church (CFC), an indigenous FBO active in plantation forestry (and other activities) in the Western Province in the Solomon Islands. We find that the CFC possesses impressive income-generating potential and political networks; however this does not always translate into positive social, economic or environmental outcomes at the village level. While FBOs such as CFC are often championed as playing an important role in environmental governance in an under-resourced nation state, the reality is that they can fall well short in delivering appropriate outcomes for poor communities or the environment despite, and because of, their close ties to target communities.