Hidden homes? Uncovering Sydney’s informal housing market

Australia faces a chronic shortage of affordable rental housing, as do many other nations in the Global North. Unable to access the formal rental sector, lower-income earners are increasingly resorting to share housing and other informal arrangements, sometimes occupying makeshift accommodation or illegal dwellings. This article examines informality in Sydney’s housing market, an important case because of the explicit policy efforts geared towards supporting diverse and higher density housing supply. It draws on analysis of the regulatory planning framework and primary data derived from interviews and focus groups with housing advocates, support workers and building compliance officers from across the metropolitan region. It seeks to understand the drivers of supply and demand within the informal housing market and constructs a typology of informal tenures and dwelling provision. The article contributes new empirical data on the outcomes of planning policies designed to enable flexible housing responses which legitimise some informal practices, and the wider dimensions of informal housing provision within formal urban systems of the Global North

Strategic planning, ‘city deals’ and affordable housing

This study examines how local and international funding interventions focussed on specific regions, such as City Deals, deliver affordable rental housing for low income households to enhance urban productivity. Such strategic policy interventions offer some promise in creating new economic opportunities, however explicit policies are needed to ensure low income households can access affordable housing close to employment opportunities

Australian adaptation of UK dealmaking: towards state rescaling?

Place-based funding deals are inter-governmental contracts focused on boosting economic growth and productivity. Informed by policy adaptation scholarship, we compare the policy and practice of City Deals and dealmaking in the UK and Australia to consider the implications for scalar power relations. In the UK, local government is compelled to engage in dealmaking and the rescaling to the supralocal, city-regional level it incentivises. Thus, central-local state relations have been upscaled whilst city-regional powers are highly constrained. In Australia, deals enable the federal government to engage in the ostensible policy domains of state government, but purposive state rescaling is absent. However, the Australian case indicates an appetite for more formalised forms of supralocal governance, should the state tier concur, revealing that dealmaking has opened up alternative ways of working and that local as well as higher tiers of government play a role in shaping rescaling

Supporting affordable housing supply: inclusionary planning in new and renewing communities, AHURI Final Report No. 297

This study examined recent Australian and international practice in planning for affordable housing within new and renewing communities, focusing on South Australia’s 15 per cent inclusionary housing target and voluntary incentives for affordable housing in NSW, as well as recent practice in the UK and the US. * Key data sources included policy documents, government reports, and development approval data as well as 23 interviews with planners and affordable housing developers and consultants

International experience of public infrastructure delivery in support of housing growth

This paper compares planning and funding arrangements for public infrastructure delivery in support of new housing development in the UK, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the US, and Hong Kong/Mainland China. It examines the roles and responsibilities of different levels of government, the extraction of financial contributions from the development process (mainly funded through increases in land value), and the level of involvement of private and public actors in infrastructure delivery and land value capture (LVC). Three linked questions provide a basis for comparison of the cases: first, what arrangements are in place, in terms of planning hierarchy and responsibility, for coordinating infrastructure delivery (and how do these relate to funding arrangements); second, how are local contributions extracted from the development process or through the acquisition and sale of land; and lastly, what inferences can be drawn regarding the relative power of public and private actors in this process and to what extent is public interest prioritized/served through prevailing approaches to value extraction. The paper contributes international experience to debates on optimizing planning approaches for infrastructure delivery while maximizing public benefit from land value

First Results of Magnetic Field Penetration Measurements of Multilayer SIS Structures

The performance of superconducting RF cavities made of bulk Nb is limited by a breakdown field of Bp ≈200 mT, close to the superheating field for Nb. A potentially promising solution to enhance the breakdown field of the SRF cavities beyond the intrinsic limits of Nb is a multilayer coating suggested in [1]. In the simplest case, such a multilayer may be a superconductor-insulator-superconductor (S-I-S) coating, for example, bulk niobium (S) coated with a thin film of insulator (I) followed by a thin layer of another superconductor (S) which could be e.g. dirty niobium [2]. Here we report the first results of our measurements of field penetration in Nb thin films and Nb-AlN-Nb multilayer samples at 4.2 K using the magnetic field penetration facility designed, built and tested in ASTeC

Low secondary electron yield of laser treated surfaces of copper, aluminium and stainless steel

Reduction of SEY was achieved by surface engineering through laser ablation with a laser operating at • = 355 nm. It was shown that the SEY can be reduced to near or below 1 on copper, aluminium and 316LN stainless steel. The laser treated surfaces show an increased surface resistance, with a wide variation in resistance found de-pending on the exact treatment details. However, a treated copper surface with similar surface resistance to aluminium was produced

Gene Co-Expression Network Analysis Identifies Vitamin D-Associated Gene Modules in Adult Normal Rectal Epithelium Following Supplementation

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common, multifactorial disease. While observational studies have identified an association between lower vitamin D and higher CRC risk, supplementation trials have been inconclusive and the mechanisms by which vitamin D may modulate CRC risk are not well understood. We sought to perform a weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) to identify modules present after vitamin D supplementation (when plasma vitamin D level was sufficient) which were absent before supplementation, and then to identify influential genes in those modules. The transcriptome from normal rectal mucosa biopsies of 49 individuals free from CRC were assessed before and after 12 weeks of 3200IU/day vitamin D (Fultium-D3) supplementation using paired-end total RNAseq. While the effects on expression patterns following vitamin D supplementation were subtle, WGCNA identified highly correlated genes forming gene modules. Four of the 17 modules identified in the post-vitamin D network were not preserved in the pre-vitamin D network, shedding new light on the biochemical impact of supplementation. These modules were enriched for GO terms related to the immune system, hormone metabolism, cell growth and RNA metabolism. Across the four treatment-associated modules, 51 hub genes were identified, with enrichment of 40 different transcription factor motifs in promoter regions of those genes, including VDR:RXR. Six of the hub genes were nominally differentially expressed in studies of vitamin D effects on adult normal mucosa organoids: LCN2, HLA-C, AIF1L, PTPRU, PDE4B and IFI6. By taking a gene-correlation network approach, we have described vitamin D induced changes to gene modules in normal human rectal epithelium in vivo, the target tissue from which CRC develops

Analyzing and predicting the spatial penetration of Airbnb in U.S. cities

In the hospitality industry, the room and apartment sharing platform of Airbnb has been accused of unfair competition. Detractors have pointed out the chronic lack of proper legislation. Unfortunately, there is little quantitative evidence about Airbnb's spatial penetration upon which to base such a legislation. In this study, we analyze Airbnb's spatial distribution in eight U.S. urban areas, in relation to both geographic, socio-demographic, and economic information. We find that, despite being very different in terms of population composition, size, and wealth, all eight cities exhibit the same pattern: that is, areas of high Airbnb presence are those occupied by the \newpart{``talented and creative''} classes, and those that are close to city centers. This result is consistent so much so that the accuracy of predicting Airbnb's spatial penetration is as high as 0.725