From Cowpastures to pigs' heads: The development and character of western Sydney

Western Sydney is a region of great diversity and complexity: a patchwork of cultures, language, ethnicity, personal histories, religion, education, income and status. Taking a chronological developmental approach, this paper examines the development of western Sydney, particularly in the postwar period, in an attempt to reveal some of the more oblique foundations contributing to the contemporary character of ‘Western Sydney’ as both a spatial and social signifier of the ‘other’ Sydney

The experience of mortgage distress in Western Sydney

Mortgage distress is affecting a growing number of Australian households. Distress ranges from arrears in mortgage payments to defaults, foreclosures and repossessions. The impacts of mortgage distress are complex and include issues relating to the ongoing financial viability of the affected households, wider neighbourhood effects, and a range of psychological and social impacts. In recent years, mortgage stress has had a consistently higher prevalence in certain parts of Western Sydney than in any other region across Australia.This study is an attempt to uncover the experiences of mortgage distress in Western Sydney and of mortgage holders’ coping strategies. While not claiming to be a representative sample of mortgagors in distress, the report reveals much about the circumstances contributing to mortgage distress and its considerable impacts on the lives of those affected

Seeking Utopia : master planned estates on Sydney's urban fringe

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The allure of the master planned community on Sydney's urban fringe

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Paradise planned : community formation and the master planned estate

The focus of this study is the formation of 'community' in contemporary greenfield master planned estates.The project is cast against the historical backdrop of modern utopian place-making, and the idea that a particular permutation of urban design, infrastructure and social programs can produce an ideal of community: of connectivity, social support and social identity. A further ambition of contemporay urban design is the marketable idea of securing a physical and social space. The thesis comprises four parts. Part I presents the theoretical framework of the thesis, a task which incorporates a review of theoretical concepts and of the relevant literature. Part II discusses methodological issues, the research design and research process, before providing background information needed to support the following empirical chapters. Part III comprises these empirical chapters and sets about detailing and analysing data captured through the comparative case study of Harrington Park and Garden Gates. The final section of the thesis provides an interpretation of the empirical and research data. It draws conclusions as to the character of the Master Planned Community (MPC)and the dynamics which contribute to its contemporary character. It concludes by attempting a tentative theory of the MPC

On politics, sport and "coming the knuckle"

Essay featured in the exhibition catalogue for, 'A Show About Joe', shown 19 May - 9 June 2007 at the Liverpool Regional Museum, Liverpool, NSW. This paper is concerned with one man's personal biography as it intersects with the social issues and structures of his time. On one hand it tells the story of family love and moral rectitude, of suburban disparity and political action, and of masculine aggression and sport. On the other it contends with the more structural issues of working class culture, urban development, inequality and social change. In this it is following the tradition laid down by C. Wright Mills who argued that "neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both" .1:3 Consequently, the paper is not intended as a biography of Joe Durrant, community activist, alderman and one time Mayor of Liverpool, rather it explores those aspects of one man's life which help to elucidate some of the impetus behind local political action in a disadvantaged community

Paradise planned : community formation and the master planned estate

The popularity of master planned estates with prospective settlers and planner developers alike has burgeoned in the past 20 years. Stimulated by the settlers’ desire for product assurance, and the developer’s search for a marketing advantage, movements such as new urbanism and neo-communitarianism have underpinned large-scale planned suburban tract developments in both Australia and the USA. The marketing of such developments together with quality of design and physical and social infrastructure, commonly includes the promise of ‘community’. Such promises strike a chord with residents driven by security concerns. Drawing on recent qualitative research on two planned housing estates on Sydney’s south-west fringe, this article examines two interrelated processes that underpin the notion of community in the contemporary master planned community. Firstly, it investigates the influence that design and development practices can have on community formation and community outcomes. It also examines the nexus between community association and economic interests in the drive to shape a secure, status-oriented residential environment. During a time when community is perceived as a scarce resource, and a goal to be achieved, ‘community’ becomes a resource deployed by both the planner-developer and residents to differentiate one residential area from another

Network society and the politics of community

This paper draws on the structure of Wellman’s (1979) ‘Community Question’ to examine the rise and implications of the ‘politics of community’, particularly as it pertains to social space and geographic place. The ‘Community Question’ incorporates three perspectives that have underpinned community research and theories since the industrial revolution: Community Lost, Community Saved and Community Liberated. Where both the Lost and Saved paradigms commence their examination of community from the position of geographical propinquity, the Liberated paradigm examines community from a perspective of social ties and networks in social space. Communication enhancing technology has changed the structure and nature of social ties in contemporary society, allowing certain individuals and groups greater movement and control over their networks and mobility, while conversely causing the stasis and exclusion of others. With reference to the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ the second part of this paper examines the implications for two cases of sedentarist government strategies which have been captured by the ‘politics of community’: the Building Stronger Communities (2007) policy of the NSW Department of Housing and the development of ‘Masterplanned Communities’ by Landcom, the NSW Government’s land agency

Once were Westies

The Westie was a creation of the 1960s and \u2770s as young, working families were encouraged westward into the newly built, rather austere public and private housing subdivisions on Sydney\u27s urban fringe. It was a term of division and derision, and became shorthand for a population considered lowbrow, coarse and lacking education and cultural refinement. Westie became a rhetorical device to designate the \u27other\u27 Sydney: spatially, culturally and economically different from the more prosperous and privileged Sydneysiders of the north and east. Aspirationals came to prominence in the late 1990s to describe a seemingly new constituency of voters living on the urban fringes who appeared to have clawed their way out of the real battler class and into big cars, big houses and even bigger mortgages. In reality, as the one-time leader of federal Labor, Mark Latham, both promulgated and epitomised, Sydney’s Aspirationals are mostly grown-up Westies who have taken advantage of dual incomes, easy finance and housing-based wealth. The term has come to incorporate others, including a mix of blue-collar contractors/service providers who live on the fringes of other Australian cities. In keeping with its pejorative nuance, University of Wollongong academic John Robinson notes that the term resonates more with outsiders. Viewed as self-interested and materialistic, Aspirationals are reckoned to hold a more selfish set of values and morés than other Australians. As one of Robinson’s interviewees from Sydney’s privileged eastern suburbs puts it: \u27They are people who want to be middle-class but are not. They are into credit and consumption, living in suburbs they can\u27t afford to be in and in houses they can’t afford, with lots of goods they can’t afford to have.\u2