Bridging the Divide: Exploring the Intersections of Education, Income, and Identity in Western Sydney

This Centre for Western Sydney issues paper examines the key trends in the 2021 census that highlight the relationships between place and identity for key groups in Western Sydney: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, multicultural communities and women and how these identities intersect across educational attainment and income

State of the Arts in Western Sydney

This report shows that the arts sector in Western Sydney is facing critical inequities in funding, infrastructure and resources that have restricted the growth and success of the arts economy, and resulted in challenges faced by workers in the region. As a result, key studies and strategic documents have advocated for greater resource allocation and policy planning at a state level to support the arts in the Western Sydney region

Parramatta 2035: Community Views on the Future of Our Region

This report documents diverse community voices on the Future of Greater Parramatta, as captured through a public consultation undertaken from September to October 2022. The public consultation was launched as a part of The Glover Review on Parramatta 2035: Vibrant, Sustainable Global', and reflects the Centre for Western Sydney's commitment to a politics of listening. This research seeks to engage with local communities and reflect their vision for the future of Parramatta and the Central River City. The report documents the region's most pressing challenges, and the solutions required for a thriving future in Greater Parramatta as identified by its communities. It is these communities that are most invested in the future of the region, and ultimately most impacted by decisions made when planning for its development. By listening to these valuable voices, we highlight the importance of capturing the knowledge and experience of various communities when planning for regional futures. We argue that through engaged community consultation, planners and policymakers can build cities that respond to community needs and visions

Untapped Talent: Western Sydney's Remarkable but Inequitable Labour Market

This issues paper analyses the 2021 census data, considering the profound but uneven changes to educational attainment, industry mix and labour force participation. Western Sydney has registered a significant increase in its educational attainment over the past decade. The region’s proportion of higher skilled residents now sits on par with the national average. In some areas it exceeds that level. The shift is profound but uneven within the Western Sydney region, producing complex implications. Additionally, the census data reveals persistent socio-spatial polarisation between Western Sydney and the Rest of Sydney when it comes to high productivity jobs. This issues paper produces an analysis of the census data, and considers the implications of the data for policy makers in the State and Federal Governments of Australia

Western Sydney Votes: The Voice Referendum

Western Sydney was once again positioned as a key 'electoral battleground' in the 2023 Voice Referendum – with voter behaviour in the western suburbs of Sydney projected to be critical to the outcome. The referendum was always going to be challenging in a region like Western Sydney, where trust in government has been profoundly compromised in recent years. However, the region is diverse and complex, and so is voting behaviour. This paper examines Australian Electoral Commission Tally Room data (as at 2PM Sunday 15 October 2023) and presents a geographical mapping and key analysis of the votes in the Voice referendum

Parramatta 2035: Vibrant, Sustainable, Global

This Review, prepared at the request of the NSW Premier, tests the proposition that Greater Parramatta can become a ‘global city’ by 2035. Parramatta, in the past five years, has been the focus of intensive and accelerated urban regeneration. Equally, it has been the recent beneficiary of substantial public infrastructure investments. Ensuring these positive developments work to the city’s benefit, particularly against liveability and sustainability benchmarks is an emphasis of the Review. The city’s elevation into a ‘global’ cohort is conditional on the preservation and enhancement of these attributes, particularly in fundamental areas like housing affordability, cultural expression, and connectivity. Recognising the investment and talent attraction properties of these elements is a vitally important and, ideally, distinctive element of Parramatta’s current and future character. The Review identifies four priorities where government should now focus its efforts for this region over the next decade: 1. Greater Parramatta needs a Strategic Plan and better cross-government cooperation and investment in the region; 2. The development of the Greater Parramatta region needs to balance the goals of liveability and growth and better manage the unequal impacts of change; 3. Greater Parramatta’s economic future needs to be secured through preserving and investing in the region’s industrial and urban services land; and, 4. Sustainability needs to be a priority to ensure Greater Parramatta’s successful transformation into a resilient global city-region. The Review concludes that Parramatta will become a ‘global’ city, and notes that the real question is one of what type of global city it chooses to become. The Review makes twelve recommendations framed thematically across three priorities: 1. Strategic Planning and Governance; 2. Planning and Infrastructure Priorities; and, 3. Liveability and Sustainability

Mapping perceptions of Islamophobia in the San Francisco Bay Area, California

Recent debates in social and cultural geography on the inclusionary/exclusionary nature of space have brought our attention to the ‘everywhere different’ nature of racism across cities. Among these debates have been calls to interrogate the socio-spatial dimensions of new forms of racism, like Islamophobia as they evolve. This paper draws on the findings of an online survey conducted from September 2016 to April 2017 with young Muslim American residents of the Bay Area, California. It provides empirical material on the way young Muslims map ‘the geography of Islamophobia’ across this region to uncover how the racialization of Muslims has translated into perceptions of racism across city spaces. The findings indicate that Islamophobia occurs in various public spheres, particularly on public transport and in airports. There is a spatial concentration of Islamophobic spaces in the Bay Area, focussed in the North and Outer-East Bay regions–relatively rural parts of the region with a less significant Muslim population. Conversely, areas with larger Muslim populations were associated with lower levels of perceived Islamophobia. This paper highlights the need for more localised, socio-spatial engagements in racism that capture the evolving nature of the American racisms, and how they are spatialised across cities

Islamophobia in the United States: A Reading Resource Pack

This reading resource pack provides a thematic overview of current academic research on Islamophobia in the United States in the form of peer-reviewed academic journal articles and books. This effort brings to light the wide range of research on Islamophobia produced in the last few decades. In doing so, the authors wish to highlight trends in knowledge production around this topic and draw attention to any areas in need of further development where contributions can be made

Reflecting on Christchurch : an Australian perspective

This reflective piece draws on a range of emerging research and discourses on the Christchurch attacks, within the context of Islamophobia in Australia and the globe. Based on emerging research and discourse within Australian debates on the Christchurch attack, we argue that the Christchurch attacks must be understood as a continuum and contextualized within the broader rise of global Islamophobia and rise in Right Wing Extremism. We then draw on recent research to examine how the Christchurch attacks have shaped the climate of hate activity and hate-groups in Australia. Building on this argument, we explore the impacts of the Christchurch attacks on the lived experience of Muslims in Australia - ranging from the solidarity shown by the public for Muslims, to the looming threat and danger that these attacks posed on their safety on both online and offline spaces. We close our reflection with five key recommendations derived from the tragedy

Media representations of racism and spatial mobility : young Muslim (un)belonging in a post-Cronulla riot Sutherland

Young Australian Muslims living in Sydney have been influenced by the Cronulla riot. Online surveys (n: 76) and interviews (n: 10) reveal the impact on their engagement with the Sutherland region around Cronulla, detectable a decade after this event. The exclusionary intent of the rioters and their sympathisers was a racist form of spatial management that had both specific and general aims. The Australian news media contribute to the ethnic purification that was originally intended by the Cronulla riots. This reduces mobility among an 'ethnic other' in accessing spaces that have been portrayed as 'racist' - or, in the case of young Muslims, 'Islamophobic'. Findings demonstrate the ongoing consequences of a wide-scale racist attack, like the Cronulla riot, on urban citizenship. Representations of the Cronulla riot are a repertoire of learning for young Sydney Muslims that rehearse what has been conceptualised as pedagogies of (un)belonging by Noble and Poynting [(2010). White Lines: The Intercultural Politics of Everyday Movement in Social Spaces. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 31, 489-505]. We have extended the application of this concept to a specific space and point to the means by which constructions of unbelonging are reinforced and made material. Processes of repetition and accumulations identified by Butler and Essed highlight how this enduring pedagogy of spatial unbelonging is maintained by media representations of places as Islamophobic