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

Adipose tissue macrophages induce hepatic neutrophil recruitment and macrophage accumulation in mice

Objective Obesity is a risk factor for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). This risk has been attributed to visceral adipose tissue (vAT) expansion associated with increased proinflammatory mediators. Accumulation of CD11c+ proinflammatory adipose tissue macrophages (AT M) is an important driver of vAT inflammation. We investigated the role of AT Ms in hepatic inflammation during NASH development. Design vAT isolated from lean, obese or AT M -depleted (using clodronate liposomes) obese mice was transplanted to lean ldlr-/-acceptor mice. Systemic and hepatic inflammation was assessed either after 2 weeks on standard chow or after 8 weeks on high cholesterol diet (HCD) to induce NASH. Results T ransplanting donor vAT from obese mice increased HCD-induced hepatic macrophage content compared with lean-transplanted mice, worsening liver damage. AT M depletion prior to vAT transplantation reduced this increased hepatic macrophage accumulation. On chow, vAT transplantation induced a more pronounced increase in circulating and hepatic neutrophil numbers in obese-transplanted than lean-transplanted mice, while AT M depletion prior to vAT transplantation reversed this effect. Microarray analysis of fluorescence-activated cell sorting of CD11c+ and CD11c-macrophages isolated from donor adipose tissue showed that obesity resulted in enhanced expression of neutrophil chemotaxis genes specifically in CD11c+ AT Ms. Involvement of the neutrophil chemotaxis proteins, CXCL14 and CXCL16, was confirmed by culturing vAT. In humans, CD11c expression in vAT of obese individuals correlated with vAT expression of neutrophil chemotactic genes and with hepatic expression of neutrophil and macrophage marker genes. Conclusion AT Ms from obese vAT induce hepatic macrophage accumulation during NASH development, possibly by enhancing neutrophil recruitment

Sharing as sociomaterial practice: Car sharing and the material reconstitution of automobility

© 2017 The Authors Sharing has become one of the buzzwords of contemporary urban life and scholarship, as cities and social lives are transformed by the share economy and collaborative consumption. This paper advances critical analysis of sharing economies through an investigation of the ways in which objects are mobilized in the practice of sharing. Drawing on an empirical base of 35 interviews conducted with Sydney residents using car sharing as a form of transport, we explicate the material entanglements that constitute car sharing in order to highlight the complex intersections of the object being shared, the constellations of objects brought into the orbit of the practice, and the code that flows through each. Bringing together a material-focused analysis into conversation with the concepts of share economies as both performed and hybrid, we advance the concepts of sharing as a set of socio-material entanglements. We argue that the divergent spatialities and temporalities of objects and humans both hold together and tear apart the experiences of sharing, which in turn underpins car sharing's implications for the reconstitution of automobility

Catalysts for transport transitions: Bridging the gap between disruptions and change

© 2017 The ability of disruptions - big and small - to induce modal shift away from the private car is one of the more pressing concerns of transport geography and policy. Car sharing, a more sustainable mode of mobility to private car ownership, has quietly emerged as a viable and popular alternative to private vehicle travel in numerous cities of the world. This paper brings these two phenomena into conversation. We present a novel exploration of the precise moment in which the decision to start car sharing is made - an event which remains under-researched and little understood. Using a qualitative analysis of interview data to explore the period during which the individual adopts car sharing, we ask: how are transport transitions, particularly the uptake of car sharing, catalysed? We find that disruptions can either be single shocks, or a bundling and re-ordering of existing practices. We propose that willingness and ability as two preconditions that are key to enable transition to new ways of being mobile. Willingness is an embrace of new practices through inevitable teething problems. Ability is an aptitude for alternative practices, as well as access to infrastructure

DIY Home Modifications: What information is required at point-of-sale? Final Report

Television shows like The Block and House Rules are fuelling a ‘do it yourself’ revolution, and this reserach conforms that older people, people with disabilities and their familes are no exception. This reserach outlines what motivated them and what frustrated them in doing the disability modifications without service supports.Consumer responses ranked hardware stores as the most utilised or popular place to source information about DIY.The study confirmed in the retail data of at least 15,000 DIY modifications per year, and conservative economic analysis revealed that the annual cost offset to health and aged care services could be as much as $15 million per annum.The results from the combined data collection support the project’s initial premise to develop point of sale resources. It is recommended that further research be conducted into understanding the most effective mechanisms for providing the type of information resources identified as needed by this research to the people who need it most, particularly given the changing nature of home hardware offerings and distribution of knowledge, skill and competences involved in doing DIY.This research forms the objectives for Stage 2 of the DIY Home Modification project being undertaken

The design and public imaginaries of smart street furniture

No abstract available

Discovering smart: Early encounters and negotiations with smart street furniture in London and Glasgow

In the late 2010s, publics in the UK encountered new kinds of street furniture: Strawberry Energy Smart benches in London and InLinkUK kiosks in Glasgow, with smart features such as phone charging, free Wi-Fi, free phone calls, information screens and environmental data. This article analyses how smart street furniture is socially constructed by relevant social groups, each with different interests, forms of power and meanings. Smartness became associated not only with advanced technologies, but with a neoliberal agenda of private-public partnerships promising urban transformations, such as free devices for councils and citizens in exchange for access to advertising or sponsorship space in public places. The research examined the design, use and governance of new types of smart street furniture using mixed methods, including document analysis of promotional and regulatory texts, site observations of these devices, and interviews. We found that the uses and meanings of these devices were discovered at different moments by technology companies, local councils, and the public. Few members of the public knew about the devices, and showed little interest in them, even if they were the assumed users. An exception was gig workers and people experiencing homelessness who found uses for the smart features and a community activist who campaigned against these as surveillant and intrusive. Businesses and councils embraced smart city visions but took multiple approaches to agreements for the implementation and governance of smart street furniture. Notably, these more powerful groups discovered and negotiated the meanings of smart street furniture well before these were publicly encountered. This article reveals how a social construction of technology (SCOT) approach is strongest when it accounts for the relative power of social groups in struggles over meanings and resources. It provides empirical information on everyday sociotechnical encounters that provide nuanced evidence for wider critiques of smart city agendas