He came back a changed man : The popularity and influence of policy tourism

Why does policy tourism remain a popular and influential method of policy learning and mobility in an age of information abundance? Framed by a case study of homelessness policy tourism to New York City, this paper suggests that policy tourism remains popular because it allows for: (1) thinking outside the everyday strictures of the bureaucratic workplace; (2) the development of associational bonds between policy tourists, and between tourists and hosts; (3) the verification of information; and (4) the legitimation of decisions/positions. Noting the powerful influence that tourist encounters have on policy tourists, the paper then discusses the production of authenticity. The paper calls for greater attention to the active and affective production of authenticity as a means to better understand policy tourism and its significant effect on policy learning and mobility

Spatial theories of the urban

This paper explores how spatial theories, models and concepts function as representations whose underlying logic and reasoning are primarily metaphorical. We examine the underlying metaphors and founding premises of key theories of urban systems and of cities\u27 internal spatialisation, and we trace these theories\u27 production as artifacts of how we think space. The purpose of this is to focus attention on how metaphors, as representations of space, make the city available to us for analysis; what they foreground and what they elide. We suggest how, as representations, these theories give us interpretive frames through which we grasp empirical data and develop understanding of process, creating \u27facts\u27 about urban spaces and spatial relations. Relatedly, then, we foreground more generally the necessity to think critically and reflexively about our representational practices and the analyses they sustain

Using questionnaires in qualitative human geography

This chapter deals with questionnaires, an information-gathering technique used frequently in mixed-method research that draws on quantitative and qualitative data sources and analysis. We begin with a discussion of key issues in the design and conduct of questionnaires. We then explore the strengths and weaknesses for qualitative research of various question formats and questionnaire distribution and collection techniques, including online techniques. Finally, we consider some of the challenges of analyzing qualitative responses in questionnaires, and we close with a discussion of the limitations of using questionnaires in qualitative research

Applying GIS in practitioner settings

This paper focuses on the involvement of CURS in a project aimed at developing an integrated GIS to facilitate inter-agency data sharing and analysis so as to enhance the planning and provision of family services in the Hunter. The paper focuses on the process of developing the \u27soft technologies of engagement\u27 necessary to facilitate the co-operative data-sharing between key government human services agencies that must underpin an integrated GIS. These soft technologies are required to address the ethical, procedural and technical challenges of data sharing and, more intangibly, to manage the organisation and institutional barriers to inter-agency data sharing. The paper outlines a template of ethical protocols and procedures for data-sharing as a first step in developing longer term inter-agency engagements. Crucially though, the paper argues that the process of engagement is central to the development of an informed and critical community of practitioners within government agencies. We see this longer term engagement as having the potential to address some of the broader epistemological and ontological critiques of GIS and spatial indicators

Repositioning urban governments? Energy efficiency and Australia’s changing climate and energy governance regimes

Urban local governments are important players in climate governance, and their roles are evolving. This review traces the changing nexus of Australia’s climate policy, energy policy and energy efficiency imperatives and its repositioning of urban local governments. We characterise the ways urban local governments’ capacities and capabilities are being mobilised in light of a changing multi-level political opportunity structure around energy efficiency. The shifts we observe not only extend local governments’ role in implementing climate change responses but also engage them as partners in conceiving and operationalising new measures, suggesting new ground is being opened in the urban politics of climate governance. A review of the Australian context provides important insights for the new politics of energy in the city as, internationally, energy efficiency is reframed as a climate change issue and the city is repositioned as an important strategic space in energy politics and the governance of energy systems

Demonstrating retrofitting: perspectives from Australian local government

Cities are critical to transitions to low carbon futures, not only because of the large and growing global urban population but also because global resource consumption is concentrated in cities (Gossop, 2011:208; Hodson, Marvin, Robinson, & Swilling, 2012; Monstadt, 2007). Ensuring that new urban spaces, such as new housing or new city precincts, are low or zero carbon is central to these transitions (Hodson & Marvin, 2010). Yet, equally important to reducing urban carbon consumption is the retrofitting of existing urban planning frameworks and imaginaries, infrastructure, built form and patterns of daily life (Eames et.al., 2013; Pincetl, 2012). Retrofitting involves the modification of what already exists in cities: altering the ways in which existing buildings are heated and cooled, diverting households, businesses and organisations toward renewable sources of energy rather than fossil fuels, encouraging the take up of energy efficient appliances, altering urban infrastructures of energy and transport provision toward renewable sources. Retrofitting is both a social and a technological challenge. Technologically, it involves the installation of a diverse range of new or upgraded zero or low carbon technologies in the existing urban fabric. These include, often in combination, new forms of building insulation to minimise heat transfer between the inside and outside of buildings, more efficient lighting and heating (e.g. heat pump rather than electric hot water systems) and micro-generation of energy supply. Retrofitting technologies can be applied at a number of scales. These include individual buildings, clusters of buildings, precincts, entire local authority areas, or supra-urban systems of energy infrastructure. In the Australian case, for example, where 60% of carbon emissions are generated by energy use and 75% of electricity generation is coal-fired (Australian Australian Government, 2011), micro (ie individual building) installation of solar PV is the most common retrofitting technology. Retrofitting is also a social process in which technologies are adopted, accommodated and altered by urban actors. The behaviours and choices of individuals have a potentially profound impact on the effectiveness of technologies. For example, a recent Cambridge study suggested that attention to behaviour change can double the energy savings of retrofitting (Markusson, Ishii, & Stephens, 2011). Surprisingly, given the importance of retrofitting to the achievement of low carbon cities, and the voluminous literature on urban carbon governance (Bulkeley & Castan Broto, 2013; Rice, 2010; While, Jonas, & Gibbs, 2010), explicit focus on enabling retrofitting through governance is rare. There is some analysis of programs that encourage retrofitting at household or building scales (see Deakin, Campbell, & Reid, 2012; Ghosh & Head, 2009; Kelly, 2009; Sunikka-Blank, Chen, Britnell, & Dantsiou, 2012; Willand et al 2012), but little consideration of what institutions and mechanisms might best enhance cities’ capacities to adopt retrofitting technologies and behaviours. This chapter hence provides a theoretical framework for understanding the governance of urban retrofitting as well as empirical answers to the question of the character of retrofitting governance. Specifically, we develop and implement a framework for understanding the governance of urban retrofitting that considers the assemblage of institutions, materials, agencies and mechanisms that might enable the transformation of cities. This framework is outlined in the first section. The second section presents a more detailed examination of retrofit governance at the ‘sub’ urban scale, using an audit of local scale retrofitting initiatives in Australia’s largest city – Sydney – to develop a typology of means or techniques through which retrofitting is governed. Developing our argument that an understanding of governing retrofit requires attention to the mechanisms and techniques through which conduct is ‘conducted’, in the final empirical section we outline two cases in which retrofitting is pursued through demonstration. We ask how and by whom they are enabled (and simultaneously, what are the constraints they negotiate), what are the mechanisms through which they become productive, and what is their relationship to the existing carbon governance regime. We also focus on the ‘demonstration’ or ‘showcase’ elements of these projects to critically interrogate the multifaceted learning processes embedded within them. We conclude with an analysis of the limitations of retrofitting governance as currently practised and reflections on the purchase of demonstration as a governmental technique at citywide scales

Assembling urban regeneration? Resourcing critical generative accounts of urban regeneration through assemblage

In critical urban studies, managed urban regeneration has been linked to trajectories of neo-liberalising urban policy and urban entrepreneurialism. While the insights arising from this work have been many and valuable, significant gaps remain particularly in terms of the foci of analysis and the conception of politics. In this paper, we aim to address these gaps and to reposition the conceptualization of regeneration as a performed and emergent consequence of \u27relatedness\u27 and as subject to a range of relational effects and determinations. To do so we work through four capacities of assemblage thinking that are particularly productive for this task: (i) revealing the relational, multiple and processual nature of urban trajectories; (ii) revealing the multi-scalar labouring involved in configuring the (socio-material) assemblages that constitute regeneration; (iii) identifying openings for multiple possible trajectories of regeneration; (iv) providing critical insights into how regeneration trajectories are constrained. We conclude with reflections on what assemblage thinking offers in terms of critically and generatively rethinking urban regeneration

The material politics of smart building energy management: A view from Sydney\u27s commercial office space

The potential of cities in leveraging energy transformation is increasingly recognised, with a growing focus on urban built environments. In this paper we focus on smart building energy management as an increasingly pivotal material means through which energy transformation comes to matter in cities, and through which buildings are politicised in the negotiation of energy transformation. We advance a material political analysis of the case of Sydney\u27s premium commercial office building sector to explore how such buildings are conferred with political capacity. We explicitly extend this material politics framework to pluralise the \u27whereabouts\u27 of the politics of energy transformation, expanding recognition of the sites and moments of negotiation through which these politics are enacted, authority shaped, and where trajectories of energy transformation begin to be fashioned. Drawing on this extended conception of politics, the paper traces how the political capacity of buildings comes to matter through smart building energy management platforms as they are negotiated through the context of Sydney\u27s policy settings, the political-economy of the top tier commercial office sector, and building management cultures. We conclude with observations on how smart building energy management platforms might contribute to the shaping of particular trajectories, possibilities and limits for energy transformation advanced through the built environment

Effective practices for interagency data sharing: insights from collaborative research in a regional intervention

Data sharing adds considerable value to interagency programs that seek to tackle complex social problems. Yet data sharing is not easily enacted either technically or as a governance practice, especially considering the multiple forms of risk involved. This article presents insights from a successful data sharing project in a major region in east coast Australia involving a federally funded research partnership between two universities and a number of human services agencies. The Spatial Data Analysis Project sought to establish a community of practice for devising data sharing protocols and embedding data sharing into agency practices. Close dialogue between the project partners and mobilizing the authority of extant regulatory and legal frameworks proved effective in confronting risks and barriers. The article reveals effective practices for data sharing and derives lessons for other policy and governance contexts

Carrington: Community of difference?

Newcastle is a city redolent with images. Perhaps the most dominant of these is of a male industrial working environment deriving from the days of the \u27coally seaport\u27, while other aspects of its identity, such as the female and the Aboriginal, are suppressed and obscured (Dunn et al., 1995). Another recurrent image is of profound community, of solidaritty. This is evident in the \u27Our Town\u27 epithet applied to numerous local businesses. 5uch an image is portrayed in the cartoon by Eggleston, where the SS Newcastle is under siege from economic, political and physical forces, where the (all male) inhabitants, clinging together in adversity, are ignored by the Canberra rescue service. Such imagery is demonstrative of community but it is largely negative. The community is parochial, defensive and whinging, complaining of discrimination against it by \u27them\u27, the authorities in Sydney and Canberra, yet expecting \u27them\u27 to be a saviour when in distress. It is aJso a commrmity which is partial andd exclusionary, consisting solely of the Anglo males in their sinking industrial ship (Dunn, 1992)