Redeveloping the compact city: the challenges of strata collective sales

Purpose: High-density development requires large land parcels, but fragmented land ownership can impede redevelopment. While earlier compact city development in Sydney occurred on large-scale brownfield sites, redeveloping and re-amalgamating older strata-titled properties is now integral to further densification. The purpose of this study is to examine collective sales activity in one Sydney suburb where multiple strata-titled redevelopments and re-amalgamations have been attempted. The authors explore how owners navigate the process of selling collectively, focusing on their experience of legislation introduced to facilitate this process, the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 [New South Wales (NSW)]. Design/methodology/approach: By reviewing sales listings, development applications and media coverage, and interviewing owners, lawyers and estate agents, the authors map out collective sale activity in a case study area in Sydney’s northwest. Findings: Strata collective sales are slow and difficult to complete, even when planning and market drivers align. Owners find the Strata Scheme Development Act 2015 (NSW) difficult to navigate and it has not prevented strategic blocking attempts by competing developers. The long timelines required to organise collective sales can result in failure if the market shifts in the interim. Nonetheless, owners remain interested in selling collectively. Originality/value: This case study is important for understanding the barriers to redevelopment to achieve a more compact city. It highlights lessons for other jurisdictions considering similar legislative changes. It also suggests that legislative change alone is insufficient to resolve the planning challenges created by hyper-fragmentation of land through strata-title development

Defining Social Exclusion in Western Sydney: Exploring the Role of Housing Tenure

Over the past decade social exclusion has increasingly been positioned at the forefront of political, academic and lay discourse as the cause of disadvantage (Marsh, 2004). While the definition, measurement and solutions to social exclusion remain open to debate, housing has progressively been positioned as a central variable creating neighbourhoods of exclusion. Much of this debate has positioned areas of public housing as the most disadvantaged and socially excluded neighbourhoods. However, the multiplicity of social exclusion questions the simple identification of areas of public housing as the most excluded. By exploring six dimensions of exclusion (neighbourhood, social and civic engagement, access, crime and security, community identify and economic disadvantage) we argue that there is relatively little difference between areas dominated by public housing and those characterised by private rental for each of these individual dimensions of exclusion (with a number of exceptions). Rather, it is the experience of multiple dimensions of exclusion which marks areas of public housing as unique

Re-assessing the Upper Permian Stratigraphic Succession of the Northern Sydney Basin, Australia, by CA-IDTIMS

High precision Chemical abrasion-isotope dilution thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (CA-IDTIMS) U-Pb zircon results from tuff marker beds that are interstratified within the Upper Permian deposits of the northern Sydney Basin add constraints on the timing of sediment deposition, and afford a better understanding of the regional stratigraphy. The results indicate a magmatic influence during the deposition of the sediments, with episodic events spanning at least from 255.65 +- 0.08 to 255.08 +- 0.09 Ma. The zircon data suggest that the studied sedimentary rocks and tuffs have accumulated simultaneously over a short time interval, which contrasts with current stratigraphic models that suggest a much greater period of deposition and stratigraphic thickness. Therefore, an updated stratigraphic correlation of the basin is suggested, which combines the presently defined Lambton, Adamstown, and Boolaroo sub-groups into a single Lambton sub-group. This updated correlation framework is stratigraphically and geochronologically constrained and provides a more precise exploration model for the northern Sydney Basin. This case study highlights the valuable contribution of the CA-IDTIMS method in intrabasinal correlations of sedimentary successions, when integrated with a robust sedimentological framework, to minimize the stratigraphic uncertainties.This research was funded by Geological Survey of New SouthWales (GSNSW), through the research project Stratigraphic Correlation: Nobbys Tuff-Althorpe Claystone

Planning system reform and economic development: unpacking policy rhetoric and trajectories in Victoria and New South Wales

Despite recent resource booms, the Australian economy remains dominated by the urban. In the wake of the post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and in the face of falling global commodity prices, the economic functioning of Australian cities is critical to maintaining the unprecedented levels of prosperity that have existed since the mid-1990s. Australian cities are increasingly identified as being vital to facilitating economic growth. Indeed, many of the direct interventions by the previous federal Labor government, aimed at insulating the Australian economy from the worst of the GFC, were urban in nature. At the state level, which has constitutional authority for planning, cities are routinely identified as the drivers of state economies - especially in states which have not been characterized by the export of resources. However, a public and policy discourse has emerged that sees planning policy as restricting and constraining economic performance. This discourse, propelled by peak business groups, the development industry and neoliberal ideologues, insists that urban planning is a barrier to economic growth. The need for greater efficiencies has become so widely accepted that state governments are now engaged in a seemingly endless round of system reviews and reform. Against this background, this paper reviews recent planning reforms initiated in the major Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales

Manufactured Home Estates As affordable retirement housing in Australia: drivers, growth and spatial distribution

Manufactured Home Estates (MHEs) are an increasingly popular type of housing for older Australians. MHEs are similar to caravan parks where an operator owns the land, and the resident owns their (technically relocatable) dwelling and pays site rent. Residents are both owners and tenants, with many receiving the age pension, or other benefits, and are entitled to receive Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA). We examine three interrelated processes encouraging the growth of MHEs as specialised housing for older Australians. First, CRA payments are promoted by operators as a form of government support that improves the affordability of MHE living, while also contributing to their own financial returns. Second, the location of properties developed by operators is in response to demand from Australia’s ageing population. Third, and related, new supply in coastal locations drives amenity retirement migration, where older people relocate to locations of natural amenity. Using data on CRA payments to residents in MHEs and permanent residents in caravan parks reveals the geographic distribution of this form of housing for older Australians

A New network direction in housing research : the case for actor-network theory

This paper explores the network as an increasingly popular theoretical paradigm in institutional and sociological readings of market, governance and housing research and seeks to build upon the recent special edition of Housing, Policy and Society (2007, Vol. 24, No.1) by positioning actor-network theory as a new theoretical direction for housing research. Although the special edition provided a comprehensive and timely discussion of “the most relevant strands of network theory” (Mullins & Rhodes, 2007:10) in housing studies (social housing in particular), the absence of a detailed discussion of actor-network theory is remiss given its growing recognition in the post-structural social sciences more broadly. The paper provides an overview of actor-network theory and highlights potential areas where it can contribute to housing studies.18 page(s

Teaching and learning responses to a new professional degree : the case of the Bachelor of Planning, Macquarie University

First offered in 2008, Macquarie University's Bachelor of Planning offers an interdisciplinary social and environmental orientation to planning which seeks to differentiate itself from more traditional programs which focus more on urban design and architecture. Delivered from a board social science basis, the planning program seeks to build on existing University strengths in urban studies, to integrate economic, social, environmental and cultural dimensions of planning and urban management. As part of the program, in addition to a set of core planning subjects, students are required to enrol in a number of elective units ranging from Demography to Development Studies. While this degree structure offers students a firm foundation in the social sciences, it simultaneously present a challenge to teaching staff in these elective courses ncreasingly required to teach and assess planning students. This diverse set of units also represents a challenge to students trying to complete their qualifications and develop appropriate skills for their future lives as planners. This paper explores the opinions and experiences of students over the implementation of the Macquarie University Bachelor of Planning. Emphasis is placed on the learning and teaching challenges and responses obvious in the early stages of the degree.28 page(s

The St Ives mesothermal gold system, Western Australia - a case of golden aftershocks?

The late orogenic evolution of the Archaean greenstone sequence in the Eastern Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia is characterised by strike-slip tectonics and locally very high, fault-controlled, fluid fluxes. Fluid flow was associated with the formation of many fault-hosted and shear-zone-hosted gold deposits, which are commonly clustered adjacent to high displacement faults or shear zones. In the St Ives goldfield, near Kambalda, fluid flow in a gold-producing hydrothermal system was localised within arrays of low displacement faults and shear zones, which form part of the NNW trending, crustal-scale, Boulder-Lefroy fault system (BLFS). The numerous ore-hosting structures are kinematically related to sinistral to sinistral-oblique slip on the Playa Fault, which is a 20-km-long splay of the 200-km-long Boulder-Lefroy Fault. Most of the known gold mineralisation at St Ives occurs within an area of 20 km2 immediately south-west of the Playa Fault. The distribution of low displacement faults and shear zones that host gold mineralisation is related to the presence of a kilometre-scale contractional jog (the Victory jog) and an associated imbricate thrust array on the Playa Fault. By analogy with modern seismogenic systems, the low displacement structures that localised fluid flow and gold mineralisation in the St Ives goldfield are interpreted as aftershock structures whose development was driven by major slip events on the BLFS. For large slip events on the BLFS, and mainshock rupture arrest at the Victory jog, modelling of co-seismic static stress changes indicates that most ore-hosting structures are localised within a crustal volume whose stress state was closer to failure as a consequence of Coulomb stress transfer. The modelling supports an interpretation that aftershock networks can form a high permeability damage zone that localises fluid flow and gold mineralisation within particular parts of crustal-scale fault systems. Both co-seismic stress transfer and time-dependent changes in fluid pressures, during post-seismic fluid redistribution, are implicated in driving the growth of low displacement, gold-hosting fault networks in the St Ives goldfield. Stress transfer modelling has application for area selection in exploration programs targeting mesothermal gold systems. Clustering of deposits hosted by aftershock fracture networks is favoured by the presence of major, long-lived jogs or bends that can repeatedly arrest ruptures propagating along high displacement faults

Flexibility versus certainty: Unsettling the land-use planning shibboleth in Australia

Within the planning literature, the distinction between regulatory planning and strategic spatial planning has exposed a recurring dichotomy that exists between the idea of 'conforming' (regulative certainty) and 'performing' (strategic flexibility) plans and planning systems. This paper critically examines the divergent trajectories of land-use policy and regulation in two Australian states, Queensland and New South Wales. This paper concludes by arguing that the flexibility/certainty dilemma is something of an artifice 'a land-use planning shibboleth' that serves to distract professional and scholarly attention away from substantive issues such as how planning might better engender more sustainable urban settlements