Editorial

No abstract available

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

Editorial

No abstract available

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

A prospective evaluation of treatment with Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIR-spheres) in patients with unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer previously treated with 5-FU based chemotherapy

BACKGROUND: To prospectively evaluate the efficacy and safety of selective internal radiation (SIR) spheres in patients with inoperable liver metastases from colorectal cancer who have failed 5FU based chemotherapy. METHODS: Patients were prospectively enrolled at three Australian centres. All patients had previously received 5-FU based chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer. Patients were ECOG 0–2 and had liver dominant or liver only disease. Concurrent 5-FU was given at investigator discretion. RESULTS: Thirty patients were treated between January 2002 and March 2004. As of July 2004 the median follow-up is 18.3 months. Median patient age was 61.7 years (range 36 – 77). Twenty-nine patients are evaluable for toxicity and response. There were 10 partial responses (33%), with the median duration of response being 8.3 months (range 2–18) and median time to progression of 5.3 mths. Response rates were lower (21%) and progression free survival shorter (3.9 mths) in patients that had received all standard chemotherapy options (n = 14). No responses were seen in patients with a poor performance status (n = 3) or extrahepatic disease (n = 6). Overall treatment related toxicity was acceptable, however significant late toxicity included 4 cases of gastric ulceration. CONCLUSION: In patients with metastatic colorectal cancer that have previously received treatment with 5-FU based chemotherapy, treatment with SIR-spheres has demonstrated encouraging activity. Further studies are required to better define the subsets of patients most likely to respond

Innovating urban governance: a research agenda

Urban governance innovation is being framed as an imperative to address complex urban and global challenges, triggering the adoption of novel institutional forms, approaches and techniques. Urban political geographers are still some way off fully apprehending the dynamics of these innovations and their potential to reconfigure the composition and politics of urban governance. This paper suggests dialogue between urban political geography and public sector innovation literatures as a productive way forward. We build from this engagement to suggest a critical research agenda to drive systematic analysis of innovatory urban governance, its heterogeneous formation, politics and possibilities

Smart Publics: Public Perceptions of Smart Street Furniture in London and Glasgow: Insights for Policy and Practice

No abstract available

Gendering the careers of young professionals: some early findings from a longitudinal study. in Organizing/theorizing: developments in organization theory and practice

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales