Conference

8th State of Australian Cities National Conference, 28-30 November 2017, Adelaide, Australia

Owning Institution

The State of Australian Cities (SOAC) national conferences have been held biennially since 2003 to support interdisciplinary policy-related urban research. SOAC 2017 was jointly hosted in Adelaide by the University of South Australia, the University of Adelaide and Flinders University.

Refereed papers at SOAC 2017 were organized across the seven well-established themes of Economy, Environment, Governance, Structure, Movement and Infrastructure, Housing and Social, and Health. There were also three significant plenary panel sessions on Housing Affordability, Urban Resilience and the continuing challenge of achieving more productive relationships between academic researchers and urban policymakers.

Papers from all past and subsequent SOAC conferences can be found at the State of Australian Cities Conferences Collection on APO.

Conference paper

Toward a framework for walkable and bikeable coastal Australian communities

18 Jun 2018

Anthony J. McCosker

8th State of Australian Cities National Conference, 28-30 November 2017, Adelaide, Australia

Australia demonstrates a unique spatial pattern whereby approximately half of the population resides within seven kilometres (and eighty-five percent within fifty kilometres) of the coast, and eighty-nine percent live in areas defined as ‘urban’ but that have a relatively low population density. This differs notably from the geographies evident of (predominantly) European and North American...

Conference paper

Deep ecology, nonhumans and activism: discursive representations of nature in controversial land use developments

18 Jun 2018

Ryan Quinn

8th State of Australian Cities National Conference, 28-30 November 2017, Adelaide, Australia

As cities continue to expand outwards and the pressure for urban infill intensifies, there has been increased community concern around the protection and enhancement of urban natures. In land-use planning processes, the inability of nonhuman nature to communicate or deliberate in matters affecting them, tends to confine their participation to human interpretation and representation. Such...

Conference paper

Skilled workers in Ballarat and Bendigo: why did they choose a regional location and are they likely to stay?

18 Jun 2018

Fiona McKenzie

8th State of Australian Cities National Conference, 28-30 November 2017, Adelaide, Australia

Capital cities like Melbourne continue to attract the majority of State population growth. This can create challenges for attracting skilled workers to, and retaining them in, regional locations. This paper reports on a survey of more than 1200 professional workers in the Victorian regional cities of Bendigo and Ballarat. The survey aimed to better understand...

Conference paper

Roxby Downs: a lost opportunity by urban planning and design

18 Jun 2018

Michael McGreevy

8th State of Australian Cities National Conference, 28-30 November 2017, Adelaide, Australia

In hegemonic economic theories, base activity, which taps into exogenous capital flows as exports, underpins endogenous activity within urban environments. Historically, urban development in the remote arid and semi-arid interior of Australia has occurred on the back of the exploitation of mineral resources. Major interior towns such as Ballarat, Bendigo, Mt Isa, and Kalgoorlie owe...

Conference paper

Rental vulnerability: a new methodology for measuring and mapping disadvantage in rental housing

18 Jun 2018

Laurence Troy,

Chris Martin

8th State of Australian Cities National Conference, 28-30 November 2017, Adelaide, Australia

This paper presents the outcomes of research undertaken for Tenants Queensland to develop and map a ‘rental vulnerability index’ (RVI) for Queensland. Originally conceived of to help plan the delivery of tenant advice services, the RVI combines various housing system indicators and indicators of disadvantage to produce a composite measure of rental vulnerability.