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

Planning healthy neighbourhoods: Addressing the links between health, wellbeing, health equity and neighbourhood built form

18 Jun 2018

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

The social determinants of health (SDH) are recommended as a policy focus for governments seeking to increase health and wellbeing, and maintain control of health care budgets. Urban planning influences the SDH by shaping the physical and social aspects of neighbourhoods, creating conditions that can either support or detract from the promotion of physical activity...

Conference paper

Dormancy in two regional cities and its relevance to the growth of Sydney

18 Jun 2018

Jonathan Drane

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

The dormant cityscape continues to haunt many of our burgeoning, high growth cities. Former port lands, ‘brownfield’ sites and degraded suburban areas persist in these states for what appears to be decades without any apparent revival. Despite the usual forms of planning, zoning and controls they appear to display obstinacy over large time periods that...

Conference paper

Walking for recreation: an innovative method for creating a GIS-based walkability surface on the Gold Coast, Australia

18 Jun 2018

Heather Shearer

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

Encouraging greater levels of physical activity is a key policy focus in many urban areas, given the link between this and improved physical and mental health outcomes. The majority of previous studies on walkability however, have focussed on walking for transport; and generally consisted of creating desktop based walkability indices using variables such as residential...

Conference paper

Validating mobile phone generated bicycle route data in support of active transportation

18 Jun 2018

Scott Lieske,

Simone Zarpelon Leao,

Lindsey Conrow,

Christopher J. Pettit

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

As our cities continue to growth in an era of urbanization there is a need to harness the power of big data to support data driven planning. Yet we need to ensure this data in credible and reliable, particularly when obtained from smart phone apps through crowdsourced approaches. The goal of this paper is to...

Conference paper

Reorienting TOD policy in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to improve delivery of low-carbon communities

18 Jun 2018

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

Transit Orientated Development (TOD) provides a nuanced, policy-relevant design to connect social and planning frameworks to create low-carbon communities. This form of urban development aims to co-locate sustainable housing, transport and consolidated urban forms. Fully integrated TODs offer strong potential to blend social and environmental planning objectives to reduce carbon intensity. Despite this, many Australian...