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

The crucial role of private domestic gardens in achieving sustainable cities: a model linking the person, Maslow’s Hierarchy and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to sustainably meeting ecological and human needs

18 Jun 2018

Ross Wissing,

David Jones,

Anna Klas

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

Over the past few decades, the act of engaging people in achieving sustainable cities has focused upon changing environmental values, predominantly through social networks and, increasingly, social practices. Despite increasingly higher levels of environmental awareness within the community, and reasonably consistent levels of community involvement in voluntary activities, there has been little improvement in the...

Conference paper

Distributions of end-use water consumption among households

18 Jun 2018

Mishka Talent

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

Estimating the distribution of domestic water consumption among households is important for establishing baselines against which policy success can be measured. Estimates of this kind are typically produced using household surveys. This study aimed to investigate how simple heuristic estimates of water consumption and surveys compare with measures of water consumption obtained from meter readings...

Conference paper

The rise of the Australian university city campus: RMIT and transformative design in Melbourne's CBD

18 Jun 2018

Andrew Saniga,

Robert Freestone

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

In land use, design and development terms the modern university in Australia is a fixture in all urban environments including central business districts, inner city, middle ring, outer suburbs, and regional towns. The predominant spatial pattern in the university expansion era of the late 1950s through the 1970s saw universities develop expansive campuses on large...

Conference paper

Towards Gold Coast smart city: a combination of local planning priorities and international best practices

18 Jun 2018

Tooran Alizadeh,

Leila Irajifar

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

Smart cities are no longer limited to a handful of metropolitan branded cities; as a large number of mid-sized cities have now joined the trend to become smart. Australia has also introduced its Smart Cities Plan in 2016; emphasizing the opportunities and challenges Australian cities have on their path to be smart. Gold Coast City...

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...