Conference

10th State of Australasian Cities National Conference, 1-3 December 2021, Melbourne, 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 2021 was hosted collaboratively and online by RMIT University, Monash University, Swinburne University and the University of Melbourne.

Refereed papers and extended abstracts at SOAC 2021 focus on urban and regional transitions in the COVID recovery era to report and appraise the social, spatial, and economic consequences for equity, inclusion and justice. The conference aims to connect these questions to urban practice and inform more robust policy and public discussions about the emerging new futures of Australasian cities and regions. In keeping with past SOAC conferences, SOAC 2021 papers are organised into broad thematic tracks: City Economics & Economies, City Governance, City Health & Liveability, City & Nature, City Movement & Infrastructure, City Structure, City Social & Housing and, for the first time this conference, a track called 'Reckoning with Settler Colonial Cities'.

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

Conference paper

Beyond ‘mobility reductionism’: striking new paradigms for the wellbeing of Wheeled Mobility Device (WMD) users in the public realm

12 May 2022

Puneeta Thakur

10th State of Australasian Cities National Conference, 1-3 December 2021, Melbourne, Australia

This presented paper is an exercise in reforming policy planning on disability and ensuring the participation of WMD users in communities. It is critical of the conventional placemaking approaches that focus solely on meeting mobility needs and are ‘mobility reductionist’.

Conference paper

COVID-19 infection outbreaks in Melbourne: what is the role of the built environment?

5 May 2022

Eric Gaisie,

Nana Yaw Oppong-Yeboah

10th State of Australasian Cities National Conference, 1-3 December 2021, Melbourne, Australia

This ongoing research examined the effects of the built environment attributes on COVID-19 infections, using metropolitan Melbourne as a case study. This study explores the intracity dynamics of Melbourne neighbourhoods using postcode-level data and analysis across three different outbreaks.

Conference paper

$35 billion is a lot for a subway that won’t really improve accessibility all that much

5 May 2022

Iain Lawrie,

Nathan Pittman,

John Stone

10th State of Australasian Cities National Conference, 1-3 December 2021, Melbourne, Australia

Compared to Melbourne's current the Suburban Rail Loop project, this paper argues that much more service, and thus accessibility, could be provided for a given budget through surface upgrade options. To test this assumption, the paper uses an ‘Alternative Network’ structure using a conservative but still significant $25 billion budget.

Conference paper

The loss of peri-urban agricultural land and the state-local tensions in managing its demise: the case of Greater Western Sydney, Australia

5 May 2022

Amy Lawton,

Nicky Morrison

10th State of Australasian Cities National Conference, 1-3 December 2021, Melbourne, Australia

This study examines the drivers of peri-urban agricultural land loss in Greater Western Sydney (GWS), one of the fastest growing peri-urban regions in Australia, and on the particular contribution of government planning policy and resultant tensions between state and local government decision making.

Conference paper

Closing the gap: decolonisation, ANT and a bridge between practitioners and academics

5 May 2022

Eric Keys,

David Week

10th State of Australasian Cities National Conference, 1-3 December 2021, Melbourne, Australia

In order to make the decolonisation of planning a fact, rather than an aspiration, this paper asks: How do we build a bridge between: (a) the researchers on decolonisation, and their network, in their role as “critics and conscience of society” and (b) the practitioners of planning, in their role as executors of government policy...