Conference

7th State of Australian Cities Conference, 9-11 December 2015, Gold Coast, 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 7 was held in the City of Gold Coast and hosted by Griffith University.

The 164 peer reviewed papers were organised into seven broad themes but all shared, to varying degrees, a common focus on the ways in which high quality academic research can be used in the development and implementation of policy. The conference featured leading national and local politicians and policy makers who shared their views on some of the current challenges facing cities and how these might be overcome in the future.

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

Conference paper

The function of individual factors on travel behaviour: comparative studies on Perth and Shanghai

11 Dec 2015

Shaoli Wang

7th State of Australian Cities Conference, 9-11 December 2015, Gold Coast, Australia

The aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of the extent that personal travel behaviour is affected by individual factors such as socio-economic characteristics and travel attitudes rather than by external factors such as land use system and the transport system.

Conference paper

Regional innovation and public wi-fi

11 Dec 2015

Chris K. Wilson,

Ian McShane,

Denise Meredyth

7th State of Australian Cities Conference, 9-11 December 2015, Gold Coast, Australia

The paper focuses on the link between regional development, social enterprise and digital infrastructure, through analysis of an initiative in Goulburn NSW, in which local entrepreneurs rigged up a wi-fi network, providing free internet access to the public in the city’s main street.

Conference paper

Urban dimensions of creative clustering: mix/adaptation/networks/ambivalence

11 Dec 2015

Stephen Wood,

Kim Dovey,

Lucinda Pike

7th State of Australian Cities Conference, 9-11 December 2015, Gold Coast, Australia

Why do creative clusters emerge within some specific urban morphologies and not others? This paper is based on a series of in-depth interviews with cultural producers in a range of fields including included design, new media, visual and performing arts, working in key creative clusters in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Conference paper

Don't fence me in: Understanding local government decisions to allocate and fence public open space for dogs in Melbourne, Australia

11 Dec 2015

Simon Carter,

Jennifer Day,

Ole Fryd

7th State of Australian Cities Conference, 9-11 December 2015, Gold Coast, Australia

This study examines the rationales of key actors in local government in making decisions about fencing public open spaces for dogs and builds an overarching understanding of how different councils allocate public open space for dogs.

Conference paper

Resilient cities and lost opportunities: the case of transport funding in New Zealand

11 Dec 2015

Stephen Knight-Lenihan

7th State of Australian Cities Conference, 9-11 December 2015, Gold Coast, Australia

This paper uses the example of New Zealand’s national transport funding policy and allocation processes to demonstrate how an unreflective use of the term resilience results in lost opportunities to pursue a low carbon future, and works against the concept of resilience itself.