Addressing Complex Problems: Spatial Targeting, Disadvantage and Urban Governance in Australia

Abstract

Over the past 20 years governments in Australia have been experimenting with spatial targeting as a way to address disadvantage. Spatially targeted programs are distinct from traditional functional programs in that they are geographically based and focus on working with communities and across governments to address multiple problems at the local level. In this context NSW and Queensland stand out as two states that adopted explicit spatial responses to urban disadvantage in the form of place management programs. Place management programs were cast as innovative attempts to address concentrated disadvantage in discrete local communities. Why these two states adopted spatial targeting is the central question of this research. The research uses in-depth case study analysis of place management programs in Western Sydney and Brisbane to uncover the multiple factors that led to this form of spatial targeting. Analysis of the decision-making and implementation process for these programs provides insights about the policy process in Australia and the prospects for spatial targeting to tackle complex social policy issues. Place management programs are comparable with examples of spatial targeting in other Western democracies, for example area-based initiatives in the UK. Area-based initiatives sought to address the concentrated disadvantage that arose from restructuring and deindustrialisation, with targeted intensive interventions in local areas. Drawing on the international literature, this research extends the concept of spatial targeting by applying it to the Australian case. Whilst some of the international features are identifiable here, other aspects of spatial targeting are unique to the Australian institutional context. In this thesis it is argued that from the 1980s onwards, economic restructuring and urban redevelopment in Australian cities contributed to the emergence of complex problems. Existing governance arrangements were unable to respond to these problems and the capacity of the service system was undermined by increasing demand as well as public sector reforms and changing welfare policy. Spatially targeted programs were seen as a new way to respond to these issues.