Variation in Bus Transit Attribute Perceptions between Australian Cities

Current research into the peri-urbanisation associated with the rapid population growth of preferred Australian metropolitan regions has shown that their landscape values are put at risk and the region's quality of life (QoL) and the community's standards of liveability are consequently threatened. Whilst the concept of a landscape framework as an analytical, policy and management tool has general acceptance, there appears to be few if any working examples where this concept has been operationalised. To date, the conventional approaches utilised by regional planning agencies and local government have not been able to deliver the necessary tools to incorporate the essential landscape planning principles let alone planning processes to address the regional landscape values at risk in the peri-urban areas of rapidly growing regions. However, promising initiatives have emerged from allied planning fields such as landscape planning. Despite shortcomings in the theoretical development of this conceptual framework, a regional landscape framework has been incorporated into the recently released SEQ Regional Plan 2005–2026, a statutory planning instrument for the South East Queensland (SEQ) region, Australia's fastest growing metropolitan region. Whilst it is conceivable that in the SEQ case, practice may be ahead of theory, there is now an imperative to develop this framework in a manner that it can be utilised as a regional policy framework and as an integrating instrument to address the values of regional landscapes including the range of existing and emerging rural values of the critical urban–rural interface.

Stillorgan QBC Level of Service Appraisal

Congestion and peak loading are key concerns for public transport agencies in Australian cities. Two fare policies, off-peak discounts and volume rebates, have been adopted in South East Queensland (SEQ) attempting to alter passengers' travel behaviour. This research examines how these two fare policies have changed passengers' travel patterns by using newly available smart card data from automated fare collection systems. The findings indicate that current off-peak discounts do not significantly alter passengers' boarding times or encourage peak spreading. Volume rebates, however, do provide incentives to encourage more use of public transport, implying that this could be a way to reduce traffic congestion should most of the additional trips be diverted from other modes. The paper concludes with suggestions for additional, more sophisticated policies to ease congestion and peak loading.

New forms of shared mobility, such as ride-hailing, car-sharing, bike- and scooter-sharing, are all touted as promising means to address car dependence and mass car ownership. Most Australian cities and their policymakers are devising policies to facilitate the entry of these new modes. Many have, however, disputed whether many of these new disruptive transport innovations are indeed sharing and several knowledge gaps remain about shared mobility. Transport policy is overwhelmingly focused on increasing transport supply by building more infrastructure. Demand-side responses such as increase “sharing” of modes receive comparatively less research and policy attention. A key challenge is the limited understanding of “how much transport is shared” and “how to make sharing easy”. Conventional household travel surveys and other forms of data collection are ‘blind’ to whether travellers are either sharing vehicles or sharing rides. In this paper, we explore fundamental questions about sharing in Australian cities – How should we define and measure sharing? How much transport is shared? How could we better measure and capture it? Most importantly, how much of the currently non-shared travel is amenable to sharing? The methods involve in-depth review and analysis of South East Queensland Travel Survey in 2017-18. The results provide preliminary analysis on the state of shared mobility from existing data, and propose improved protocols and new data sources. Urban policymakers should embrace and encourage shared mobility but not ignoring the potential pitfalls.

Purpose Many cities across the world are actively investing in ways to excel in the innovation economy through the development of innovation districts as one of the most popular policy options. While innovation districts are among the leading drivers of innovation activities in cities, they are also high-cost and high-risk investments. Besides, holistic approaches for assessing these districts’ multifaceted performances are scarce. Bridging this knowledge gap is critical, hence, this paper aims to explore how innovation district performance can be assessed through a classification framework. Design/methodology/approach The paper introduces a multidimensional innovation district classification framework and applies it into Australian innovation districts with divergent features, functions, spatial and contextual characteristics. The study places 30 innovation districts from South East Queensland under the microscope of the framework to assess the multifaceted nature of innovation district performance. It uses qualitative analysis method to analyse both the primary and secondary data, and descriptive analysis with basic excel spreadsheet calculations to analyse the validity of the data. Findings The data analysis clusters 30 innovation districts from South East Queensland under three performance levels – i.e. desired, acceptable and unsavoury – concerning their form, feature and function characteristics. Originality/value The results disclose that the framework is a practical tool for informing planners, developers and managers on innovation district performances, and it has the capability to provide guidance for policymakers on their policy and investment decisions regarding the most suitable innovation district types and characteristics to consider.

Australian cities exhibit a quality of life arguably among the best in the world, but rapidly expanding populations may soon threaten this status. The burgeoning conurbation of South East Queensland (SEQ) is an example. Recent growth management policies and plans (e.g. South East Queensland Regional Plan and local authority growth management strategies) have sought to curtail urban sprawl through urban footprints, growth management boundaries, urban consolidation, and other measures. The ‘density imperative’ presented by these collective urban policies affects the sourcing, provision and management of open space in inner-city locales in SEQ which may soon run out of land for parks and urban greenspace. This paper presents results from recent research into the environmental equity dimensions of providing urban greenspace in SEQ. Critiquing the long-entrenched parks-standards approach, the paper offers a ‘needs-based’ alternative, and considers its utility for SEQ and other fast-growing Australian urban areas. Questioning orthodox planning perspectives about who lives in higher density areas, we argue that local and state governments should look towards a variety of new types of green and open space to meet the needs of existing and future residents living in denser built environments.

Rainwater tanks are increasingly being implemented as part of the integrated urban water management paradigm where all sources of water, including potable, stormwater and recycled, are considered eligible to contribute to the urban water supply. Over the last decade or so, there has been a rapid uptake of rainwater tank systems in urban areas, especially in Australian cities, encouraged through financial incentives, but more importantly, from change in residential building codes effectively mandating the installation of rainwater tanks. Homes with rainwater tanks in Australian cities have increased from 15% to 28% over six years to 2013. These building codes specify certain rainwater tank specifications to achieve a stated rainwater use, and hence potable water savings. These specifications include minimum rainwater tank size, minimum connected roof area, plumbing for internal supply for toilets and washing machines, and external supply for garden watering. These expected potable water savings from households are often factored into regional strategic water planning objectives. Hence if rainwater tanks do not deliver the expected saving due to sub-standard installation and/or poor maintenance, it will have an adverse impact on the regional water plan in the longer term. In this paper, a methodology to assess the effectiveness of a government rainwater tank policy in achieving predicted potable water savings is described and illustrated with a case study from South East Queensland, Australia. It is anticipated that water professionals across the globe should be able to use the same methodology to assess the effectiveness of similar rainwater policies, or indeed any other distributed water saving policy, in their local planning communities.

Sustainable development is one of the key issues facing human survival on this planet. The urban planning discipline is actively involved in fostering more feasible ways to structure human activities and their relationship with the global ecosystem’s finite resources. Since sustainability has become a major issue for human kind, sustainability assessments have proliferated in different ways to integrate socio-economic prosperity and provide environmental safeguards. In theory, these assessments can contribute towards addressing the increasing threats posed by climate change and by the depletion of natural resources, by building consensus around shared strategies involving a wide range of stakeholders to address national and international sustainable development goals. In practice however, sustainability assessments are undermined by problems associated with first the policy-making processes (for example, stakeholders’ involvement) and second the measurement of the impacts of policies, plans and programs (such as the definition and computation of sustainability indicators). These issues weaken community trust in sustainability assessments and reduce their efficacy. Critical research is required to explore viable solutions. The main goal of this thesis is to address the shortcomings of current procedures for sustainability assessment. A comparative case study explores differences and similarities between an Australian region (South East Queensland) and an Italian region (Lombardia), which are representative of different institutional and planning backgrounds. Methodologically, this thesis develops and applies a framework to understand how limitations within political and societal processes prevent the achievement of environmentally sustainable planning. This framework combines a ‘limits-oriented approach to evolutionary ecology’ (Sih & Gleeson 1995) transposed to governance and policy-making processes, and the need to pursue a sustainable use of finite natural resources as suggested by positions addressing the ‘limits to growth’ by Meadows et al. (1972). Overall, this thesis develops an approach to diagnose current obstacles that need to be overcome and the pathway for achieving institutionalised limits-oriented approaches for improving procedures of sustainability assessment. This ‘limits-oriented’ framework outlines the benefits that South East Queensland and Lombardia can achieve by optimising current practices for sustainable planning within their regional contexts. This approach explores the limiting traits that undermine the performance of sustainability assessments, and proposes ways to bridge the gaps that separate their theoretical conceptualisation from their practical implementation. The framework developed and tested through this thesis offers an analytical lens to examine how the assessment of sustainable planning is currently featured in different institutional contexts. Its experimental implementation in countries with different planning traditions provides an insight on how to overcome issues affecting the procedural development of sustainability assessments and their measurement of sustainability.

Energy Implications of Water Management in Cities

Competition for land between agriculture and urban uses is a global problem. Until recently, planners and policy makers have relied on regulatory ‘command and control’ planning approaches; however, there is growing interest in the use of market-based instruments to address natural resource management issues in complex and highly contested peri-urban environments. Tradable development rights are one type of market-based instrument. While tradable development rights have been used extensively in the United States, their application in Australia has been limited. Yet, in Australia, population growth and development in peri-urban areas is placing extensive pressure on natural resources and productive agricultural lands. These pressures are particularly acute in Australia's fastest growing metropolitan region, South East Queensland. By using a case study approach we explore stakeholder perspectives on the value of this tool to protect peri-urban landscape values. Whilst current planner and stakeholder perspectives suggest there is considerable support, there are substantial political, institutional, knowledge, resource and legislative barriers that need to be overcome before this tool can be a viable, realistic and acceptable option for land use planning in peri-urban regions such as South East Queensland.

This article presents the findings of a cross-cultural research project that explored similarities and differences between palliative care service provision in Kerala, India and South-East Queensland, Australia, to inform a process of mutual learning for service development. Three major points of difference that can inform this process of mutual learning were identified: 1) an understanding of the significance of honesty in information-giving to the patient, 2) recognition of the importance of palliative care specialists providing education to mainstream health professionals, and 3) appreciation of the need for palliative care to be cognizant of the socio-economic impact of dying-especially for families experiencing poverty-by embracing strategies for financial and material support. The findings highlight the effectiveness of a cross-cultural collaboration between health professionals and researchers in South-East Queensland, Australia and Kerala, India.

Book reviewed in this article:Australian Cities and Public Policy, edited by Peter Scott Geomorphology of Papua New Guinea, by Ernest Loffler Employment Incomes and Migration in Papua New Guinea Towns, by R. Garnaut, M. Wright, R. Curtain. 17 times 25 cms, xiü and 212 pages, 120 tables. Monograph 6 Wilderness in Australia — Eastern NSW and South Eastern Queensland, by Peter Helman, Alan Jones, John Pigram, and Jeremy Smith The Australian Climatic Environment, by E. Linacre and J. Hobbs

Black African refugee communities are a relatively recent addition to the Australia landscape. Between 2001 and 2007, over 5000 refugees from various African nations resettled in Queensland. There are very few data about African refugee settlement geography in Australia and no previous study delineating African refugee settlement within the State of Queensland. This research addresses the knowledge gap by examining the geographic distribution and secondary migration patterns of eight African refugee communities in Southeast Queensland. The research adopted a multi-method approach, mapping quantitative data from an existing secondary database and comparing these to qualitative primary data to determine geographical distribution. Additional qualitative data were used to establish secondary migration patterns of the case study communities. Results show noticeable discrepancies between existing secondary datasets and primary data collected from the communities. These inconsistencies are significant because settlement service providers who use the secondary data to budget, plan and deliver essential settlement services might be underestimating the size of the African communities and missing some settlement locations altogether. The results also reveal a tension between the main socio-cultural forces of concentration and housing forces of dispersion that are driving secondary migration in the communities. A policy recommendation to mitigate the potentially negative effects of residential dispersion on settlement outcomes includes the strategic location of service hubs in key suburbs, such as Moorooka, to which the communities are already drawn.

The purpose of this thesis is to advance understanding of oil vulnerability1 of transport in Asia Pacific cities. This is achieved by the development of a multiscalar methodology which leads to nine published/submitted papers. This thesis is motivated by the concern of uncertain oil prices and the uneven dependence of oil in transport due to different urban designs and available modes to transport users. To achieve this purpose, a literature review (Chapter 2) is conducted, revealing prior oil vulnerability studies can be distinguished as being inter-city, intra-urban and disaggregate (household or personal) based. A conceptual framework based on prevailing vulnerability components is developed, defining oil vulnerability with the tripartite components of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. This conceptual framework helps to interpret previous and current research methodologies and approaches. The methodological approach of this thesis is based on these conceptualisations, as outlined in Chapter 3. A broad international comparison study is first presented in Chapter 4. Eleven major cities across the Asia Pacific are analysed, showing that compact cities like Hong Kong and Singapore are the least vulnerable. Australasian cities are highly vulnerable due to high car use, yet this vulnerability is offset by the relatively high income and wealth of their populations. New ways to research oil vulnerability are introduced. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method is first used to benchmark the level of fuel stress, which refers to the proportion of fuel expenditure to disposable income. This is a direct measure of oil vulnerability, instead of proxy measures that were largely used in previous efforts. Oil resilience is also measured by how fuel stress could be offset by public and active transport usage. Chapter 5 used this method to examine Australian major cities, and Chapter 6 takes the DEA method to an international level, which internal divisions between Australia and Taiwan are compared. The thesis then narrows down to areas within cities (intra-urban). Presented in Chapter 7 is an improved vulnerability mapping method covering South-East Queensland (SEQ). This involves the use of previously unused adaptive capacity measures. The resultant spatial analysis provides a more nuanced socio-spatial understanding of oil vulnerability across urban spaces. Chapter 8 takes this approach and uses it in what is likely to be the first international spatial mapping comparison of intraurban oil vulnerability - Hong Kong is compared with Brisbane. The results show stark contrast of oil vulnerability of Hong Kong and Brisbane, where in the latter, the car is the dominant mode in most parts of the city. A comparative study of urban transport policy follows in Chapter 9. This involves a discursive analysis of urban transport policy of both Hong Kong and Brisbane and revealed the different levels of interest in oil vulnerability and the associated policy responses. Lastly, an analysis of Gold Coast’s recent light rail commencement is provided in Chapter 10 demonstrating the effect on vehicle travel distance on households between 2009 and 2015. The thesis contributes to transport and urban policy research by presenting likely the first international comparison of multi-level oil vulnerability, both quantitatively and qualitatively, inter-city and intra-urban. Insights drawn from the results will help to shape the debates on preparing for post-petroleum cities and to reduce automobile dependence for a more sustainable future.

New approach for the measurement of long-term alcohol consumption trends: Application of wastewater-based epidemiology in an Australian regional city