Large Australian City Research Articles

Conurban

Conurban

The Public Space and the Monuments of the City

The relationship between the public spaces of a city and those buildings which represent the significant institutions of the community—the monuments of the city—reflects both the values and the power structure of that community. It epitomises the urban design process as intrinsically both hermeneutic in nature and driven by the dominant cultural values of a society.The preamble provides a framework which contrasts the typical outcomes of democratic and autocratic decision-making processes Four case studies of major new or proposed public spaces in the two largest Australian cities are discussed. Inadequacy of consultative processes in three of these cases may in some measure account for the critical interface between the monument and the public space being reminiscent of the products of autocratic regimes, whilst the fourth is more characteristic of the outcomes expected of a democratic society.

Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression in Australian Adolescents: Comparisons with Worldwide Data

Data from two Australian studies were combined so that the prevalence of anxiety and depression in a large, normative sample of Australian adolescents could be investigated. The combined sample comprised 1,299 adolescents randomly selected from metropolitan and country schools in Melbourne, a large Australian city. The data were examined in order to ascertain the percentages of adolescents who scored above the clinical cut-off on two self-report instruments-the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (C. R. Reynolds & B. 0. Richmond, 1985) and the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (W. M. Reynolds, 1986). The results of these analyses were then compared with previously reported prevalence rates from studies worldwide. This comparison revealed striking differences in the prevalence of anxiety and depression across different countries and cultures. Limitations attributable to different self-report measures and imposed-etic approaches are discussed. Issues pertaining to social and political climate are also raised.

Associations between varying magnitudes of the urban heat island and the synoptic climatology in Melbourne, Australia

This paper examines the characteristics of the urban heat island (UHI) in a large Australian city (Melbourne) using local area weather data and the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalyses data of mean sea level pressure (MSLP). Conventional methods to determine the UHI from climatological data often involve comparing minimum temperature data between urban and rural environments. The findings presented in this paper show that comparing simultaneous measurements of temperature at one urban and three nearby airport sites at 0600 (Australian eastern standard time (EST)) provided a better estimate of the UHI magnitude. Analyses of these data between 1973–1991 were grouped according to the daily UHI magnitude. For each UHI group of the daily data, mean anomalous synoptic conditions from the 19-year mean monthly MSLP were examined for the influence of the different MSLP conditions on varying UHI magnitudes. These synoptic conditions included the entire range of weather conditions over the study period. Over the 19-year period, daily analyses of the regional climatological 0600 EST temperature data revealed a UHI between −3.16° and 6.0°C. The reanalyses of the NCEP MSLP data, in association with the local area climatological data, suggest that statistically significant anomalous anticyclonic conditions were associated with the warmest 17% and coolest 1% of UHI events. The position of the centre of the anticyclone was critical to UHI genesis and development. Statistically significant mean low pressure anomalies were associated with UHI values between 0° and 1°C. These occurred on 40% of the days between 1973–1991. Melbourne's urban area, independent of the topography, was found to inhibit early morning advection events of warm continent air and result in an urban cool island (UCI). Copyright © 2000 Royal Meteorological Society

The management of chronic wounds: factors that affect nurses' decision-making.

This study sought to determine how registered nurses make decisions regarding the management of chronic wounds. A self-administered questionnaire consisting of both Likert-type and open-ended questions was used to survey registered nurses working in hospitals and community services in a large Australian city. A total of 140 questionnaires were returned from a variety of clinical settings. The study revealed that registered nurses had a significant role in chronic wound management. However, they relied primarily on their own experience and that of colleagues for decision making in which they had varying degrees of autonomy. The authors conclude that nurses and medical staff require more objective, research-based education on wound assessment and management.

Caregiver factors and pool fencing: an exploratory analysis.

OBJECTIVES: To explore the relationship between caregiver characteristics and the adequacy of domestic swimming pool fencing. SETTING: A typical metropolitan area of a large Australian capital city, Brisbane. METHODS: From...

Governmentality in Parent-Teacher Communications

Official rhetoric emphasising the importance of 'good' home-school relationships for the common good of children/students is widespread. Drawing upon Foucault's notion of governmentality, this paper analyses different examples of parent-teacher talk and printed materials sent to parents of students attending various secondary schools in and around a large Australian city. The paper focuses particularly on extracts in which responsibility for student surveillance is negotiated. Analysis of home-school communications reveals that readers and writers, hearers and listeners are conversationally and textually positioned within and through such communications as subjects and agents of regulation and control within school discourses. Individual parents, teachers and students are seen to actively regulate themselves and each other by means of certain recurring conversational and textual practices. Such communications can thus be seen as practices of governmentality.

CAN URBAN DENSITY EXPLAIN PERSONAL TRAVEL LEVELS?

This article examines the changes in personal travel levels, urban density, and other land use patterns over the period 1901 to 1991 in large Australian cities. It is shown that urban density changes are not the direct cause of the observed travel increases. Instead, the huge rise in travel convenience brought about largely by the shift from public transport to cars, best explains travel growth in the post-war era. Urban density, however, does affect travel convenience (especially average travel speeds and ease of parking), and thus indirectly, travel levels.

Agency registered nurse use of medical equipment: an Australian perspective

This cross-sectional survey explored how and what 142 registered nurses working for a nursing agency in a large South Australian city initially learn about the medical devices they use in direct patient care, as well as the consequences of device use both for patients and staff. The most frequently identified method of initial learning was reading the user/instruction manual. Furthermore, 87.1% of respondents indicated they had received instruction from another staff member on their units, typically another registered nurse. At least 90% of participants indicated they initially learned the purpose of the device and how to operate it. Medical device use caused 39.4% of registered nurses to feel stress. Only 10% indicated that they had used a medical device that had harmed a patient.

Postural stability, falls and fractures in the elderly: Results from the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study

OBJECTIVE: To assess measures of postural stability in a large population of persons aged over 60 years in order to compare performance between fallers and non-fallers and relate postural stability to fracture prevalence. METHODS: The sensorimotor, visual and balance functions were measured in 1762 ambulatory, community-dwelling patients aged between 60 and 100 years (mean age, 70.1 years) living in a large semi-urban Australian city. A history of recent falls and fractures was recorded at the time of assessment. RESULTS: The prevalence of impairment in all tests increased with age. Men performed significantly better than women in tests of muscle strength, visual field dependence, sway on the floor with eyes open and dynamic balance. In the 12 months before testing, 72.3% of the patients experienced no falls, 18.4% fell only once and 9.3% fell on two or more occasions. Multiple fallers had weaker quadriceps, poorer tactile sensitivity, greater visual field dependence and greater body sway than other patients. Test scores for once-only fallers were mostly between those for non-fallers and multiple fallers. Those who suffered recent fall-related fractures had significantly reduced tactile sensitivity and quadriceps strength and increased body sway. Postural stability was also impaired in patients taking psychoactive and/or anti-hypertensive medications. CONCLUSION: Tests of postural stability can identify, independently of age, individuals living in the community who are at risk of falls and fall-related fractures. Language: en

BUILDING UPON THE FOUNDATIONS OF GENTRIFICATION: INNER-CITY HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA IN THE 1990s

In three recent papers, Bourne has suggested that the rate of gentrification in Canadian cities will decline, for both demand and supply reasons, notwithstanding economic recovery in the mid- 1990s. This prognosis for Canadian cities is so much at odds with the activity currently being generated in the upper-income housing markets at the center of the five largest Australian cities that it invites further investigation. Evidence is presented of recovery in the inner-suburban terrace housing submarket, and what began as countercyclical investment in the Australian equivalent of the loft-conversion and condominium submarkets. This latest phase of residential revitalization in the inner city heralds a trend to higher-value, high-rise living at the center of Australian cities. By the early 1990s enough Australians had become conditioned to inner-area living to provide optimism about the underlying demand, while the projected yields brought condominium development into the realm of financial feasibility. But c...

Postural stability, falls and fractures in the elderly: results from the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study

To assess measures of postural stability in a large population of persons aged over 60 years in order to compare performance between fallers and non-fallers and relate postural stability to fracture prevalence. The sensorimotor, visual and balance functions were measured in 1762 ambulatory, community-dwelling patients aged between 60 and 100 years (mean age, 70.1 years) living in a large semi-urban Australian city. A history of recent falls and fractures was recorded at the time of assessment. The prevalence of impairment in all tests increased with age. Men performed significantly better than women in tests of muscle strength, visual field dependence, sway on the floor with eyes open and dynamic balance. In the 12 months before testing, 72.3% of the patients experienced no falls, 18.4% fell only once and 9.3% fell on two or more occasions. Multiple fallers had weaker quadriceps, poorer tactile sensitivity, greater visual field dependence and greater body sway than other patients. Test scores for once-only fallers were mostly between those for non-fallers and multiple fallers. Those who suffered recent fall-related fractures had significantly reduced tactile sensitivity and quadriceps strength and increased body sway. Postural stability was also impaired in patients taking psychoactive and/or anti-hypertensive medications. Tests of postural stability can identify, independently of age, individuals living in the community who are at risk of falls and fall-related fractures.

Dimensions of adolescent sexual ideology

ABSTRACTAll theories of adolescent development give sexuality a central place in negotiating the transition from child to adult. The sexual urges that emerge at puberty must be blended with other aspects of teenagers' lives and channelled adaptively. It is especially important that the adolescent be able to integrate his or her sexual feelings, needs, and desires into a coherent and positive self-identity, which contains, as one aspect, a sexual self. This sexual self is influenced in complex ways by cultural expectations and the sexual discourse characteristic of any social context. This study is a report of interviews with 153 adolescents aged 15 to 18 from three very different backgrounds: homeless youth, and Anglo-Australian and Greek-Australian young people living at home in a large Australian city. A number of themes about the ways young people describe their sexual worlds emerged from analysis of the interviews. The themes concerned permissiveness, romance, beliefs about both the “double standard” and the control of sexual urges, sexual aggression, and sexual “regrets.” The importance of these themes in influencing sexual self-definition and sexual behaviour is presented. The extent to which young people undergo conflict and questioning in integrating their ideas about sexuality and their actual sexual behaviours is considered.

Do Industrial Cities have the Highest Rates of Urban Unemployment?

This paper considers the widely held, but still untested, assumption that deindustrialised and deindustrialising cities have the highest rates of urban unemployment today. Comparison is made between the unemployment rates for the largest Australian cities devoted significantly to manufacturing – Geelong, Newcastle, and Wollongong – and the rates for the other nine major Australian cities. What is found is that the industrial cities did not have the highest rates of unemployment at any of the four censuses under examination(1971, 1976, 1981, 1986). The highest rates were in tourist cities, centres antithetical to industrial cities because they exist for consumption rather than for production (as is the case with the industrial cities).

Aboriginal migration to the cities.

"An analysis of actual patterns of Aboriginal migration to the large Australian cities (major urban areas), using data from the 1981 and 1986 Australian Censuses, shows that the major urban areas of New South Wales and Victoria were...losing Aboriginal population through net migration throughout the period 1976 to 1986. At both inter-State level and country-to-city level, any Aboriginal migration flow in one direction tends to be almost cancelled out by a flow of similar size in the opposite direction. However, there are definite age-specific patterns. In particular, there is movement of young single adults to the cities, often counterbalanced by migration of somewhat older adults with their children to the country. Aboriginal migrants have higher levels of labour-force participation than equivalent categories of non-migrants."

Active and Passive Conceptions of the Television Audience: Effects of a Change in Viewing Routine

Are human beings best viewed as active or passive in relationship to their environment? Television audience research in recent decades exemplifies this longstanding issue. Polarization on the question may be due to a tendency to compartmentalize qualitative and quantitative data. In this study, a prototypicalfield experiment involving 156 adult residents in a large Australian city generated both types of data to clarify the nature of television audience activity. Viewing frequencies for a group restricted to their least preferred channel decreased significantly when compared to two other comparison groups suggesting that attraction to content does in fact play an important role in influencing viewing behavior. Qualitative comments elicited during the experience of being restricted suggested important differences in respondents' affinity with the medium. Viewers can possibly be distinguished on the basis of whether they orient to content or medium and whether they experience a sense of freedom and control or a lack thereof. The value of field experimentation as a way to generate both convergent quantitative and divergent qualitative data is emphasized.

Changes in self-containment within Melbourne, 1966–1981

Abstract This paper explores the issues of whether the post Second World War suburbanisation of jobs and residents in large Australian cities has facilitated opportunities for outer suburban residents to obtain local work rather than travel to jobs in the inner suburbs, as was the typical case prewar. Empirical data are provided to examine this question for the case of one major Australian city, Melbourne.

Reciprocal effects between locus of control and job attributes

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the reciprocal relationships between locus of control and job attributes of a representative sample of 1383 employees in a large Australian city. It was predicted that employees with an internal locus of control would attain jobs higher on skill-utilization, influence and income than those attained by employees with an external locus of control. It was also predicted that jobs involving high skill-utlization, influence and income would induce greater internal control beliefs than those low on skill-utilization, influence and income. Locus of control was measured using Rotter's scale (Rotter, 1966). Reciprocal causation was assessed using two-stage least squares analysis. For the total sample, it was found that locus of control and job attributes were reciprocally determined. However, locus of control was not related to influence when skill-utilization and income were controlled. When the sample was split on the basis of gender and marital status, the predi...

An evaluation of an australian youth work programme

To evaluate the effects of a youth work programme with a focus on interpersonal relationships, contacts were made with young people on the streets of a large Australian city. Verbalizations from them were recorded and content analysed and indicated that they were experiencing a poverty of interpersonal regard. They mentioned few satisfying interpersonal relationships and talked of being lonely. Comparison of young people who participated in the programme with others who did not indicated that the former had made at least short term gains in both of these areas, while other aspects of their experience outside the focus of the programme had not varied from the beginning to the end of the four month period of the evaluation.

Neighbourhood Change in Inner Adelaide, 1966-76

The inner residential areas of Australian cities have not experienced the neighbourhood decline associated with the restructuring of old British and US industrial cities. Rather, neighbourhood change near the centre of Australian cities during the 1960s and 70s has been characterised by reinvestment in land and structures. Residential rejuvenation in one such city is illustrated with a case study of Inner Adelaide between 1966 and 1976. This involves documenting the regional shift, 1966-76, in the occupational structure of the workforce residing in Inner Adelaide. Next we outline the main features of a typology which is then used to reveal the direction, nature and spatial expression of neighbourhood transition within Inner Adelaide, 1966-76. Lastly, some reasons are advanced for the predominantly upward trajectory of neighbourhood change in the inner areas of large Australian cities.