Master Planned Estate Research Articles

Towards sustainable urban communities: Investigating the associations between community parks and place attachment in master-planned estates in Sydney

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our living experiences in cities and neighbourhoods. It is urgently necessary to understand more about place attachment and human-environment interactions in urban communities. Master-Planned Estate (MPE) as a sustainable residential form, provides physical and social infrastructures to build a healthy community and sustainable environment. Place attachment is one essential factor of community sustainability. However, there is a significant research gap in exploring the relationship between neighbourhood built environment and place attachment in MPEs. This study investigates the associations between community parks and place attachment in MPEs in Sydney. Using the data collected via a resident survey in two MPEs in Sydney during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, we found that three factors of community park use are significantly and positively associated with place attachment: pedestrian accessibility to parks, pedestrian connectivity with surroundings and satisfaction with children's playground in parks. This study provides theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions to sustainable communities. It tests place attachment theory in the Australian MPE context. It provides first-hand empirical evidence to understand human-environment interactions in MPEs and adds evidence from the COVID-19 context to the literature. The findings provide practical implications for sustainable urban communities in Sydney or wider regions.

Inevitability of automobility: How private car use is perpetuated in a greenfield housing estate

Ongoing advances in technologies of connectivity have strengthened our capacity to envision urban environments less dominated by private car use. Yet many cities remain attached to, and defined by, the automobile. In challenging this status quo, we must understand the complex and varied ways private car use is reinforced in different urban environments. This paper provides such an understanding in the context of a low-density, and currently car-dependent, city. It presents a detailed analysis of the system of automobility to demonstrate the way private-car use is unintentionally perpetuated through contemporary practices of planning, developing and inhabiting cities. A newly constructed suburb in Sydney, Australia, provides the case for analysis. The suburb—Oran Park—is a master-planned estate intentionally designed to encourage alternative transport modes that is rendered ostensibly car-dependent as a result of a confluence of historical and contemporary structural and practical influences. The paper combines a detailed examination of the planning, transport and land-use context of the suburb with survey data from 300 of its residents. The paper’s novel contribution is to analyze these data sources using a social practice approach. The analysis lays bare the inevitability of automobility’s reproduction in the estate—describing the litany of elements that are both infrastructural and cultural and that, in orchestration, reproduce private car use. These elements are deconstructed to inform future challenges to the hegemony of the private car.

The Lived Experience of Residents in an Emerging Master-Planned Community

Master-planned communities around the world are developed and purposefully planned to address housing sustainability and community connectivity; they often have a distinctive look, and appeal to a particular customer base desiring a strong, utopian-esque community. However, the lived experience of new residents joining master-planned communities has not been explored. This paper examines the lived experience of new residents within an emerging Australian master-planned estate, and reports on the first two stages of a longitudinal study focusing on the results of an online forum. This unique study presents real-life findings on a culturally diverse community. The findings reveal how the purposeful development of community identity in the early stages of the MPCommunity has not led to satisfactory levels of social infrastructure or social connectedness for the pioneering residents. The physical and social environment, as interpreted by residents against the developers’ imagined vision and marketing testimonies, has not been entirely satisfactory. Infrastructure issues—such as transport, and access to daily activities such as shopping, work, and school—were points of frustration and dissatisfaction. The findings provide insight into the challenges and opportunities for residents in a developing MPC, and further our understanding of the specific factors that inform us as to how social infrastructure can best encourage and support connection within existing and future MPC developments.

The Limits to Authority: Developer Interventions and Neighbour Problems on a Master Planned Estate

Master planned estates are large suburban developments built by a private sector developer. As part of its pursuit of building ready-made communities, the Developer becomes active in the management of the estate for years after its completion, subsequently finding itself in the difficult position of running, rather than simply building, new communities. In this paper, this challenge facing the Developer is explored with reference to Foucault’s writing on the problematics of governing under liberalism and the question of what is within the competence of the state and what is not. This paper shows how corporate property developers pose themselves similar questions and face the effects of demarcating certain spheres of residential life as not within their domain. The example addressed here is the issue of managing problems between neighbours and the tensions arising from residents’ expectations that this is indeed a matter of development control.

Under Construction: How Home-making and Underlying Purchase Motivations Surface in a Housing Building Site

Drawing on material geographies of home, this paper argues researching building sites furthers understandings of home-making, purchase motivations and modes of valuing new homes. The building site is examined through semi-structured walking interviews with 21 households living in a master-planned estate (MPE) under construction in southern Sydney. MPEs are a fitting representative for profiling the intricacies of new build housing developments. In these contexts, the duration of the building site persists; this overlaps with early occupation and creates challenges that are expected and unexpected, brief and enduring. Results are presented in two sections. First, sharing space with builders and new neighbours fractures some expectations of an ideal home. Home-making proceeds by accommodating, both emotionally and physically, the challenges of building sites. The second section shows how residents weigh up home-making challenges alongside anticipated financial reward. This reward is always speculative though, and the building site compounds this: residents take a risk at the outset, managing fears and worries that hinge upon the aesthetic expression of others. Building site experiences are both an example and evidence of home as a process. Housing studies should continue to pause at these interstitial moments, towards better grasping the expectations and aspirations of contemporary home-making.

‘A Fantasy to Get Employment Around the Area’: Long Commutes and Resident Health in an Outer Urban Master-Planned Estate

The Selandra Rise master-planned estate (MPE) in Melbourne’s south-east growth corridor was designed to create a “healthy and engaged community” through the provision of parks, physical activity opportunities and community facilities. A 5 year longitudinal study researched the impact on residents. Over one third of residents spent 2 to 3 h per day commuting and high levels of dissatisfaction with commutes were found. Longer commute times were associated with poor physical activity and weight outcomes. The paper concludes that provisions for health and wellbeing within an MPE are insufficient when opportunities for local employment are limited and broader locational, connectivity and transport disadvantages are not addressed.

Understanding the Materiality of Neighbourhoods in ‘Healthy Practices’: Outdoor Exercise Practices in a New Master-planned Estate

The importance of neighbourhood design for health outcomes is well-established. Yet interactions between people and neighbourhood features, and how they are incorporated into daily routines, remain conceptually and empirically underdeveloped. Using theories of social practice this paper foregrounds the materiality of neighbourhoods to understand the role of natural and built features in everyday practices of physical activity. Drawing on longitudinal data about residents who recently moved to a master-planned estate, we discuss our findings in regard to the implications for those involved in designing and building new neighbourhoods. Our findings show how the presence—or absence—of certain material features affects the performance, frequency and timing of practices, such that they were modified, shifted to other (indoor) forms, or not performed at all. In addition, to effect change the meanings about, and skills to perform, exercise practices need to be supported in addition to their material elements. Lastly, the timing and synchronisation of exercise practices in relation to other daily routines is crucial to their ongoing performance. In focusing on how the material features of neighbourhoods co-constitute practices of outdoor physical activity we provide new insights into how design is implicated in health and wellbeing.

Young people's lived experience of the ‘street’ in North Lakes master planned estate

This article explores young people's lived experience of the ‘street’, defined as outdoor public/private spaces, such as streets, shopping centres, corner stores within a Master Planned Estate in Australia. A strong market-based planning rationale has significantly constrained young people's access to, and use of, public space and the public realm. Young people are often left with little option but to occupy spaces through paths of least resistance or subversive use of space. Private developers require stronger regulatory oversight and a shared vision with planning authorities for the creation of appropriate spaces for young people.

Crime Talk in the Suburbs: Symbolic Representations of Status and Security on a Master Planned Estate

Master planned estates (MPEs) are marketed, sold and purchased on the basis of powerful symbols of security and aesthetics, as well as shared aspirations, values and lifestyle patterns. Living in an MPE not only represents a significant economic investment, but also provides residents with symbolic capital that comes with living in a new, secure, and high status community. Drawing on a case study of an MPE in Brisbane, Queensland, this paper examines the discursive strategies used by residents when the symbolic representation of their suburb is challenged by an ongoing problem of delinquency. By reviewing resident ‘blogs’ on community forums, it examines how the dissonance between the representation and the experience of the MPE is collectively managed, through the medium of talk, to rationalise and neutralise the problem.

Life in a Master Planned Estate—Community and Lifestyle or Conflict and Liability?

Master planned estates (MPEs) in Australia and internationally are increasingly promoted as offering both enhanced lifestyles and closer communities. Resort-style facilities and environmental enhancements are often included in these estates and are promoted in marketing material to evoke an image of an affluent lifestyle in promotion. Such assets are sometimes placed into collective private ownership using a joint legal entity known in Victoria as an owners corporation. This brings with it a range of legal obligations and requires ongoing management. This article explores the promotional images invoked by developers and compares them with the reality of life in one Melbourne MPE with privatised community assets. A disjuncture is shown between the promoted harmonious community in the MPE and the reality of managing complex and sometimes inadequate assets. The authors argue that this ownership arrangement should be avoided where possible due to the long-term ramifications of this kind of development decision.

Negotiating Community Title: Residents’ Lived Experiences of Private Governance Arrangements in a Master Planned Estate

Residents of private residential estates must negotiate the complex of expectations, rights and responsibilities that comes with the community title legislation that defines the management and structure of these neighbourhoods. Of particular importance is the way in which the governance structure of these estates simultaneously supports and threatens their social and financial viability. Drawing on the findings of research conducted in a privately governed master planned residential estate in Sydney, Australia, this article considers the residents’ lived experience of the community title scheme. It argues that a perceived lack of transparency in the contractual arrangements which residents enter into when they purchase a property within a private estate directly frames a set of expectations that are at odds with their legislative responsibilities. Also evident is the existence of tensions between the demands placed on residents by the structure of private governance that manages and polices the estate and those of the local government that manages the area within which the estate is located. The article concludes that there is a need for policy attention to be given to the development and management of private residential estates in Australia.

Privatism, Privatisation and Social Distinction in Master-Planned Residential Estates

In Australia, master-planned residential estates (MPREs) are often discussed within an internationalised academic discourse around the privatisation and fortification of residential environments. Yet we know very little about the lifestyles, community forms and ways of living in MPREs. We report on the results of an extensive survey across the Sydney metropolitan area that investigated in detail the attractions of master-planned estate living, the socio-demographic composition of these neighbourhoods and patterns of social interaction within them. These data are analysed in terms of a typology of MPRE that encompasses a spectrum of privatism and securitisation: what we see as their open, symbolically enclosed and gated forms. We find that whilst these estates differ along dimensions such as patterns of neighbouring and use of facilities, strong commonalities exist. From this analysis, conclusions are drawn about the links between built form and processes of social distinction as well as their implications for urban planning.

The Politics of Housing Consumption: Renters as Flawed Consumers on a Master Planned Estate

Master planned estates offer package dreams of homeownership to those wanting to live among others who share their lifestyle aspirations. Yet we show in this paper how divisions can arise between housing tenure types, with owner-occupiers constructing private rental tenants as a problem. Extending Bauman’s concept of the flawed consumer using Rose’s writings on ethopolitics, we show how renters are viewed as failing in three domains of social life: aesthetics, ethics and community by undermining the aesthetic value of the neighbourhood and by failing to demonstrate an ethic of care for themselves and others. As a result, the homeowners in this study try to avoid living among rental properties and are disappointed to find that, contrary to expectations, moving to a master planned estate does not guarantee this.

Co-operation or Co-presence? The Comforting Ideal of Community in a Master Planned Estate

Given the long and well-documented decline in the existence and relevance of place-dependent urban community, we explore the use of an idealised version of community of place in the marketing and implementation of a new suburban master planned estate (MPE) in Australia. In a social policy environment where strong communities of place are idealised, we find residents lack the resources or inclination to devote to the establishment of civic norms or durable social networks within the boundaries of the development and, for the most part, they are content to leave the establishment of the symbols of community to the property developer. It is the idea, rather than the reality, of community that is important, but in order to generate that idea, the developer needs to go to some lengths to create an ‘illusion’, or ‘sense’ of strong local community in the estate through marketing, the creation of nostalgic physical reminders, and selected community interventions such as cyclical events and celebrations. These all play an important role in the establishment of subjective ontological security for residents; to the benefit of both resident and developer.

Consciously Constructing Exclusivity in the Suburbs? Unpacking a Master Planned Estate Development in Western Sydney

AbstractIn Australia, master planned estates are emerging as a favoured form of residential development, finding support from urban planners and government. The proliferation of master planned estates has led urban researchers to comment on the socially exclusive nature of many of these new developments and their potential contribution to socio‐spatial polarisation in the urban landscape. Do master planned estates purposefully inculcate an image of exclusivity, and do these constructions result in socio‐spatial polarisation? A case study of the contribution of master planned estates to polarisation in the urban landscape is examined here. This research analysed the intentions, imagery and outcomes of a specific master planned estate in suburban Sydney – Glenmore Park. The established, socially constructed, and in some ways negative image of western Sydney has been used as a mirror against which an alternative – albeit exclusive and distinct – identity for Glenmore Park has been advanced. The intended image was for an exclusive and prestigious estate for white nuclear families. The developers and place marketers played a key role in the construction of this exclusivity, which ultimately superseded some of the more socially inclusive planning objectives for the area. The overriding conclusion from this research is that, in this case, there is an explicit connection between intentions and imagery, which encourages socio‐spatial polarisation.

Paradise Planned: Community Formation and the Master Planned Estate

The popularity of master planned estates with prospective settlers and planner-developers alike has burgeoned in the past 20 years. Stimulated by the settlers' desire for product assurance, and the developer's search for a marketing advantage, movements such as new urbanism and neo-communitarianism have underpinned large-scale planned suburban tract developments in both Australia and the USA. The marketing of such developments together with quality of design and physical and social infrastructure, commonly includes the promise of ‘community’. Such promises strike a chord with residents driven by security concerns. Drawing on recent qualitative research on two planned housing estates on Sydney's south-west fringe, this article examines two interrelated processes that underpin the notion of community in the contemporary master planned community. Firstly, it investigates the influence that design and development practices can have on community formation and community outcomes. It also examines the nexus between community association and economic interests in the drive to shape a secure, status-oriented residential environment. During a time when community is perceived as a scarce resource, and a goal to be achieved, ‘community’ becomes a resource deployed by both the planner-developer and residents to differentiate one residential area from another.