Suburbs Of Sydney Research Articles

Geophysical and social vulnerability to floods at municipal scale under climate change: The case of an inner-city suburb of Sydney

Assessments of vulnerability to flooding can generate useful data for planners and policy makers. To the best of the authors knowledge, no flood-vulnerability study has combined geophysical modelling of floods with socio-economic assessments of vulnerability at finer municipal or household scale. In addition, the extent to which vulnerability assessments actually feed into flood adaptation policies remains largely unknown.A new flood vulnerability index, and associated methodology, is proposed, combining high-resolution hydrological-hydraulic modelling with built-environment and socio-economic indicators at the smallest spatial scale at which socio-economic data is available. The main advantage of the methodology is its ability to incorporate place-specific data, hence yielding more refined simulations of floods and the capacity to make projections into climate futures at local scale. The index is built and applied to the inter-city suburb of Marrickville in Sydney and used to assess the effects of future climate change on vulnerability mapping in the suburb. Finally, the results of the assessment are presented to, and discussed with, the local government authority responsible for implementing flood adaptation policies for Marrickville.Locally specific modelling of floods, combined with socio-economic and built-environment mapping, has yielded a rich set of information on flood vulnerability and significant variability within a single suburb. Flood duration is projected to increase by more than 100% under some climate change scenarios, as a result of reduced drainage caused by sea level rise. Feedback from municipal council has highlighted the potential usefulness of the knowledge generated by the assessment, especially for emergency services.

Air quality pollutants and their relationship with meteorological variables in four suburbs of Greater Sydney, Australia

Meteorological variability plays a pivotal role in ambient air pollution. An in-depth analysis of air pollutants including meteorological variables in four suburbs of greater Sydney, Australia, was carried out for a continuous period of 24 months from January 2016 to 2018. Results revealed significant air quality problems with seasonal trends, for all six pollutants, in all suburbs. Maximum 24-h average PM10 concentrations for the four suburbs were 49.4, 55.3, 74.0 and 102.8 μg/m3 demonstrating severe PM10 air pollution events. NO2 concentrations exceeded national guideline limits and all four suburbs showed higher than recommended concentrations of O3. Generalised additive model analysis displayed varying dependencies between air pollutants and meteorological variables influenced by season and location. Different plots were used to interpret data in terms of meteorological variables. Generally, easterly and southerly winds led to the highest average concentrations of air pollutants for all suburbs. Extremes in air quality pollution concentrations were related to east and west winds and higher wind speeds (4–8 m/s). Wide variations existed in air pollutants between the 10th and 95th percentile values, especially PM10. Minimum and maximum concentration of all analysed pollutants occurred during low temperatures (11.7–18.4 °C) with the exception of ozone favouring higher temperatures (24–38 °C) during hotter months. Results show pollution formation varies in different seasons and suburbs, in relation to meteorological variables. This study can be used to mitigate, improve prediction and forecast accuracy of air pollution. Such studies open the possibilities to explore the effects of air quality and its impact on public health.

ASA 302 @ Georges Heights: Swedish Timber Prefabs in Australia

ABSTRACT Partially hidden by bushland in the Sydney suburb of Georges Heights sit five unassuming, prefabricated timber houses. Saved from demolition in 2003 and now restored, these houses were manufactured in the early 1950s in Sweden by Åmåls Sågverks Aktiebolag (ASA). They were erected in 1951 for the Australian Navy and are some of the last remnants of thousands of prefabricated houses imported by the Federal and State Governments to alleviate the post-war housing shortage. By the end of 1951, approximately 70,000 prefabricated houses had been imported into Australia. While the importation of prefabricated houses was driven by urgent need, questions of quality and suitability to Australian conditions were considered important enough to warrant considerable research. Several European study tours by building experts established that the Swedish houses were of high quality, particularly in relation to their materials, detailing, and levels of insulation. In nineteen fifties Australia, this implanted example of sophisticated Swedish design would have represented a quite different cultural frame for household living. Despite their obvious quality, these prefabricated houses were not accepted into the mainstream housing market as they were in Sweden and Ormal Construction Pty Ltd, the company ASA established in Melbourne in 1950, lasted only a few years.

Learning to Belong: Ordinary Pedagogies of Civic Belonging in a Multicultural Public Library

ABSTRACT Public libraries are quintessential civic and education institutions which have undergone significant transformation. In the context of digital knowledge platforms and the neoliberalisation of public space, libraries are increasingly framed as knowledge portals, community hubs, refuges, and rare examples of universally accessible public spaces. If public libraries are transforming as educational, public and civic spaces, what does this mean for the way libraries work as everyday pedagogical spaces? This paper explores this question by considering how citizen-subjects might be ‘curated’ through the everyday materialities and spatial ordering of a community library in an ethno-culturally diverse neighbourhood in suburban Sydney. Drawing on interviews with users and staff in the library, I examine how material, spatial and interactional codes shape habits and constitute a pedagogical assemblage oriented around civic instruction, particularly for recently arrived migrants. I suggest that the library as conditional, semi-public space and spatial-material assemblage includes subtle forms of citizenship training, including training in openness to forms of ‘commonplace diversity’. I argue that examining community libraries in this way can offer insights into the everyday pedagogies of social spaces and the way people practice civic belonging.

The Apartment Shortage

This paper measures the excess demand for apartments in Australia’s largest cities. We estimate that homebuyers will pay an average of $873,000 for a new apartment in Sydney though it only costs $519,000 to supply, a gap of $355,000 (68 per cent of costs). There are smaller gaps of $97,000 (20 per cent of costs) in Melbourne and $10,000 (2 per cent of costs) in Brisbane. The large gaps are sustained by planning restrictions. The shortage of apartments is most severe in the inner suburbs of Sydney, where height limits prevent more construction. Elsewhere, restrictions on converting low density housing to apartments are important. High rise apartments are a much less costly means of supplying extra housing than the medium density housing that some planners favour.

Geographies of local government

Geographies of local government

The not-yet-tropical: mapping recombinant ecologies in a Sydney suburb

Mapping and fitness apps, government agencies and departments, and citizen science projects provide a wealth of data on urban green spaces, charting parks, reserves, and green corridors in and around Sydney. These maps represent vegetation as surface and, as Doreen Massey in the 2005 book For Space noted about other types of Western maps, detach the observer from the object of their gaze. The authors argue that, in order to make recombinant ecologies present, as well as visible, we need a different order of maps, able to place the observer back in the thick of things, and to capture the entanglements between humans and more-than-human gatherings. This, they maintain, requires a shift to mapping as an embodied methodology that brings together walking, visual documentation and drawing. To do this, they present three walking maps of plants imagined as ‘tropical’ growing in Marrickville, a suburb in Gadigal-Wangal Country in Sydney’s inner west, an area located in the ‘sub-tropical humid’ climate zone map. Through the generation of three plant-led walking maps, they reveal recombinant Marrickville ecologies. They show how plants redesign the urban landscape and engender everyday practices in the gardens, verges, and non-cultivated parcels of land and, in doing so, contribute to sensing the suburb as tropical.

Catherine Hamlin: internationally renowned humanitarian and fistula surgeon

Credit: Kate Geraghty Thanks to Australian obstetrician and gynaecologist Catherine Hamlin (nee Nicholson), the lives and health of more than 60 000 Ethiopian teenage girls and women, and countless others...

Evaluation of shade profiles while walking in urban environments: A case study from inner suburban Sydney, Australia

Precise shade distributions at the street level are an area of research of increasing importance to provide complete and high spatial and temporal resolutions of the amount and effectiveness of shade. Temporal shade distributions and profiles were evaluated for an inner Sydney tree-lined suburban street at different times of the day using an electronic sun journal (ESJ), providing detailed profiles of shade availability for various times of the day to provide very detailed street-level shade profiles and distributions that are often not included in shade audit methods and models. Further profiles were developed of streets adjoining shopfronts and public parks. Distributions of dense, light and no shade areas were calculated, revealing that tree canopy shade area during the middle of the day is considerably less effective and more prone to gaps than at other times. Distributions calculated using the ESJ were compatible with the paper-based shade auditing with less than 10% variation, whilst the ESJ has revealed a greater resolution of detail of gaps in the shade, thus records a higher amount of areas of no shade. The ESJ is a robust, low cost and portable tool that can efficiently and quickly produce shade profiles during walks in an urban environment, such as streetscapes.

‘I see myself as undeveloped’: supporting Indigenous first-in-family males in the transition to higher education

ABSTRACT The underrepresentation of males from particular equity groups in Australian universities continues despite recent gains in achievement. This article presents a case study of the transition of one Aboriginal student, Robbie, from a school located in the Western suburbs of Sydney to an urban Australian university. Drawing on recent theorisations of learner identities, we investigate the formation of Robbie’s aspirations, as well as the support he is entitled to and capitalises upon. The case study captures how different aspects of Robbie’s life interrelate, as well as how he accesses support over time in transitioning from secondary school to university. Exploring Robbie’s journey as a learner compels us to think critically about equity programmes and emphasise the role of close family involvement, peer mentoring and personalised support to improve outcomes for students from underrepresented backgrounds.

The case for a second safe injecting facility (SIF) in Sydney

ABSTRACT Sydney’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross has been a major national and global example of successful harm reduction in relation to illicit drug use ever since it opened its doors 18 years ago. However, since then Sydney has undergone significant transformations as a city, including gentrification of the inner Sydney suburbs where the injecting centre operates and expansions to its Western and South Western suburbs where many of its injecting drug-using population reside. Furthermore, Australia is seeing growing public health concerns about steady increases in opioid overdose deaths worth comparing to the opioid crisis in the United States. Using data from the National Coronial Information System, we explore the distribution of overdose deaths across Sydney and in doing so make the case for the establishment of a second medically supervised injecting centre in Sydney’s outer suburbs.

Temporary dwellings as informal suburban development in the global North and the case of Sydney 1945–1960

ABSTRACTOccupation of non-compliant temporary dwellings as an informal stage in the achievement of permanent, primarily owner-built suburban housing is a global phenomenon although, until recently, much of the urban planning literature conveyed the notion that this type of informal urbanism existed only in the global south. Yet a number of studies reveal that comparable informal urbanism existed in the global North throughout the twentieth century, in the form of makeshift housing on purchased land surrounding cities and towns in France, Canada, England, Greece, Portugal and Spain, however, these dwellings did not necessarily lead to housing security for their occupants. References to temporary dwellings in the Australian literature indicated that urban informality existed at an appreciable scale on the fringes of towns and cities in Australia following the Second World War. This article highlights the distinctive Australian story. It surveys the international examples and compares them with the phenomenon as it played out in the outer suburbs of metropolitan Sydney. The article concludes by suggesting that a unique conjunction of circumstances, namely wartime legislation, the availability of affordable land, unprecedented household financial security, and communal subsidization of services enabled many low-income Sydney households to successfully transition from temporary dwellings to conventional home-ownership.

Quête spirituelle, résilience et Temps du Rêve chez les Aborigènes de Sydney

ContextThis article contains a discussion of cultural continuity between self-improvement and health practices amongst Aboriginal populations in large Australian cities, from a psychological anthropology perspective. GoalsThere are two main purposes to this article: (a) showing how some contemporary urban Aborigines reappropriate cultural elements, historically and anthropologically considered as “traditional,” especially concerning their links to the Dreaming cosmology; (b) analyzing how this cultural reappropriation impacts the way Aborigines express their pain, both individually and collectively. MethodThis study is based on first-hand ethnographic data collected during the author's doctoral research. The fieldwork consisted of a 10.5-month participant observation of an Aboriginal group therapy circle in a suburb of Sydney and about 15 semi-structured interviews with some members of this group. FindingsThis article presents two main findings: (a) the urban Aboriginal populations under consideration reappropriate an altered version of the myth and practices of the Dreaming and (b) their involvement in a therapeutic process aimed at allowing them to “feel better” takes the form of a spiritual quest framed in this altered conception of the Dreaming. ConclusionsThrough the analysis of this ethnographic example, this research promotes an understanding of therapy as being intrinsically linked – from a pragmatic point of view – to the cultural background from which it emerges. Doing so, this article shows the cultural inventiveness and resilience demonstrated by Aborigines in Australia's large cities to contain the pain generated by colonization.

Air Quality Impacts of Smoke from Hazard Reduction Burns and Domestic Wood Heating in Western Sydney

Air quality was measured in Auburn, a western suburb of Sydney, Australia, for approximately eighteen months during 2016 and 2017. A long open-path infrared spectrometer sampled path-averaged concentrations of several gaseous species, while other pollutants such as PM 2.5 and PM 10 were sampled by a mobile air quality station. The measurement site was impacted by a number of indoor wood-heating smoke events during cold winter nights as well as some major smoke events from hazard reduction burning in the spring of 2017. In this paper we compare the atmospheric composition during these different smoke pollution events and assess the relative overall impact on air quality from domestic wood-heaters and prescribed forest fires during the campaign. No significant differences in the composition of smoke from these two sources were identified in this study. Despite the hazard reduction burning events causing worse peak pollution levels, we find that the overall exposure to air toxins was greater from domestic wood-heaters due to their higher frequency and total duration. Our results suggest that policy-makers should place a greater focus on reducing wood-smoke pollution in Sydney and on communicating the issue to the public.

Stormwater retention using pervious concrete pavement: Great Western Sydney case study

Urban stormwater runoff is evaluated to be in a higher volume when it is compared to the natural stormwater runoff. This is mainly due to the higher ratio of impervious surfaces in the urban texture which results in less water absorption by the ground. Many organizations around the world is promoting the concept of sustainable drainage system which are, in fact, focusing on not only the quantity of the stormwater retention, but also takes the quality of the stored water in account. This study aims to assess the feasibility of the application of pervious concrete pavements. An area of 754 km2 of the Western suburbs of Sydney has been selected for the case study. Considering the average rainfall in the selected region along with the state government plan on urban developments of the region, it is crucial to evaluate a suitable stormwater retention system. The rainfall data had been collected from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Laboratory experiments had been run to assess the compressive strength of the concrete samples at the age of 7 days. Permeability of the samples had been tested in order to match up the rainfall demand of the region. Workability tests had also been conducted to provide a more comprehensive view on the performance of the proposed pervious concrete also in the fresh state.

Linguistic landscapes

AbstractSome of the key challenges in teaching intercultural communication (IC) are to engage learners in activities which develop their critical intercultural awareness and to prepare them for communication in superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) contexts. This paper discusses linguistic landscapes (LL) as an innovative method for teaching intercultural competence. Undergraduate linguistics students conducted a LL project to explore linguistic diversity in their chosen suburb of Sydney and reflected on their own intercultural learning experience. Student reflections revealed that the project had a strong impact on their perceptions of diversity and their attitudes towards other languages and cultures. Students increased their critical awareness of how identity, ideology and attitudes influence language choices and intercultural interactions. The experiential learning project also made them reflect on their own identity as intercultural citizens. The findings of this study highlight the usefulness of the project in developing intercultural competence (ICC). The paper discusses methodological implications for teaching IC in the context of increasingly multilingual and multicultural learning communities.

Understanding Spatial Variability of Air Quality in Sydney: Part 1—A Suburban Balcony Case Study

There is increasing awareness in Australia of the health impacts of poor air quality. A common public concern raised at a number of “roadshow” events as part of the federally funded Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub (CAUL) project was whether or not the air quality monitoring network around Sydney was sampling air representative of typical suburban settings. In order to investigate this concern, ambient air quality measurements were made on the roof of a two-storey building in the Sydney suburb of Auburn, to simulate a typical suburban balcony site. Measurements were also taken at a busy roadside and these are discussed in a companion paper (Part 2). Measurements made at the balcony site were compared to data from three proximate regulatory air quality monitoring stations: Chullora, Liverpool and Prospect. During the 16-month measurement campaign, observations of carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, ozone and particulate matter less than 2.5-µm diameter at the simulated urban balcony site were comparable to those at the closest permanent air quality stations. Despite the Auburn site experiencing 10% higher average carbon monoxide amounts than any of the permanent air quality monitoring sites, the oxides of nitrogen were within the range of the permanent sites and the pollutants of greatest concern within Sydney (PM2.5 and ozone) were both lowest at Auburn. Similar diurnal and seasonal cycles were observed between all sites, suggesting common pollutant sources and mechanisms. Therefore, it is concluded that the existing air quality network provides a good representation of typical pollution levels at the Auburn “balcony” site.

Radical changes in the avifauna of a Sydney suburb, 1971–2014

We document changes in the avifauna of Longueville, a residential suburb of Sydney, between 1971–73 and 1977–79 based on daily bird lists, and make comparisons with the present avifauna based on surveys in 2013–14. Of the 31 most common native terrestrial bird species, 17 were ‘decreasers’, present in 1971–73 but not recorded in 2013–14 (although 16 of them were recorded in a large bushland remnant 5 km away), and 14 were ‘increasers’, seven of which were absent or very rare in 1971–73. Eleven species decreased during the 1970s, and six species afterwards. Eight species increased during the 1970s and six species afterwards. The decreasers were predominantly small insectivores and nectarivores. The increasers were of three main types: medium to large carnivores, large frugivores or granivores, and medium-sized nectarivores. Two of the nectarivores, the noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) and rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus), now dominate the urban bird community of Longueville and are by far the most numerous birds. The increase of both species dates from the late 1970s. The noisy miner is highly aggressive towards other birds and its dramatic increase (it was absent in 1971–73) appears to be the chief cause of the decline of small native birds in Longueville.

Association of dyslipidaemia and oral statin use, and dry eye disease symptoms in the Blue Mountains Eye Study.

There is limited literature on oral statin use and its association with dry eye. To analyse the association between dyslipidaemia, use of oral statin drugs, and symptoms of dry eye disease (DED) among older adults. Population-based study. Participants of the Blue Mountains Eye Study III (BMESIII), a large cohort study in suburban Sydney, aged 60 years or older (mean age = 74, range = 60-97, n = 1680) were analysed. Information on DED symptoms and statin use were obtained from an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Serum lipid profiles were determined from fasting blood tests. The association of various DED symptoms, as well as their number and their severity, with dyslipidaemia and oral statin intake was evaluated. At least one DED symptom was reported in 52% (n = 1029) of the population. Patients with hypercholesterolaemia (>5.5 mmol/L) did not report more DED symptoms than those without hypercholesterolaemia. Neither serum high-density lipoprotein nor low-density lipoprotein levels were associated with any DED symptoms. Patients taking oral statins were more likely to report one or more moderate to severe symptoms of DED (odds ratio: 2.054, 95% confidence interval: 1.281-3.295). The association between oral statin use and presence of moderate to severe DED symptomatology is a novel finding that deserves further mechanistic and clinical correlation in order to determine its potential, or lack thereof, for the management of dry eye.

Evidence for a change in wind regime during the Last Glacial Maximum from the Sydney region

This paper presents the results of a small number of dates from sand samples collected at building sites in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. OSL ages of well-sorted, quartz sand ranges from 31 to 24 ka from within well-developed podzol soil profiles within a metre of the surface. The source of this sand appears to be from the east off the inner continental shelf during a period just prior to the maximum of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, Marine Isotope Stage 2) when sea-level was approximately 70–90 m below present level. During a later phase of the LGM, there is evidence from other coastal sites in central NSW and Gippsland, Victoria, that the dominant wind was from the west consistent with evidence from arid and semiarid Australia. Dune orientations in northern NSW into Queensland and other evidence at this time appear to reflect winds from the southeast quadrant. This study highlights the existence of a potential pivot area in dominant wind direction during the LGM between sustained westerly flow in southern area including Victoria and northeast Tasmania and southeast flow of northern NSW into Queensland. In central NSW, the circulation switched from easterly in Stage 2 to westerly as the glacial stage intensified in the LGM sometime after ca 25 ka.