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Cities all over the world have activated policy support for urban consolidation in recent decades. Rationales for urban consolidation focus on its perceived ability to achieve sustainability goals, including decreased automobile dependence, increased social cohesion and greater walkability. Despite this, there are few international examples of urban consolidation policy implementation that has achieved its stated aims. This paper explores the nature and character of perceptions of urban consolidation held by urban planners, developers, architects and local politicians. The perspectives held by these ‘city shapers’ are integral to urban consolidation debates and delivery, yet the nature and character of their specific views are underexplored in urban studies literature. This paper combines the theoretical lens of Social Representations Theory with the methodological approach of Q-methodology to understand the common sense understandings of urban consolidation held by city shapers in Brisbane, Australia. It identifies, synthesises and critically discusses the social representations employed by city shapers to understand, promote and communicate about urban consolidation. Findings indicate that urban consolidation debates and justifications diverge significantly from stated policy intentions and are based on differing views on ‘good’ urban form, the role of planning and community consultation and the value of higher density housing. We conclude that there is utility and value in identifying how urban consolidation strategies are influenced by the shared beliefs, myths and perceptions held by city shapers. Understanding these narratives and their influence is fundamental to understanding the power-laden manipulation of policy definitions and development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, research has emphasised a shift from city government to urban governance. Such a shift brings about its very own challenges, namely governance gaps, uncertain configurations in governance and a limited capacity to act. In this paper, we argue that the concurrent rise of strategy documents in city administration addresses these challenges. Our central claim is that strategy documents can be understood as a distinct discursive device through which local governments enact aspired governance configurations. We illustrate our argument empirically using two prominent examples that, while showing similar features and characteristics, are anchored in different administrative traditions and institutional frameworks: the city administrations of Sydney, Australia, and Vienna, Austria. The contribution of the paper is to show how strategy documents enact governance configurations along four core dimensions: the setting in space and time, the definition of the public, the framing of the res publica and legitimacy issues. Moreover, our comparative analysis of Sydney and Vienna gives evidence of differences in governance configurations enacted through strategy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the housing sub-market literature has focused on establishing methods that allow the partitioning of data into distinct market segments. This paper seeks to move the focus on to the question of how best to model sub-markets once they have been identified. It focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of multilevel models as a technique for modelling sub-markets. The paper uses data on housing transactions from Perth, Western Australia, to develop and compare three competing sub-market modelling strategies. Model 1 consists of a city-wide ‘benchmark’; model 2 provides a series of sub-market-specific hedonic estimates (this is the ‘industry standard’) and models 3 and 4 provide two variants on the multilevel model (differentiated by variation in the degrees of spatial granularity embedded in the model structure). The results suggest that the more granular multilevel specification enhances empirical performance and reduces the incidence of non-random spatial errors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many suburban areas in Australian cities built between the 1930s and 1960s are facing major challenges from socio-demographic change, ageing housing, long-term disinvestment and entrenched pockets of social disadvantage. Yet despite emerging relative disadvantages, these middle ring or ‘third city’ suburbs are experiencing locally generated piecemeal market-led reinvestment and renewal. This paper explores housing, household and housing investment characteristics and trends in the older parts of Sydney’s western suburbs drawing on analyses of socio-demographic and development application data. Policy options to achieve more appropriate urban renewal outcomes under broad social sustainability criteria are canvassed. Similarities and differences to the American ‘first suburb’ phenomenon are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the redevelopment of the site of Sydney’s 2000 summer Olympics, locating it within debates over the legacy of these events. The paper describes some of the key stakeholders involved in the redevelopment and planning of the site. It provides an overview of the regulatory context and governance bodies that have structured the space since the staging of the Olympics, then identifies two key areas of private-sector involvement, in event space and in business development, where tensions emerged over how the site should best be governed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 1980s a remarkable transformation has occurred in the rationale that informs public policy in Australia. This transformation reflects a fundamental change in the way national economies and populations are conceived by policy-makers, and has led to the emergence of new strategies of governance as a consequence. We argue that this change of direction in Australian public policy may be best thought of as a specific neoliberal `political rationality'. The first section of the paper outlines changes in conceptions of the economy and subjectivity which are associated with neoliberalism as a political rationality. The second part of the paper examines the articulation and implementation of neoliberalism in Australia over the last couple of decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporters of collective employment regulation in New Zealand would have celebrated a centenary of arbitration a full decade before Australia, in 1994. Yet fate intervened and New Zealand’s arbitration system formally collapsed in 1991 following the introduction of theEmployment Contracts Act.Despite a series of challenges during different periods, the Australian arbitration system has survived, if badly scathed, to see its 100-year anniversary. The present paper traces the historical similarities and differences in the advent, development and decline of the Australian and New Zealand systems of compulsory arbitration. Given the many structural similarities between the two systems, the paper explores important differences in the economic and political interests that both underlay the introduction and development of the two systems, and contributed to the earlier demise of the New Zealand system. The experience of the more extensive labour market reform in New Zealand provides some salutary lessons for those seeking further changes to weaken the Australian arbitration system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is accepted that effective marketing is an important feature of successful tourism destinations and is necessary in order to promote tourism growth. Effective marketing is even more important for remote destinations since these destinations have extra challenges to overcome such as accessibility and tourists’ perceptions of inferior infrastructure. This article presents findings from a study that examined Tourism Northern Territory’s approach to marketing and how stakeholders in three destinations viewed this approach. Stakeholders suggested that Tourism NT’s ‘destination’ approach to marketing the Territory, when viewed against the previously employed generic ‘whole of Territory’ marketing methodology, provided a more appropriate positioning tool for their region, and by extension, provided local tourism stakeholders with a greater connection with the marketing division of Tourism Northern Territory. However, these positive conclusions were tempered by some perceived failings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian labour set out on a grand attempt to restructure vocational education and training in the 1980s and 1990s. The reforms were intended to go beyond the scope of previous worker education by aiming at complete systemic change by linking skill development to wages through the award system. This article locates labour's training reform in the wider program of economic modernization. It argues that unions provided the inspiration for the new system but by the early 1990s had lost the initiative as enterprise bargaining was introduced and as employer associations and state education bureaucracies re-asserted control and established a new training market. That training reform's original expectations were not delivered demands closer attention and analysis. Learning the lessons of this experiment is an essential step for labour in developing a positive agenda for workers' education in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]