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The article discusses study on relationship between the characteristics of neighborhoods and the health and well-being of residents. It mentions use of data from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics Australia survey to measure neighborhood socio-economic characteristics. It suggests policy makers need to account for the complex interactions between individual drivers and complexities of accounting for neighborhood socio economic status.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the author discusses articles in the issue on topics including housing quality and health outcomes, impact of subjective quality of environments wellbeing and importance of social network.

Impacts from climate change pose a raft of challenges for societies, governments and policy-makers internationally. The anticipated changes are well documented, including rising sea levels, increased floods and other extreme weather conditions. Much research and policy emphasis has focused on technical and economic aspects. Less debated are questions about different communities' vulnerabilities, inequitable distributional impacts, social justice issues and how vulnerability links to social inclusion/exclusion. This paper explores a case study mapping social exclusion and vulnerability in Brisbane, Queensland, which found that while communities can be vulnerable through physical aspects of an area when social dimensions are added to the equation it amplifies or exacerbates the scale of vulnerability. The findings also suggest that in developing research agendas and policy debates around climate change, there could be benefits from interlinking the currently separate areas of work on social vulnerability to extreme weather events, to forms and processes of social inclusion/exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International literature has illustrated that the health impacts of heat waves vary according to differences in the spatial variability of high temperatures and the social and economic characteristics of populations and communities. However, to date there have been few studies that quantitatively assess the health vulnerability to heat waves in China. To assess the spatial distribution of health vulnerability to heat waves in Guangdong Province, China. A vulnerability framework including dimensions of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity was employed. The last two dimensions were called social vulnerability. An indicator pool was proposed with reference to relevant literatures, local context provided by relevant local stakeholder experts, and data availability. An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and a principal component analysis were used to determine the weight of indicators. A multiplicative vulnerability index (VI) was constructed for each district/county of Guangdong province, China. A total of 13 items (two for exposure, six for sensitivity, and five for adaptive capacity) were proposed to assess vulnerability. The results of an AHP revealed that the average VI in Guangdong Province was 0.26 with the highest in the Lianzhou and Liannan counties of Qingyuan (VI=0.50) and the lowest in the Yantian district of Shenzhen (VI=0.08). Vulnerability was gradiently distributed with higher levels in northern inland regions and lower levels in southern coastal regions. In the principal component analysis, three components were isolated from the 11 social vulnerability indicators. The estimated vulnerability had a similar distribution pattern with that estimated by AHP (Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC)=0.98, p<0.01). Health vulnerability to heat waves in Guangdong Province had a distinct spatial distribution, with higher levels in northern inland regions than that in the southern coastal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pritchard B., Argent N., Baum S., Bourke L., Martin J., McManus P., Sorensen A. and Walmsley J. Local – if possible: how the spatial networking of economic relations amongst farm enterprises aids small town survival in rural Australia, Regional Studies. Over recent decades, the tendency in developed countries has been the consolidation of farms into fewer and larger units, and a shifting of economic functions from smaller to larger population settlements. This paper uses data from face-to-face interviews with 115 Australian farmers in agriculture-dependent regions to investigate how the spatial pattern of farm expenditure affects these processes. It is concluded that in these spatial contexts, stability, attachment, and reliance on ‘the local’ remain vital components in farm–town economic links, notwithstanding substantial adaptation by farmers to restructured economic and community circumstances. Such expenditures help sustain small towns, thus tempering judgements on rural decline. Pritchard B., Argent N., Baum S., Bourke L., Martin J., McManus P., Sorensen A. et Walmsley J. Localement – de préférénce: comment la constitution de réseaux géographiques de relations économiques parmi les exploitations agricoles aide la survie des petites villes en Australie rurale, Regional Studies. Au cours des décennies récentes, la tendance des pays développés est à la consolidation des exploitations en moins d'unités de taille plus importante, et au déplacement des fonctions économiques des pays plus petits à des pays plus grands. Cet article emploie des données qui proviennent des faces-à-faces auprès de 115 exploitants agricoles australiens situés dans des régions à vocation agricole afin d'examiner comment la distribution géographique des dépenses agricoles influe sur ces processus. On conclut que dans de tels contextes géographiques, la stabilité, les relations, et la dépendance vis-à-vis du ‘local’, restent des éléments clés des liens économiques entre les exploitations agricoles et les villes, en dépit d'importantes adaptations par les exploitants agricoles à la restructuration des situations économiques et communautaires. De telles dépenses aident le soutien aux petites villes, ce qui atténuent les jugements sur le déclin rural. Petites villes?Restructuration rurale?Australie?Agriculture?Thèse sur le découplage Pritchard B., Argent N., Baum S., Bourke L., Martin J., McManus P., Sorensen A. und Walmsley J. Lokal – wenn möglich: wie das räumliche Netzwerk der Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zwischen landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben Kleinstädten in ländlichen Gebieten Australiens beim Überleben hilft, Regional Studies. In den letzten Jahrzehnten ging die Tendenz in den Entwicklungsländern hin zu einer Zusammenlegung von landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben zu größeren Einheiten in geringerer Anzahl sowie zu einer Verlagerung der Wirtschaftsfunktionen von Siedlungen mit kleineren zu Siedlungen mit größeren Bevölkerungszahlen. In diesem Beitrag wird anhand der Daten von Einzelinterviews mit 115 australischen Landwirten in von der Landwirtschaft abhängigen Regionen untersucht, wie sich das räumliche Muster der Ausgaben von landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben auf diese Prozesse auswirkt. Es wird der Schluss gezogen, dass innerhalb dieser räumlichen Kontexte die Stabilität, die Verbundenheit und das Vertrauen in ‘das Lokale’ wesentliche Komponenten der wirtschaftlichen Verknüpfungen zwischen landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben und Städten bleiben, wobei es keine Rolle spielt, ob sich die Landwirte in erheblichem Umfang an die umstrukturierten wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Umstände angepasst haben. Diese Ausgaben helfen beim Erhalt von Kleinstädten und mäßigen somit die Urteile über den Niedergang ländlicher Gebiete. Kleinstädte?Ländliche Umstrukturierung?Australien?Landwirtschaft?Entkopplungsthese Pritchard B., Argent N., Baum S., Bourke L., Martin J., McManus P., Sorensen A. y Walmsley J. Local, si es posible: cómo la red espacial de las relaciones económicas entre las empresas agrarias ayuda a la supervivencia de pequeñas ciudades en la Australia rural, Regional Studies. Durante las últimas décadas, la tendencia en los países desarrollados ha sido la consolidación de las empresas agrícolas en un menor número de unidades mayores, y un desplazamiento de las funciones económicas desde poblaciones más pequeñas a poblaciones más grandes. En este artículo utilizamos datos de entrevistas personales con 115 granjeros australianos en regiones dependientes de la agricultura para investigar cómo influye el modelo espacial del gasto agrícola en estos procesos. Concluimos que en estos contextos espaciales, la estabilidad, la conexión y la confianza en ‘lo local’ son componentes vitales en los vínculos económicos entre las ciudades y las granjas, pese a la adaptación sustancial por parte de los agricultores a las circunstancias económicas y comunitarias reestructuradas. Tales gastos ayudan a sostener las pequeñas ciudades, atenuando los juicios sobre el declive rural. Pequeñas localidades?Reestructuración rural?Australia?Agricultura?Tesis de desligamiento [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a prolonged period of Australian prosperity ends, attention has now begun to turn to the likely impacts of a severe economic downturn. The pain of recession is unlikely to be evenly distributed across the population or across space. Not that the previous economic good fortune was evenly spread across society. It is, therefore, expected that a new layer of socio-economic stress will be laid over existing patterns of social and spatial disparity. In this context, questions of deprivation and social exclusion are an important ongoing concern. Deprivation and social exclusion are operative at a number of levels of society. Neo-liberal thought and policy has been directed at the level of the individual. However, space and place are also important, as spatially concentrated disadvantage has structural consequences for both individual fortunes and the broader social fabric. This article considers the spatial distribution of disadvantage across our major metropolitan regions and considers potential approaches to address social exclusion in our suburban heartlands. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baum S., Bill A. and Mitchell W. F. Employability and labour under-utilization in non-metropolitan labour markets, Regional Studies. This paper addresses labour under-utilization and considers the factors that are associated with under-utilization risk of individuals embedded in diverse non-metropolitan labour market regions. Taking survey and census data for Australian non-metropolitan regions, this paper applies a broad employability framework that presents the risk of under-utilization as a function of individual characteristics, personal circumstances, and labour market characteristics. The analysis finds that under-utilization is associated with individual characteristics and circumstances plus local labour market conditions. The findings indicate that policy designed to address labour under-utilization needs to focus on the outcomes of a multilevel framework in order to be effective. [image omitted] Baum S., Bill A. et Mitchell W. F... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a significant period of strong economic and jobs growth nationally, there is well-established evidence in Australia that the proceeds of this growth have not been shared equally, either between places or between individuals. Empirically, it is well known that particular socioeconomic groups have a higher risk of unemployment and it has become equally well established that there are particular geographic patterns of labour market disadvantage that suggest that local geographic context is also important. What is not well understood are the ways in which phenomena at the geographic level are associated with individual-level characteristics and other social contexts in ways that negatively impact on a range of social outcomes, including unemployment. The present paper specifically addresses this issue by using a multi-scalar approach and using survey data from the Housing, Income and Labour Force Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey and aggregate level census data to model unemployment risk. The paper argues that to better understand unemployment and to add to sound policy development, approaches that incorporate a variety of contexts, including the impact of local geographies, are important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of e-government has been an important policy goal within contemporary Singapore government. Recognizing the gains to be made by harnessing ICTs to strengthen and streamline the business of governance, Singapore has successfully developed its e-government sector across three strategic plans focusing on developing a world class e-government experience that will delight customers and connect citizens. This paper reviews the development of e-government in Singapore focusing on the outcomes of e-government strategic plans and discussing issues and outcomes associated with developing a fully mature e-government position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New national and international economic and social forces have reshaped national geographies in general and the characteristics of cities in particular, resulting in a range of diverse social and spatial outcomes. These outcomes, which include greater differentiation across, within and between cities has become a feature of the economic and social forces associated with post-Fordist social structures. Taking localities across Australia's metropolitan regions, this paper develops a typology of advantage and disadvantage using a model-based approach with clustering of data represented by a parameterised Gaussian mixture model and confidence intervals of the means providing a measure of differences between the clusters. The analysis finds seven clusters of localities that represent different aspects of the socio-spatial structure of the metropolitan regions studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's large regional cities and towns display a wide variation in their adjustment to the socio-economic transitions that have occurred over the past decade. In terms of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, these changes, often associated with globalisation, wider economic and technological restructuring, the changing demographics of the population and shifts in public policy, are not evenly dispersed across non-metropolitan regions. Such outcomes have been discussed across a variety of academic disciplines using a variety of data and methods, and the research undertaken has provided a useful grounding for contemporary studies both theoretically and methodologically. Analysis of new data provides an opportunity to extend and update our understanding. This paper presents an analysis of secondary data aimed at analysing non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions based on differential levels of socio-economic performance. Using an alternative clustering method, this paper groups non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions according to the degree to which they share similar socio-economic and demographic outcomes. These clusters form the basis of a typology representing the range of socio-economic and demographic outcomes at the non-metropolitan level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western J., StimsonR., Baum S. and Van Gellecum Y. (2005) Measuring community strength and social capital, Regional Studies 39 , 1095–1109. Five case study communities in both metropolitan and regional urban locations in Australia are used as test sites to develop measures of ‘community strength’ on four domains: Natural Capital; Produced Economic Capital; Human Capital; and Social and Institutional Capital. The paper focuses on the fourth domain. Sample surveys of households in the five case study communities used a survey instrument with scaled items to measure four aspects of social capital – formal norms, informal norms, formal structures and informal structures – that embrace the concepts of trust, reciprocity, bonds, bridges, links and networks in the interaction of individuals with their community inherent in the notion social capital. Exploratory principal components analysis is used to identify factors that measure those aspects of social and institutional capital, while a confirmatory analysis based on Cronbach's α explores the robustness of the measures. Four primary scales and 15 subscales are identified when defining the domain of social and institutional capital. Further analysis reveals that two measures – anomie, and perceived quality of life and wellbeing – relate to certain primary scales of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been increased interest in testing the thesis that global city emergence is accompanied by increases in social polarisation. Given the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region in the global economy, this paper makes a timely contribution to the social polarisation debate by discussing the social transformations occurring with reference to Singapore. It is suggested that within Singapore, rather than the development of a polarised structure, there is a trend towards a professionalised occupation structure and a growing middle-upper income-group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses whether the global city-social polarisation thesis put forward by scholars looking at North American cities can be applied in Sydney, New South Wales. Role of global processes in explaining economic structuring associated with globalization; Significance of the inclusion of factors such as the unemployed, gendered structured of occupations and migration.

There has been a growing mismatch between household and housing types in Australian cities in recent years. At the same time housing has become increasingly expensive, while low-density urban development has meant increasing social and economic costs for households in fringe suburbs. This paper explores current housing and location preferences of Adelaide residents. The findings suggest that home ownership and the single-storey detached dwelling are well entrenched preferences among residents, and that as yet, the personal costs of the linear spread of the city have not impacted significantly on housing and location preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]