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While existing studies have broadly examined the collaborative governance of dockless bike-sharing schemes (DBSS) in global cities, few provide detailed insights into how DBSS stakeholders engage in particular cultural contexts. This paper addresses this gap through a case study of government and industry interactions in Nanjing's DBSS from 2017 to 2020. Our approach is informed by the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance. We draw on qualitative analysis of policies and interviews with government officials and industry leaders. A key finding is the shift from centralised to distributed power dynamics among stakeholders, affirming the need for culturally-specific studies of collaborative governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As interest in propolis as a human medicinal product increases, so too does interest in its botanical sources and production. While literature reviewing the chemical constituents and therapeutic properties of propolis is relatively thorough, work regarding the biological, ecological, and environmental factors affecting propolis production is rarer. In this review, literature investigating factors that affect propolis production was compiled with the aim of informing producers on how to improve propolis quality and quantity; and researchers on the knowledge gaps to guide future studies. We identified six factors as being determinants to propolis production: the botanical origin of the resin, honey bee genetics, hive structure, food availability, environmental factors, and disease. This article advocates the importance of future research into these and other factors that affect propolis production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban densification proceeds apace. However, and notwithstanding a renewed awareness of the intrinsic link between urban form and human health, we are only beginning to query the impact of higher density living on health-supportive behaviours. Using Green Square, Sydney as a case study, this paper reports recent research that addresses this gap. Findings include a consistency – though largely unrecognized – with the healthy built environments research literature; a lack of a consistent 'healthy environments' language, including any definition of 'healthy density'; a lack of attention to high-rise high density; and a need for an active engagement with complexity, as well as substantial and ongoing institutional support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1995, brothels in New South Wales have been permitted to operate as legitimate businesses regulated by local councils using planning powers. Despite more than 20 years since decriminalisation and widespread support, there remains an urge by some to heavily regulate the sex industry, reflected in the recently submitted report to the NSW Government from the Select Committee on the Regulation of Brothels (2015). Although the Report supports maintaining decriminalisation, it is dominated by concern about the association of brothels with crime and the consequent need for increased policing. This article argues first that there is little to no evidence to support the criminogenic concerns articulated in the Report. Second, even if these concerns existed, there is nothing to suggest that the proposed measures would provide a solution. Moreover, these proposed reforms reflect a worrying trend in criminal law reform of the expansion of police powers modelled on anti-terrorist legislation, despite existing police powers and criminal offences that are not prosecuted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the reflections of interviewees from New York, Montreal, and Sydney, this article investigates the affective qualities of urban ruins and the role they have played in gay male experience and identity construction from 1970 to 2000. Along with other places on the margins of regulated space, urban ruins operate as points of transition—passages from reason to myth at the interstices of ordered urban space. The article argues that the sensual feelings and memories conjured by these ruins enable alternative modes of being for gay men that stand in contrast to the more regimented modes of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the association among victimization, modes of sex working, and the locations used by sex workers through an analysis of “Ugly Mug” reports detailing 528 crime acts in 333 reported incidents in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. These forms, voluntarily lodged between 2000 and 2008 by members of NSW's estimated 10,000 sex worker population, suggest that street-based work has a higher victimization rate than other modes of working, including escort work, work in commercial premises, and private work. Although this ostensibly supports the commonly held view that “outdoor” working is more dangerous than “indoor” work, this analysis suggests that most instances of victimization actually occur in private spaces. Hence, it is argued that risks of victimization in sex work are influenced by a variety of environmental characteristics relating to concealment, control, and isolation, suggesting that not all off-street locations are equally safe. We conclude with recommendations for policy regarding sex work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the question of whether or not sex work in the home should be regulated in the same way as large commercial brothels or as home occupations. Underlying concerns about sex services premises generally are that they are criminogenic, disorderly and exploitative of women. This article draws upon original research of surveys of people living in the vicinity of sex services premises, interviews with sex workers and service providers, and council records of complaint to argue that, on the contrary, home occupations (sex services) can operate lawfully with minimal amenity impacts, and that this type of business can provide a positive work environment. We recommend that sex work in the home in New South Wales should be regulated in the same way as other home occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite continuing contests in Australian states over the validity of sex work as work, Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) have been part of a global trend for states to decriminalise and/or legalise the sex industry. This article argues that although Victoria and NSW are united by their ambivalence toward the legal validity of sex work as work for women, this ambivalence is expressed and organised in different ways in each state, with consequent differences in regulatory schemas, practices of enforcement and outcomes for workers and communities. In particular, this article focuses on the regulation of sex services premises as a key indicator of how the sex industry is regarded and embedded within broader business, social and regulatory contexts. The article examines some specific regulations that affect women's status as sex workers in each state. It concludes by arguing that the failure to fully recognise sex work as work impacts most sharply on the safety and inclusion of workers: those whom the legislative schemas of both states purportedly seek to protect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interview-based research among patrons and proprietors of Sydney's gay bathhouses, asking about experiences of homosexual being from the 1960s to the early 1980s generated intriguing findings. Despite the apparent disconnect between traditional religious affiliation and the outlaw gay lifestyle of the bathhouses, a majority of interviewees asserted that spirituality and self-transformation was as important to them as sexual exploration and liberation from societal restraints (both as motivations for and outcomes of the bathhouse experience). Some of those interviewed adhered to mainstream religion (including Christianity and Judaism), but a significant number expressed a commitment to eclectic, personalized spiritual paths. Interestingly, both groups described the bathhouses as “churches” and “temples,” the activities that took place there as both collective and individual “rituals,” and attributed their spiritual growth and development to their experiences in the bathhouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary offers a background to the carbon challenge, carbon offsets, and emissions trading from an Australian perspective. It sets the scene for a more detailed discussion about carbon sequestration rights, which are defined explicitly by some Australian states and territories but not by others. We highlight that the term carbon sequestration right is poorly defined and relies, inappropriately we suggest, on the borrowed term profit à prendre. This terminology is at odds with the notion of a carbon property right, which has yet to be conceptualized fully by the marketplace and the existing legal framework, given the need to fully engage the sociological and ecological dimensions of carbon and climate change. We find that current policy intent, together with evolving public will and corporate responsibility, is ahead of the science and the legal framework for managing property rights in carbon (used broadly to represent the six greenhouse gasses). The Australian Property Institute has taken the lead in its 2007 policy paper Conceiving Property Rights in Carbon and more recently in Sheehan and Kanas's investigation of "Property Rights in Soil." This article takes the discussion to the next stage by offering a framework for property rights in carbon and asking whether such rights should be vested in the state or the nation, rather than merely creating a commodity that can be efficiently allocated and thus speculated upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gay bathhouse played a central role in the battle for gay liberation in Sydney during the latter part of the twentieth century. Utilising fifty in-depth interviews, as well as extensive archival research, this article provides an insight into how the evolving public domain of Sydney's gay bathhouses fostered the experiences of gay men and contributed to the development of a vibrant, validated homosexual culture within the city. The dynamic nature of these spaces allowed gay men an unprecedented opportunity to develop, experience and express, individual and collective sexual identities and practices. In exploring the emergence, growth and impact of Sydney's gay bathhouses, this article contributes to a burgeoning body of research exploring the role of the built environment in the development of sexual identity and sexual practices. This exploration of the interplay between built form, sexuality, civic governance, social identity and social action makes a contribution to sociology, queer studies, anthropology, architecture, geography and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much recent scholarship on sexuality and urban spaces has focused on forms of urban governance. Within this literature an emerging body of work has begun to highlight how formal urban planning processes and regulations are increasingly used as mechanisms to govern sexuality within later 20th century Western cities, particularly through the placement of sex industry premises. This paper contributes to this literature through a case study of the emergence of gay bathhouses in land-use planning process within inner Sydney during this period. It highlights how the placement of these businesses within Sydney depends on a broad range of shifting and competing discourses on how sex industry premises impact upon the amenity of the city, its neighbourhoods and land uses—that is, their secondary impacts, cumulative effects, and contribution to urban ordering. On one hand, planning processes reveal ideas about how these establishments contaminate and pollute neighbourhoods and sensitive land uses such as schools or churches. On the other, there are also emerging arguments that sex industry premises such as gay bathhouses can improve the health and lifestyle opportunities for specific communities and residents within particular city environs. I argue that these latter positive discourses have guided the placement of gay bathhouses within the planning of Sydney over the last few decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twentieth century religion was radically transformed, as the sacred uncoupled from the institutional Churches. This enabled the sacred to be experienced through what were previously 'secular' activities, including sport, rock music, psychoanalysis and sexuality. Individualism and prosperity combined to encourage a focus on personal transformation as the primary religious process. The 1960s also saw calls for self-determination and equality for previously oppressed groups—women, blacks and gays. This paper uses the model of secular ritual and Victor Turner's concept of liminality to investigate the role that the gay bathhouses had in enabling gay men to experience the sacred and to transform themselves. This paper is grounded in empirical research on Sydney's gay bathhouses that sheds light on rites of passage, the role of pleasure and its relationship to religious ecstasy, and the development of a specifically gay askesis (way of becoming). It is also argued that the gay bathhouse is a crucial transformative space for all those men who were its initiates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]