 Hello everyone. Today we explored a city of Sydney's plans for lower-income households in high-density neighborhoods. You'll be hearing today from AISL East Hope from the City Future Reachers Center at University of New South Wales about two neighborhoods with the same local government area in Sydney, both with considerable populations of lower-income households living in apartments, but which provide markedly different day-to-day experiences for their residents. I'm Claudric Silva, and today let's talk about urban planning. Welcome to our episode, Hazel. Thanks, Rodrigo. Good to be here. So the first question for you would be, why is this topic so important? Well, a lot of research that's been done on condominiums so far focuses on luxury high-risers, talks about things like their use of safety deposit boxes in the sky, how they're marketed to well-off residents, but in Australia, lots of people on lower incomes live in condominiums, and we wanted to talk about that and what it means for planners and what it means for housing development in our cities. So I guess I should start by saying, what do I mean when I say lots of people live in condominiums? When I'm talking about condominiums, I'm talking about private apartment buildings where each individual unit is owned separately. In Australia, we call them strata title. They're called lots of different things and lots of other countries, but condominiums is internationally recognized. So we could talk if you want about some of the historical reasons for that. But I'm getting a nod. So part of the reason for that is that we have quite a small supply of public housing, and also we have much fewer rental buildings than in many other countries. So buildings that are built for the purpose of renting out. So essentially, if you rent in a private apartment in Australia, you're most likely renting in a condominium, which we call strata title here. So the result is that large proportions of lower income apartment residents live in condominium housing. The other thing that's really interesting I think about the Australian case is that lower income condominium residents often live side by side with higher income residents. So it's not the case that we have neighbourhoods of lower income condos and neighbourhoods of higher income condos, but we have a mix of resident profiles within the same neighbourhoods. And I think that's really interesting when we're thinking about planning for private development, fully private condominium dominated precincts to think about the mix of people who are likely to live in them. So that's really what the paper explores how is this done. And we do that through two case studies, which are in the same local government area as you said, one of which we might call a best case or ideal scenario, and the other one is a much less than ideal scenario. So these are both neighbourhoods in the same local government area with the same local government responsible for their planning, and the same state government responsibilities for planning, but with markedly different outcomes residents. And in the paper we explore what's happened through a detailed in-depth dive into those cases. And before we jump into the findings, when you started this research, so what were you hoping to find? What was your research gap? So the paper's actually based on a slightly larger research project, which focused on how to plan higher density apartment neighbourhoods that would meet the needs of low income residents. And that project also looked at public housing provisions, private housing provisions of apartments. And we thought that that's really important because although lots of low income households who live in these developments, and in the case of private developments, lots of low income households living in private apartment developments, their needs are seldom explicitly considered or catered for. So their needs as apartment residents, but also their needs. So in this paper, we've focused on the private story. Because you think that's pretty interesting. And we wrote the paper because the contrast between these two neighbourhoods was so extreme, despite the fact that they've both made up almost entirely of private condominiums, and they're in the same place. Of course, I think this contextualisation of how the situation, so how it works in Australia, contrasting to other countries, and now jumping into this research gap was very, very interesting. So can you tell us what are the main findings of your article then? Sure. So I'll briefly describe the two case study areas. The first one we have called Upper Stratfield. So it's the lesson ideal case study. So to give you a kind of picture of people who live in Upper Stratfield in Sydney, who we spoke to, they were living next to empty development sites, so sites where the previous houses had been demolished or had not yet been demolished, but no new development had occurred for many years, without the street upgrades for the park that they'd been told were coming, and they moved to the area. The development in the surrounding area was delayed. That also delayed the contributions that the developer would have provided to fund local public infrastructure. And for example, one grandmother we spoke with, she walks past these empty sites with her grandchildren to catch a train to go to a park in another suburb. So not an ideal outcome there. So residents who live there, we talk about how convenient the location is. It is next to a major transport hub, train station, and a major shopping centre. But the closest parks and children's playgrounds are more than a kilometre away. There's no community centre. And residents told us there was no way to meet and talk or hang around. There's heavy traffic, which made walking in the area unpleasant. And the site is actually sandwiched between the heavy rail line and a major highway. So then if we turn to the other case study area, Roads West, it's in a different area within the local government area. It's waterfront. It sits on a river. It also is walking distance from a train line. It has fantastic local parks. It has a multi-purpose community centre. It was designed with community input and funded and negotiated developer contributions to that community. Residents told us that the neighbourhood gave them a really high level of everyday amenities. It was quite attractive and an enjoyable place to live. And they especially liked the waterfront walks, community centre and access to the shops and the trains. So those neighbourhoods are providing a different quality of life. In the paper, we talk about why that happened and what we can learn about those two cases. The other thing I should say is that these developments were also occurring or in the case of Upper Strathfield, not occurring around the same time as before. Okay. Okay. So there's a difference in the time of the research? Well, no, I mean, what I'm saying is it's not that they're occurring at completely different times. The development period is quite long, but contingent. Of course. And so it's interesting to do two different contracts. So my question would be for you now. So now what? Can you indicate what comes next in this topic? So what's now left to find? Well, I think what I need to explain to answer that question is how did we get here? How do we have Upper Strathfield, which has a not very desirable outcome in the roads west, which has a very desirable outcome. So Upper Strathfield was at the edge of a lot of strategic planning proposals, but it wasn't central to any of them. So, for example, there were proposals to upgrade the major highway that I mentioned. There were proposals to put in a new metro station nearby. A series of kind of rolling proposals that might have impacted on what could be developed in the site, but where the site was not central to, or strategically central to any of those proposals. And what people have indicated to us is that they think that one of the major landowners in the area was sitting on the sites and not developing them with a view to perhaps them being able to develop in the high densities where some of these were to come on. So sitting on the sites and getting a more profitable outcome. So in contrast, roads west was a high profile site. It involved larger development companies, what we call Tier 1 development companies. So kind of the big boys in town. It had a lot more local and state level political attention, and that brought with it a lot more resourcing and coordinating of planning approaches. And it became central to the strategic planning story, and it was resourced appropriately. In the paper, we discussed how that was able to happen, and there are many reasons for that. One is simply the geography. Upper Strathfield is sandwiched between a heavy rail line and a major road, while roads west is on the riverfront. But there are also other reasons. Upper Strathfield was on the edge of various strategic proposals, including a new metro and an upgrade to the highway, while roads west was central and a focus as a precinct for upgrade that received both local and state level political attention and associated with that more resourcing and coordinated planning approaches. So the question that we ask in the paper or the problem that we pose is how can this be allowed to happen? If we can demonstrate through roads west that we can achieve excellent planning outcomes for lower income residents in private apartment developments, why aren't we achieving them in all developments? And that's why the two cases in the same local government area are so interesting. Or put another way, how can we try and achieve types of outcomes that we achieve in roads west in places like Upper Strathfield? And so we explore in the paper two main areas. One is planning and public infrastructure provision, and the other is place management and community engagement. And we compare what happened and didn't happen in the two case study areas in that sense. One of the important differences in terms of base management and community engagement was the delivery of the community centre in roads west. Upper Strathfield doesn't have one. And also a dedicated place manager position within the local council in West which there wasn't afforded to Upper Strathfield. That was very important in the roads case for achieving positive outcomes that were achieved. So why can't we achieve this in all neighborhoods, not just in high profile sites? So you asked before, what does this mean for further research? I think we've demonstrated how by just looking at two cases in depth, we can really start to explore the politics of the planning process and also some of the good practices that we might want to replicate. And I would be calling for many other researchers to be doing many other case studies like this at that neighbourhood or precinct scale with a critical reflection on the planning process so that we can learn more about what we should be seeking to achieve across the board and also raising these political questions and not just assuming that private condominium developments are going to house wealthy people and provide a good quality of life for them. So if there was one takeaway that I wanted people listening to this talk to go away with, I would say, so long as we're primarily relying on the private market to deliver housing, lower income residents are going to live in private condominiums and governments are going to need to intervene through appropriate planning process to ensure that their needs are met or put another way. Don't forget that lower income people will live in condominiums too. Of course. An important punchline and still a lot of research to be done in the topic. Absolutely. Hazel, can you provide us to the listeners some additional resources about the topic that you discussed today? Some self-promotion is allowed if it's the case. So can you recommend more materials for our listeners to explore this topic? I would love to, Rodrigo. So there's a broader report on which this paper was published by the Australian Housing and Open Research Institute and I can provide a link that perhaps you can link to this presentation to that report. It has much more detail and also additional case studies in the city of Melbourne. I'll also provide links to two news articles that we published in the conversation based on this project as well for the further background and reading. Perfect. And thank you, Hazel, for your participation here today. That was my pleasure. This episode is available on Urban Planning websites on Koshitatsu's YouTube channel as well as in podcast directories. Hazel, it was a pleasure. Thanks, Rodrigo.