Public perceptions of foreign and Chinese real estate investment: intercultural relations in Global Sydney

Moving foreign human and financial capital through landed property is not a new phenomenon in Sydney. It is a recurring geopolitical strategy that is replete with intercultural tension and deep colonial roots. In contemporary Australia, there is an assumption in public policy and media rhetoric that there is a high level of public concern about foreign investment. However, there is little empirical data that examines public perceptions. In this study, we are interested in whether the dominant voices in this debate represent broad public views about this issue. We sought to fill this gap by conducting a survey of almost 900 Sydney residents, looking at their perceptions of foreign and Chinese investment. We find high levels of public concern and discontent about foreign investment amongst Sydneysiders, with Chinese investors being a key target of this discontent. In the context of high housing prices in Sydney, there were widely held concerns about housing affordability. Survey respondents had a sophisticated understanding of what influences house prices, but with an overemphasis on the role of foreign investment. There is a general lack of support for policy that encourages foreign investment, and a lack of confidence in how the government is regulating foreign investment. Half of our participants reported that they would not welcome Chinese foreign investment in their suburb.     

Prosperity and the Suburban Dream: Quality of life and affordability in western Sydney

Over the past 10 years Sydney has experienced a remarkable wave of economic prosperity and growth, partly due to its developing role as a regionally significant global city. Through this period, maintaining the quality of life in the city has been regarded as particularly important. Yet traditional accounts of the global city have stressed quality-of-life features of the inner city. In this paper I examine the implications of the prosperity of global Sydney for the quality of life of western Sydney, paying particular attention to environmental amenity and the affordability of housing. The paper argues, first, that growth in the Sydney region has depended upon continued growth in western Sydney. It highlights key instances in which residents have resisted developments associated with this growth and regarded as major threats to the environmental amenity of the region. Second, the paper argues that the prosperity of Sydney, combined with changes to government policy, have impacted upon the supply of affordable rental housing in western Sydney. This is particularly significant in the case of public housing. Managing growth in the city will require attention to managing quality-of-life issues in the metropolis as a whole.     

The price ripple effect in the Vancouver housing market

Attempts to model the dynamic characteristics of a housing market include examining the spatial diffusion of price changes from an epicenter through a regional or national network of geographic units. Less common has been the study of a ripple effect of price changes within a single metropolitan area, with implications for the erosion of residential affordability. Such trends have particular salience within the Vancouver metropolitan area, the least affordable housing market in North America. Using quarterly price data from local real estate boards, we examine price changes through municipal regions from 2005–2017, a period including several externally-induced price shocks. Several techniques test for a ripple effect in price movements. A time lag of three months consistently exists in the communication of price shocks from an originating epicenter to other parts of the metropolitan region, with longer lags with several more distant municipalities, confirming the presence of an intra-metropolitan ripple effect.     

中国城市房价对生育率的影响——基于长三角地区41个城市的计量分析

房价与人口的关系是人文经济地理学研究的热点领域,本文选取长江三角洲地区作为研究区域,利用区域内41个城市11年（2008—2018年）的数据,分别采用差分GMM模型及LSDVC法,从整体和分组的层面分析城市房价与生育率的关系。整体模拟结果表明,城市房价上涨的速度对于生育率有着显著的负向作用：房价上涨得越快,生育率下降得越快。同时,以房价收入比衡量的居民购房能力对生育率也有着显著的影响,居民购房能力下降得越快,生育率也下降得越快。分组研究的结果表明,不同房价水平的城市,生育率受购房能力影响程度不同,中等房价水平及较低房价水平的城市,其生育率更容易受到购房能力波动的影响。基于以上研究结果,提出严控房价涨幅速度、适当提高购房补贴、提高居民收入等政策建议,以期提高区域内居民整体生育意愿,促进人口增长。     

I cannot afford to live alone in this city and I enjoy the company of others: why people are share housing in Sydney

ABSTRACT

Share housing is changing. Once considered a form of short-term housing and a lifestyle choice for young adults fresh out of the family home, share housing is increasingly playing a broader role into advanced adulthood. Recent work has claimed the emergence of Generation Rent; however, the reconfiguration of housing experiences is illustrated not only by renting but also by an increase in house sharing and the emergence of ‘Generation Share’ within the renting cohort. We know surprisingly little about share housing and its increasingly important role in housing. This paper draws upon exploratory research conducted on share housing in Sydney, Australia, and argues that share housing as traditionally understood is changing. Share housing has a widening demographic and it is driven primarily by economic factors. Despite this, the social affordances offered by share housing are highly valued. Share housing therefore offers us a unique lens into changing housing pathways and values and provokes us to think of ways to produce more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable housing.     

The scale of segregation: ancestral groups in Sydney, 2011

Most studies of urban residential segregation analyse it at a single-scale only, usually the smallest for which relevant census data are available. Following a recent argument that such segregation is multiscalar, this paper reports on multilevel modelling of the segregation of 42 ancestral groups in Sydney, Australia, looking at its intensity at four separate scales in which segregation at each scale is presented nett of its intensity at all higher-level scales. Most groups are more segregated at the macro- and micro-scales than at two intermediate meso-scales, with variations across them reflecting their size, recency of arrival in Australia and cultural differences from the host society. The findings are used as the basis for developing a multiscale appreciation of residential patterning.     

The man/land theme in geography: a Sydney University perspective

Geography as practised at Sydney University over the years has been multi‐faceted. One branch of the discipline is the man/land (or people/environment) theme which was nurtured by the founding fathers of the department, Griffith Taylor and Macdonald Holmes. Numerous staff members have taught and researched aspects of this theme. This paper reviews some of the contributions from the time of Griffith Taylor to the present.     

中国市域居民住房支付能力时空演变及影响因素

利用泰尔指数、σ系数、莫兰指数和空间回归模型等方法,对2012—2017年中国大陆346个市域单元收入房价比的时空演变规律进行分析,并探究其影响因素。结果表明:2012—2017年,中国市域单元收入房价比排名整体表现为东部>中部>东北>西部,其相对差异和绝对差异均随时间呈现增大趋势,居民住房支付能力稳步增强。2012—2017年,中国市域单元收入房价比的空间集聚性显著增强,空间分布不均衡性有逐渐增强的趋势。经济水平、城镇化水平、房地产投资水平、城市规模是影响中国市域住房支付能力的主要影响因素,其中,经济水平和城镇化水平对居民住房支付能力具有较大的正向影响,而房地产投资水平和城市规模为负向影响;2012—2017年我国东北和东中西部则不同程度上受不同影响因素的影响。     

Equity Issues in the 'New Prosperity' of the 1990s: The case of Sydney

Equity issues associated with Sydney's engagement with prosperity, especially over the last decade, are examined. Sydney is positioned within the historic contexts of major national economic change and of globalisation, noting especially the rise in importance of the financial, property and business services sectors. These sectors are concentred in inner Sydney and have helped position Sydney as Australia's leading global city, thereby generating jobs and growth in incomes. At the same time, however, there have been major shifts in patterns of income distribution across the Sydney metropolitan area and between Sydney and other parts of Australia. In particular, we note the 'revitalisation' of Sydney's inner-urban areas and their association with new forms of Central Business District (CBD) workforce growth and a significant realignment of journey-to-work patterns. Using Australian Taxation Office income data, the dynamics and some of the equity outcomes of 1990s prosperity within the Sydney metropolitan area are examined, paying particular attention to the impact of change in and around the Sydney CBD and the City of Sydney local government area. We find that there has been a complex shift in the nature of inequality across the Sydney metropolitan area, including a widening in incomes in some instances and a major geographic shift in Sydney's income-divide axis. The paper concludes by arguing that ongoing economic prosperity in Sydney will depend on the extent to which social cleavage can be avoided by a more equitable sharing of the benefits of prosperity.     

The Particularity of Global Places: Placemaking Practices in Los Angeles and Sydney

What makes places different from one another in the context of globalization? An analysis of 17 emblematic practices in two global cities, Los Angeles and Sydney, provides the empirical basis for answering this question. Evidence from the built environment, the social geography, and the patterns of disorder in the inner cities of these two global places shows that these cities were more alike in the late 1960s than they are today. The differentiation of the two places has increased as the effects of globalization have become more pervasive. The evidence presented in this paper suggests that there is nothing inherent in contemporary globalization that requires global cities to have inner city slums, ghettoes, massive homelessness, residential disinvestment, White flight, relict or suboptimally-utilized brownfields, illegal prostitution, a war on drugs, public spaces awash with guns, and so forth. Places are viewed here as constellations of distinctive practices configured in particular geographical settings at the intersection of specific conjunctures of historical change. Places matter in the epoch of globalization as differentially embedded, bounded particularities consisting of a mixed assortment of human practices forming causally consequential fields of effects.     

Islam in Sydney: Contesting the Discourse of Absence

Non‐recognition is one of the key modes of re‐inscribing the Other. In Sydney's anti‐mosque politics this form of oppression was manifest as a discourse of absence. Sydney Muslims have been portrayed as non‐existent within, or external to, localities where mosques have been proposed. In these circumstances claims to belonging and citizenship by Sydney Muslims have been fundamentally injured. Census data are used to challenge the historical and contemporary constructions of Islamic absence in Australia. Sydney Muslims are a culturally diverse and somewhat disparate faith group. They are increasingly present in areas outside of the initial zones of residential focus. This diversity and dynamism is a substantial challenge for Islamic community building (Ummah) in Sydney and presents rich foci for further research.     

Planning a Prosperous Sydney: The challenges of planning urban development in the new urban context

Since their post-war inception, Sydney's metropolitan plans have tended to be overtaken by the social, economic and environmental conditions they have had to confront. The depth and scope of Sydney's recent urban transformation threatens again to overtake metropolitan planning capacity creating, in the context of competitive globalisation, a potentially significant market disadvantage for the city, not to mention poor urban development outcomes. This paper reviews Sydney's post-war metropolitan planning strategies, examining the social and economic contexts and the policy paradigms in which they have been framed, in order to draw out the lessons to be learned from their successes and failures. We argue that future success in planning urban development will rely on richly informed and fine-grained understanding of the complex spatial outcomes of Sydney's ever-deeper global integration. Only such fine-grained understanding can empower metropolitan planning to be responsive to the evolving challenges of managing development in the contemporary urban context.     

The geography of same-sex couples and families in Australia: an empirical review

ABSTRACT

Much has changed since the first mapping of single-sex couples and families from the 2006 Australian census. An increasing willingness to allow their identification in the census has accompanied increasing public acceptance of same-sex couples culminating in significant support for legalising same-sex marriage in a 2017 national survey. Technological advances permit complex cross-tabulations of Australian census data and more detailed characterisations of same-sex couples. New geographies differentiate between male and female couples with children, showing same-sex couples are not just a feature of some inner-city areas, though these remain important, but also of suburban, regional and some rural areas. Drawing on the 2016 census, contemporary geographies of same-sex couples with and without children in Australia and changes over the past decade in Sydney are analysed at a time of increased interest in this demographic.     

Place,exile and identity: the contemporary experience of Palestinians in Sydney

Statelessness, displacement and exile, far from being particular moments in history, continue to affect the lives of Palestinians living in Sydney, in the maintenance of national identity and community formation. The impacts that displacement and subsequent ‘statelessness’ have had on the ways in which Palestinians maintain a sense of national identity have similarities with those of other ‘displaced’ peoples. Without the recognition of national boundaries to secure national sovereignty (Palestine) and accommodate the continuation of a shared and inherited history, the most significant element through which Palestinian identity is kept ‘alive’ is the one thing that all Palestinians share: a communal sense of injustice which involves being denied the right to live in, or return to, their homeland. Statelessness, nationalism and the now ‘imagined community’ of Palestine are more crucial for Palestinians living in Sydney than more primordial elements of identity, such as language or local community. Statelessness and exile in Australia have constructed a particular sense of Palestinian nationalism. The continuity of Palestinian identity as a primarily political phenomenon is a situation analogous to that of other diasporic refugee communities.     

The unauthorized city: Late colonial Lusaka and postcolonial geography

This paper uses a case study of Lusaka, Zambia, to interrogate several aspects of the literature on postcolonial geography. I deploy two concepts from African postcolonial studies – the idea of exclusionary democracy and the concept of the domestication of difference – and assess the continuity in their applicability to Lusaka. More specifically, I examine the contention that both the political and the planning dynamics of the last years of colonialism are foundational to state–society relationships in contemporary Lusaka. Distinguishing two spheres for in-depth discussion – urban government and housing policy – I concentrate on the final years of colonialism, moving through to the contemporary setting, to examine if the roots still show for the processes creating exclusionary democracy and domesticating difference. I also examine the ambivalent and incomplete character of those processes. I close with an assessment of the broader meaning inherent in understanding Lusaka in postcolonial terms.     

Developing a workable model of housing need: Applying geographical concepts and techniques to a problem of public policy

Governments increasingly seek to target public sector welfare expenditures to those most in need. In Australia, attention has increasingly focussed on the question of housing need: its conceptualisation, measurement, application to policy and expression across space. This paper reports on work undertaken by geographers for the Government of South Australia on the development of a workable model of housing need as a means of establishing priorities for public sector expenditure. The paper considers the problem of housing need and the challenges of developing and applying the multi-faceted concepts embedded within the notion of ‘need’.     

中国城市房价、收入与房价收入比的时空分异格局

中国城市房价快速增长背景下,城市房价、收入与房价收入比空间格局既有相似性,也表现出差异性,其空间异质性与空间依赖性特征显著。本文以中国337个地级行政单元为研究对象,运用泰尔指数、位序-规模和空间马尔科夫链等方法,对2009—2018年中国城市房价、收入和房价收入比的时空分异格局、整体稳定性和空间依赖性特征进行分析发现:(1)中国城市房价增长呈现出波动性特征,整体分异程度增强,房价城市体系呈现"金字塔型"结构,收入则表现出平稳增长态势,整体分异度降低,城市体系呈现"橄榄型"结构,在房价与收入共同影响下,房价收入比整体差异性显著加强;(2)城市房价空间格局表现出"地带性"与"等级性"差异并存,而收入更多表现出"地带性"差异,房价收入比则以"等级性"差异为主;(3)城市房价和收入类型的稳定性和空间依赖性较强,高、低水平城市存在两极分化与"俱乐部收敛"现象,房价收入比稳定性相对较弱。对中国城市房价、收入和房价收入比时空分异格局和空间关联效应的分析,可以为探索中国城市房价收入比空间分异模式与机理提供必要研究基础。     

On the Fringe of Neoliberalism: residential development in outer suburban Sydney

Although there is widespread consensus in human geography that neoliberalism is achieved through the intersection of multiple scales and states, there has been growing emphasis in recent years on the hybrid qualities of neoliberalist-styles of governance. Because hybrid approaches draw attention to the wide range of actors and contradictory agendas underpinning the always uneven expression of neoliberalist projects, they are particularly suited to the identification of residual state capacities in contexts where neoliberalist forms dominate economic and political life. Drawing on two cases of large-scale residential development in New South Wales, namely Warnervale Town Centre on the New South Wales Central Coast and the Australian Defence Industry site at St Marys in Sydney's west, the present paper adopts an hybrid approach in order to identify current state capacities. Through a comparison of both sites, it identifies the potential for socially and ecologically balanced development in the outer suburban context.     

'You Gotta Love This City': The Whitlams and inner Sydney

This analysis of music in cultural geography, in the context of the inner Sydney-based band, The Whitlams, traces the creative links between sounds, 'scenes' and places. Based in Newtown, The Whitlams are associated with political values, evident in the band's name, and social values tied to and opposed to urban changes, such as gentrification, where community is threatened. The band's lyrics emanate from their experiences, challenging commercialisation of city life at different scales and reflecting the anomie of city living, but defending its virtues, whilst also fostering place stereotypes. The audience was similarly inner-city based until the band's recent commercial success, which has challenged The Whitlams' identity and radicalism, and resulted in mainstream appropriation. Though The Whitlams continue to reaffirm their local identity, and local audiences have remained, the popularity and commodification of their music has challenged concepts of shared meaning, the link between bands and their fans, and the connection between music and its place of origin. The Whitlams' music nevertheless remains a means of evoking and sharing a sense of place.