Interdisciplinary urban research
The Macquarie Housing and Urban Research Centre conducts research across three interconnected themes: housing and home; urban policy and planning; and public, caring and just urbanisms.
Housing and home
Houses are also homes. They provide the physical spaces where we live, work, entertain, raise families and forge communities.
This theme explores how we:
- organise our housing system
- ensure everyone has a safe, affordable and secure home
- can ensure housing reflects the needs and aspirations of different people and communities.
It includes research on tenure, finance, sustainability, accessibility, density and much more.
Learn more about our projects in this area:
This project explores the drivers, experience and outcomes of public housing estate renewal.
The project provides new insights into:
- the policy and financial objectives of renewal
- the impact of renewal interventions of tenants facing forced relocation
- alternative redevelopment models.
Researchers:
Full project title: Reassembling the city: understanding resident-led collective property sales
Funding: Australian Research Council Discovery Grant
This project investigates the emerging phenomenon of residential collective sales – where neighbours come together to sell their properties in one line – and the implications for urban residents and governments at local, metropolitan and national levels.
It provide the first ever detailed empirical analysis of this phenomenon, including mapping, case studies and stakeholder and expert interviews across Sydney and Vancouver, two cities at the forefront of collective sales activity.
The project makes significant contributions to both policy and academic debates, by advancing knowledge on how shifting dynamics of neighbourhood change will affect the planning and development of global compact cities in the 21st century.
Researchers:
- Kristian Ruming
- Simon Pinnegar (University of NSW)
- Hazel Easthope (University of NSW)
- Laura Cromelin (University of NSW)
Urban policy and planning
Our urban policy and planning theme is dedicated to addressing critical issues impacting urban transformation and change.
We aim to enhance the quality of life in cities through engaged and impactful research and policy analysis, addressing critical challenges such as:
- urban growth, densification and suburbanisation
- mobilities and technologies
- resilience to climate impacts.
We strive to create inclusive and sustainable urban environments that promote fairness and improve the quality of life for all city residents.
Learn more about our projects in this area:
Full project title: Interrogating urban planning reforms for increased housing supply: more homes where people want to live?
Funding: Macquarie University Accelerator Scheme
This project critically examines recent urban planning reforms that aim to increase housing supply in response to Australia’s housing crisis.
Utilising a mixed-methods approach, it interrogates:
- how and why has planning reform become accepted as the primary mechanism for addressing the housing crisis
- how planning reform affects the quantity and geography of housing supply
- the extent to which the NSW Government’s current round of reform will increase housing supply in well-located areas.
The project fills a vital gap by testing claims about the relationships between planning and housing supply, providing insights for policy makers, communities and researchers.
Researchers:
Funding: Natural Hazards Research Australia
The research has been informed by partnerships with key emergency and disaster response agencies across five states. It is one of the largest and most authoritative social science studies of community experiences of floods ever undertaken in Australia.
The research applied an innovative, trauma-sensitive, mixed methods approach undertaking extensive surveys and hundreds of interviews with stakeholders and community members affected by floods in 2022–23.
The research has had considerable impact on policy and practice in the emergency and disaster management fields, informing debate and discussions on:
- flood management
- urban planning
- disaster communication
- insurance
- planned retreat.
Learn more about this project.
Researchers:
Funding: Australian Research Council Future Fellowship
This project critically analyses the role of universities in shaping Australian cities.
Through a detailed case study approach, the project generates new theoretical and applied knowledge about how universities influence the planning, built form and social and economic functioning of our cities.
Outcomes include a clearer understanding of how:
- universities configure their local environment
- universities are mobilised within planning documents to achieve urban objectives
- land development is now a core activity for universities.
Researchers:
Funding: Australian Research Council Discovery Grant
This project aims to improve Australia’s economic response to climate change by evaluating the strategies that are being developed to meet decarbonisation and resilience goals.
It will generate new knowledge about the ‘climate economy’ using an innovative method to understand its ‘hybrid’ actors, policies and institutions.
Macquarie leads research on transport as critical climate infrastructure deeply connected to how we organise urban spaces and value land.
Researchers:
- Associate Professor Ben Spies-Butcher
- Associate Professor Gareth Bryant (University of Sydney)
- Dr Sophie Webber (University of Sydney)
- Dr Claire Parfitt (University of Sydney)
- Dr Svenja Keele (Monash University)
Public, caring and just urbanisms
Our research examines the processes and factors that contribute to creating more public, caring and just cities in order to address injustice, inequality and disadvantage.
Our solutions-focused work draws on cutting-edge academic scholarship, by partnering with diverse collaborators, to address some of the most pressing urban issues at a variety of scales.
We are dedicated to improving urban futures through theoretically informed and engaged urban research working towards more public, caring and just cities.
Learn more about our projects in this area:
Funding: Australian Research Council Linkage Grant
The power of public spaces project is about the interconnections and values of public spaces for people, and other beings such as plants, animals and rivers. It is framed around the question: what sustains the life of public spaces now and into the future?
Our project explores how public spaces are planned, created, cared for and shared in an Australian context.
We are currently investigating how communities, professionals, scholars and governments can come together to better design, manage, activate and collaborate in public spaces to nurture more sustainable and resilient futures.
Learn more about this project.
Researchers:
Cities globally are facing challenges with care inequalities and sustainability. One major issue is the unfair allocation of infrastructure that supports vital caregiving tasks.
The aim of this research project is advance understandings of care-informed urban planning and governance.
Researchers:
Full project title: Social resilience, migrant integration and informal sport in public space
Funding: Australian Research Council Discovery Grant
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of public space and leisure in strengthening individual and community wellbeing. This project investigates the potential of informal sport in fostering social resilience and cohesion in new migrant communities by analysing how social outcomes are shaped by public spaces and built environments of Australia and Singapore.
Expected outcomes and benefits include:
- qualitative evidence of the dynamics that contribute to the formation of successful neighbourhoods and communities
- related policy and urban planning recommendations
- an enhanced capacity to build urban citizenship among Australia's growing and vulnerable multicultural migrant populations.
Learn more about this project.
Researchers:
- Amanda Wise
- Selvaraj Velayutham
- Kristine Aquino (University of Technology Sydney)
Full project title: Survival and wellbeing among migrant precariat in Australia’s gig economy
Funding: Australian Research Council Discovery Grant
The food and parcel delivery industry is now a structural feature of the Australian labour market. Little is known about the social consequences of this development for the workforce, especially for temporary and long-term migrant workers involved in this industry.
This project aims to investigate the risks to safety and wellbeing to migrant cohorts who undertake this work, interrogating the intersecting impact of age, gender, class, and ethnicity and particularly migration status.
The project produces major national benefits, such as:
- an enhanced capacity to inform future labour market policies and regulation
- conceptual innovation in describing the 'everyday survival' strategies of migrant workers in Australia.
Researchers:
Full project title: Carceral geographies and spaces of non-care in Australia’s ‘alternative places of detention’
Purpose-built spaces of immigration detention and incarceration (often situated in remote locations) are a fundamental aspect of asylum seeker and refugee-receiving nations. However, other detention sites have emerged, with local governments across cities in the Global North becoming registered spaces and zones of refugee ‘welcome’.
This project examines what happens when spaces of welcome overlap with sites of detention in local communities, and asks what an offer of welcome means, when at the same time deprivation of freedom is accepted through the incarceration of those supposedly being welcomed. This is explored through a specific focus upon the use of ‘alternative places of detention’ (APODs) – typically hotels and motels.
Researchers: