WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.800 Good morning everyone and welcome. My name is Andrew Beer. I'm from Geography within Flinders University. 2 00:00:07.300 --> 00:00:14.000 It's my great pleasure this morning to be your chair and to introduce our speaker, Professor Ruth Fincher. 3 00:00:15.180 --> 00:00:24.160 Ruth will be speaking for approximately 30 minutes today and then we'll have 15 minutes for discussion, questions and other comment. 4 00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:31.340 So it's my great pleasure to now pass over to our speaker, Professor Ruth Fincher of the Department of Geography, University of Melbourne. 5 00:00:31.660 --> 00:00:47.240 Thank you Andrew and it's a great pleasure to be here. It's lovely to see some rain and good to have a fellow geographer chairing the session. 6 00:00:48.520 --> 00:00:52.720 As I start my presentation on this topic, 7 00:00:52.900 --> 00:00:54.060 I'd like to 8 00:00:54.060 --> 00:00:56.100 acknowledge the traditional owners of the land 9 00:00:56.100 --> 00:01:01.900 where we are now, the Kaurna people, and pay respects to their elders past and present. 10 00:01:02.760 --> 00:01:05.880 So, diversity in the city, what are our limits? 11 00:01:07.020 --> 00:01:08.820 Diversity is a slippery idea. 12 00:01:09.380 --> 00:01:14.900 I'm someone who studies how a range of social groups in the city experience their lives, 13 00:01:15.020 --> 00:01:19.540 however unequally, and use their built environments as part of that experience. 14 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:23.980 In the work I've done, I've emphasised the need for any 15 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:32.480 planning or policy that encourages our acceptance of diversity, to recognise that not all diversity is just and equally desirable. 16 00:01:33.020 --> 00:01:38.620 For example, we could say that income inequality is an expression of diversity in the population, 17 00:01:38.860 --> 00:01:43.980 and so the greater distance between the incomes of rich and poor, the more diversity we have. 18 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:49.880 But many of us of course would claim that we should not make that particular interpretation of diversity, 19 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:54.040 and we shouldn't have policy settings that facilitate ever-loss. 20 00:01:54.040 --> 00:01:57.320 And that would be a widening differences in income that would offend our notions of fairness. 21 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:06.420 Also, not all notions of diversity, or not all diversities rather, are appreciated equally by everybody. 22 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:08.020 This is a very obvious point. 23 00:02:08.200 --> 00:02:11.100 So, if you imagine shop owners on busy city streets, 24 00:02:11.380 --> 00:02:15.480 they don't always see that the loitering of young people in their vicinity, 25 00:02:15.700 --> 00:02:17.820 or their activities like skateboarding, 26 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:23.060 are as acceptable as the well-behaved consumption practices of café-sitters, 27 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:23.880 who are also 28 00:02:23.880 --> 00:02:25.500 loiterers when you come to think of it, 29 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:26.840 and shoppers. 30 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:34.940 So I guess I'm just asking you to notice I start this talk that diversity is a slippery idea, as I say it. 31 00:02:34.960 --> 00:02:42.480 It sounds very positive, but when you look into it it's obvious that you need to ask further questions and to specify it further. 32 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:47.780 Today I'll be mentioning a number of different kinds of diversity, of social diversity, 33 00:02:48.060 --> 00:02:53.860 and asking the general question, what are our limits in allowing them their expression in the city? 34 00:02:53.860 --> 00:02:59.240 city. I'll be drawing on some of my own recent work and on the work of lots of colleagues 35 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:05.560 to make the argument that though we in Australia are well schooled in the discourses of things 36 00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:11.440 like multiculturalism that value and acknowledge diversity, there is some evidence in our cities 37 00:03:11.440 --> 00:03:18.040 that we, some of us, are not very good in fact at accommodating or encouraging and sometimes 38 00:03:18.040 --> 00:03:23.820 even tolerating some differences and that sometimes visible difference has become tied 39 00:03:23.820 --> 00:03:27.200 up with fear, notions of risk or disorder. 40 00:03:28.320 --> 00:03:34.160 And you'll hear me saying as a general point through my talk that I see interaction between 41 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:40.660 social groups as a good thing. I think in fact that it is the essence of urbanity and 42 00:03:40.660 --> 00:03:46.520 I think it should be a social norm for us in designing our urban policies and practices. 43 00:03:46.980 --> 00:03:48.020 So I'm going to go on to the next slide. 44 00:03:48.020 --> 00:03:54.180 I'm going to start with a story from my own recent research which is about university 45 00:03:54.180 --> 00:04:00.100 students in central Melbourne. Now central Melbourne, as I'm sure most of you know, is 46 00:04:00.100 --> 00:04:05.400 the site of two major universities, RMIT and the University of Melbourne. And each of them 47 00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:12.320 has about 45,000 students and for each of those universities about 30% of their student 48 00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:17.800 body comes from overseas, usually from the countries of Southeast Asia, South Asia and 49 00:04:18.020 --> 00:04:23.080 also from the People's Republic of China. In the central city municipality of Melbourne 50 00:04:23.080 --> 00:04:29.940 there are 81,000 people in the resident population and about 40,000 of those are students. 51 00:04:30.860 --> 00:04:35.920 The universities and the city of Melbourne are really interested in the question of cross-cultural 52 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:41.620 interaction between these students from overseas and local students and people in the resident 53 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:47.880 population. Both in order to foster cosmopolitanism, the broad awareness of difference in the student 54 00:04:47.880 --> 00:04:52.600 body and on the part of the city, also there's an interest in encouraging these students 55 00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:57.880 to come back later on in their lives for the possible economic benefits that that might 56 00:04:57.880 --> 00:04:58.800 give rise to. 57 00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:04.200 So in a big project over the last four years I've been involved with a team of researchers 58 00:05:04.200 --> 00:05:09.100 from architecture and urban planning, asking whether students from overseas living in the 59 00:05:09.100 --> 00:05:16.220 area around the universities feel they belong there. This area is one to which students 60 00:05:16.220 --> 00:05:17.780 are channelled by universities. 61 00:05:24.020 --> 00:05:32.320 The students often end up in high-rise housing around the universities built by developers 62 00:05:32.320 --> 00:05:37.060 over the last decade in the light of this new market of students that's particularly 63 00:05:37.060 --> 00:05:41.660 been growing. You'll see on the slide a photograph of some of this housing in Swanson Street. 64 00:05:42.440 --> 00:05:47.340 So we were interested to see if students from overseas are interacting to the degree they 65 00:05:47.340 --> 00:05:52.760 wish with local students who are also living away from home and therefore likely to be socialising 66 00:05:52.760 --> 00:05:57.900 in these same sort of inner suburban and central areas. We were interested in the role that 67 00:05:57.900 --> 00:06:03.100 students' use of public spaces played as they established themselves as part of the local 68 00:06:03.100 --> 00:06:09.020 community or in social groups. We were influenced by the results of questionnaires administered 69 00:06:09.020 --> 00:06:14.120 to students as they leave the universities in which students from overseas often say 70 00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:16.660 they regret not making Australian friends. 71 00:06:16.860 --> 00:06:17.320 So we were interested in the role that students from overseas often say they regret not making 72 00:06:17.340 --> 00:06:17.500 Australian friends. 73 00:06:17.500 --> 00:06:21.960 And they say things very often like, I've never seen the inside of an Australian house. 74 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:28.440 So what we found in this study was a tale of two separate social worlds, one of students 75 00:06:28.440 --> 00:06:34.600 from overseas and one of so-called local students. They have separate friendship groups, which 76 00:06:34.600 --> 00:06:39.220 in particular the women students from overseas are disappointed and anxious about. They live 77 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:43.980 in different types of housing and in different inner-city locations and they use different 78 00:06:43.980 --> 00:06:47.320 public spaces for socialising in. They belong to separate communities and they are not just 79 00:06:47.320 --> 00:06:50.680 separate nationally and ethnically identified student clubs. 80 00:06:51.660 --> 00:06:56.640 The private and public spaces students use contribute to their separation from other 81 00:06:56.640 --> 00:07:01.360 parts of their local communities and to a lack of cross-cultural belonging. Even if 82 00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:06.940 they make friends and feel they belong in their own separate places and sort of groups 83 00:07:06.940 --> 00:07:11.400 of familiars, there's no evidence or very little evidence of cross-cultural interaction. 84 00:07:12.020 --> 00:07:17.300 Most students enjoy the interactions in their groups of familiars, but some also feel that 85 00:07:17.300 --> 00:07:19.440 they are not on the same level as their peers and they want to make connections beyond those. 86 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:24.820 So here's a story or a quote, not really the full story, but a quote from one student from 87 00:07:24.820 --> 00:07:30.680 overseas and what she told us she had to do in order to make local friends and I read 88 00:07:30.680 --> 00:07:35.400 it to you because you can see what very hard work it was on her part. She had a strategy, 89 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:39.960 she wanted to make local friends and she had thought about being an outsider and she went 90 00:07:39.960 --> 00:07:45.860 about making local friends quite systematically. This young woman was aged 20. Now once she 91 00:07:45.860 --> 00:07:47.280 got to Melbourne, she joined the local school and she was on the same level as the other 92 00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:51.440 students. She joined lots and I mean lots of university clubs. She joined a local city 93 00:07:51.440 --> 00:07:56.480 church which focuses on international people in its congregation. At the university she 94 00:07:56.480 --> 00:08:02.780 joined debating, African drumming, the choir, Amnesty International, group fitness and swimming 95 00:08:02.780 --> 00:08:06.880 because she said I've always found that's the best way not to look like you're bored 96 00:08:06.880 --> 00:08:11.560 or that you've got nothing to do and you're sad. In addition she volunteered for the city 97 00:08:11.560 --> 00:08:16.700 of Melbourne at its information desk at Federation Square. So she's consciously set out to 98 00:08:16.700 --> 00:08:17.260 participate in the community and she's a member of the community and she's a member of the 99 00:08:17.260 --> 00:08:22.660 paid in a lot of activities to take risks and put herself in social situations with a range of 100 00:08:22.660 --> 00:08:28.640 people. She says of the fact that she now has friends from overseas and from Australia, quote, 101 00:08:28.760 --> 00:08:33.600 I would definitely think that in my case it's because of the clubs I've joined. I haven't 102 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:39.080 always been fluent in English and it's the people you meet, the activities, that's had a big effect 103 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:44.200 on the way I react to things. I can't be shy anymore and in clubs I would still have that 104 00:08:44.200 --> 00:08:49.600 little sense of lack of fit but then I'd think there's a reason why I'm here and if I have this 105 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:54.340 interest and this person has this interest then there must be something common to us and we have 106 00:08:54.340 --> 00:09:00.140 to bond, unquote. Now there are a number of things that could be done to improve the likelihood that 107 00:09:00.140 --> 00:09:05.680 students from overseas in this context could meet up with students from Australia and indeed to make 108 00:09:05.680 --> 00:09:10.160 it more likely that students from Australia could have interactions with those from a set of Asian 109 00:09:10.160 --> 00:09:13.920 countries, the set from which our overseas students generally come. 110 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:19.200 Not all of the students from overseas who come here will have the strategies and the personal 111 00:09:19.200 --> 00:09:23.900 capacity to do what the young woman who I've just described to you has set out to do. 112 00:09:24.480 --> 00:09:28.760 We could put in place more integrated housing arrangements and classroom activities 113 00:09:28.760 --> 00:09:33.180 as part of our efforts to facilitate better interaction cross-culturally. 114 00:09:33.460 --> 00:09:39.480 But one of the most difficult things to alter we've found will be the attitudes of local students to 115 00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:43.940 their counterparts from overseas and predominantly from Asia. An attitude that was 116 00:09:43.940 --> 00:09:44.180 described as a very difficult one to alter. 117 00:09:44.200 --> 00:09:49.780 It was described to us by overseas students as neutral, that is one of disinterest. So here the 118 00:09:49.780 --> 00:09:55.300 account of one 18-year-old young woman from overseas. She said to us in conversation with 119 00:09:55.300 --> 00:10:00.140 our interviewer, I think maybe they, local students, think it's their country so they don't 120 00:10:00.140 --> 00:10:05.280 have to interact. They don't need anyone else to get into their group. First I thought like I really 121 00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:09.680 want to make some local friends. It's nice to have friends within the same country because they have 122 00:10:09.680 --> 00:10:14.180 more experience in the country better than any of us, right? But I haven't got that to do. I'm not 123 00:10:14.180 --> 00:10:18.240 sure. I haven't got that chance yet. And the interviewer said, why do you think that is? And the 124 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:23.500 student said, I don't know exactly. I think maybe they, local students, think like we're Asians and 125 00:10:23.500 --> 00:10:28.160 we have our separate culture. And the interviewer said, so you're saying they're not being negative 126 00:10:28.160 --> 00:10:32.800 but they're not being positive either. They're just neutral. And the student said, yes, they're 127 00:10:32.800 --> 00:10:39.020 just neutral. So what this tells us is that it could be very hard to create cosmopolitan 128 00:10:39.020 --> 00:10:44.060 cross-cultural interaction from just throwing together in classrooms or indeed in an overall 129 00:10:44.060 --> 00:10:49.840 part of the city like the inner suburbs, different groups of students. If one's ambition is that 130 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:54.460 they'll get along and get to know each other a bit as well as get a so-called education in the 131 00:10:54.460 --> 00:11:00.420 classroom as if that was separate from the outside world. This also suggests to us that how we react 132 00:11:00.420 --> 00:11:07.080 to visible difference, visibly express diversity in some settings is not perhaps what we might think 133 00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:12.880 we do. For local students are telling us that they see concentrated difference here, too much 134 00:11:14.060 --> 00:11:16.940 of it is just a matter of how they see it. And so they form their friendship groups outside it. 135 00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:23.340 One 22-year-old woman from Melbourne said, quote, I'm not against having international friends. 136 00:11:23.520 --> 00:11:28.760 Maybe they stick to themselves. They've got their own international groups worked out. I feel really 137 00:11:28.760 --> 00:11:33.540 racist and judgmental saying stuff like maybe they tend to come over here and then stick to people 138 00:11:33.540 --> 00:11:38.500 they know who speak their language. Because they feel safe doing that. And that's sort of in their 139 00:11:38.500 --> 00:11:43.740 comfort zone. I think the majority of people don't want to step outside their comfort zone, unquote. 140 00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:51.600 So there's not real fear being expressed here by local young people, just disinterest. I note that I'm 141 00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:56.780 not talking from this study about hate crimes or violently expressed racism, but rather about 142 00:11:56.780 --> 00:12:03.860 neutrality and the exclusion that attends it. One might see this as fairly inconsequential in an 143 00:12:03.860 --> 00:12:09.340 otherwise accepting urban society. But I think what it signals is that in some circumstances, 144 00:12:09.480 --> 00:12:14.040 we do resist diversity and its implications in our spaces of work and friendship. 145 00:12:14.060 --> 00:12:19.140 Even unthinkingly. It's outside our comfort zone. We can't be bothered engaging with it. 146 00:12:19.840 --> 00:12:24.460 Let me now go on to talk about some contexts in which we might see some reactions against difference 147 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:27.080 in cities, drawing here on the work of colleagues. 148 00:12:31.840 --> 00:12:37.940 So the next comments then about gentrification, master planning and the housing habits of the middle 149 00:12:37.940 --> 00:12:43.860 class. So if post-World War II in major Australian cities was about the spread of 150 00:12:43.860 --> 00:12:43.920 the 151 00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:48.980 suburbs and the growth in availability of the car, then perhaps in the last couple of decades, 152 00:12:49.180 --> 00:12:53.660 the spread of the suburbs, which is certainly going on a pace in those cities with major 153 00:12:53.660 --> 00:12:58.420 population growth, perhaps this has been accompanied by the appearance of some new 154 00:12:58.420 --> 00:13:05.240 middle class housing preferences. Gentrification, the revamping of old inner city housing so that 155 00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:10.160 it's higher quality housing than it ever was, associated with the replacement of lower income 156 00:13:10.160 --> 00:13:13.900 tenants and owners with higher income ones, is still the subject of the most popular debate 157 00:13:13.900 --> 00:13:20.580 and excitement among urban studies, and it's been a topic that has been exciting their interest 158 00:13:20.580 --> 00:13:22.040 since the 1980s. 159 00:13:22.240 --> 00:13:27.680 More recently in the Australian context, research especially about Sydney has been revealing 160 00:13:27.680 --> 00:13:33.560 the rapid growth of master planned and sometimes gated communities for the middle class within 161 00:13:33.560 --> 00:13:38.340 the suburbs but closed off from the suburbs and especially their lower income occupants. 162 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:43.680 In addition, a third trend, there is the move across our country to have public housing 163 00:13:43.680 --> 00:13:48.800 estates revitalised, with many of them now on the way to including privately owned housing 164 00:13:48.800 --> 00:13:53.880 units alongside publicly owned housing units which are occupied by tenants of the state. 165 00:13:54.560 --> 00:14:00.220 Each of these phenomena associated with housing and with the juxtaposition of richer and poorer 166 00:14:00.220 --> 00:14:05.260 people in the city, more closely or less closely, can be the subject of interesting commentary 167 00:14:05.260 --> 00:14:11.140 about the way diversity is being approached in practice. So let me just consider each 168 00:14:11.140 --> 00:14:12.520 of them very briefly in turn. 169 00:14:12.520 --> 00:14:13.380 1. Gentrification 170 00:14:13.380 --> 00:14:17.640 2. Gentrification is the reinvestment of money and middle class lifestyles into inner city 171 00:14:17.640 --> 00:14:22.700 housing and areas that previously were much poorer in quality. And in different approaches 172 00:14:22.700 --> 00:14:27.420 to revitalising the inner city that are taken in different places around the world, for 173 00:14:27.420 --> 00:14:31.380 example in some places there is a restoration of heritage buildings, other places they are 174 00:14:31.380 --> 00:14:36.120 all cleared and new buildings are built and so on. In different approaches to revitalising 175 00:14:36.120 --> 00:14:42.160 the inner city and to drawing in more wealthy consumers as residents and visitors. One important 176 00:14:42.160 --> 00:14:47.920 issue is who wins and who loses, who is excluded and who is included in the new forms of development 177 00:14:48.700 --> 00:14:53.440 and whether the activities and presence of local lower income people can be preserved 178 00:14:53.440 --> 00:15:00.080 in situ. That rarely happens with gentrification and very often now the most accessible parts 179 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:04.840 of the metropolitan area become the homes of people with resources, whilst people without 180 00:15:04.840 --> 00:15:11.120 resources are pushed outwards to the relatively unserviced urban periphery. The issue I want 181 00:15:11.120 --> 00:15:12.140 to raise here and I think is very important is that the 182 00:15:38.440 --> 00:15:43.340 area overall as a whole in which you might have some rich and some poor neighbourhoods. 183 00:15:43.520 --> 00:15:47.960 Rather, it should mean that in their daily lives there's some likelihood of people of 184 00:15:47.960 --> 00:15:53.120 different lives and prospects interacting, much as occurs for many of us in our workplaces 185 00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:54.900 and makes them interesting places. 186 00:15:56.440 --> 00:16:01.500 In neighbourhoods and streets, having this kind of possible interaction will often require 187 00:16:01.500 --> 00:16:07.300 a serious governmental commitment to affordable housing being preserved amongst the gentrifying 188 00:16:07.300 --> 00:16:11.360 housing stock to which otherwise only the wealthy have access. 189 00:16:12.360 --> 00:16:16.960 So this raises an interesting question then about the revitalisation of low-income housing 190 00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:20.220 estates, often public housing estates. 191 00:16:21.040 --> 00:16:25.320 The Australian urbanist Cathy Arthurson, a long-time resident academic in Adelaide, has 192 00:16:25.320 --> 00:16:29.600 written at length on this issue, critiquing the fact that the introduction of privately 193 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:34.920 owned and higher-cost housing units to areas previously occupied uniformly by public housing 194 00:16:34.920 --> 00:16:37.280 means that overall there'll be fewer public and private housing estates. 195 00:16:37.280 --> 00:16:50.920 Plus the佘佘佘 196 00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:11.660 one would want to emphasise, as Cathy Arthurson does, that this should not result in an overall 197 00:17:11.660 --> 00:17:16.820 loss of public housing units in accessible locations. Furthermore, one would want, I think, 198 00:17:16.820 --> 00:17:23.120 to unsettle the view that often seems to surround very fuzzily the introduction of middle-income 199 00:17:23.120 --> 00:17:28.400 housing to low-income estates, that it's for the good of low-income people to be exposed to 200 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:32.480 middle-income people who are clearly more successful members of society and should be 201 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:37.860 emulated. And those of you who know Mark Peel's extraordinary work of a decade or so ago about 202 00:17:37.860 --> 00:17:42.420 the development in South Australia of Elizabeth will have seen his wonderful discussion of that 203 00:17:42.420 --> 00:17:47.680 philosophy. So I think rather one would want to take the view that it's in everyone's interests 204 00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:52.840 to know how people of different circumstances live. Now there is, of course, no guarantee at 205 00:17:52.840 --> 00:17:57.700 all and possibly not even a likelihood that people who are very different, who find themselves 206 00:17:57.700 --> 00:18:02.460 living close by, will become friends and anything more than casual nodding acquaintances. 207 00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:08.380 This is the finding of much research already. It belies the expectation, for example, 208 00:18:08.380 --> 00:18:14.660 of some recent British policies for cities over there that what has been called a multicultural 209 00:18:15.180 --> 00:18:20.620 intimacy should result from people of different cultural backgrounds being neighbours. And 210 00:18:20.620 --> 00:18:25.820 it supports the view of others researching urban encounter that purposeful activity in 211 00:18:25.820 --> 00:18:30.780 groups with common interests is the thing that forms friendships across difference in 212 00:18:30.780 --> 00:18:32.460 what could be regarded as the good of the people. 213 00:18:32.480 --> 00:18:44.900 Now a relatively new form of exclusionary clustering of the wealthy, more disdainful 214 00:18:44.900 --> 00:18:51.460 of living closely with diversity than is gentrification, is the master-planned estate. And sometimes 215 00:18:51.460 --> 00:18:56.840 this is even a gated community. Geographers in Sydney have documented the emergence of 216 00:18:56.840 --> 00:19:01.660 this phenomenon over the past decade, particularly in the western suburbs of Sydney. And there 217 00:19:01.660 --> 00:19:02.460 are interesting examples of this. 218 00:19:02.460 --> 00:19:07.480 The analysis appearing of whether or not local councils give the residents of these communities 219 00:19:07.480 --> 00:19:12.760 reduced council rates, for it's the levies on residents that pays for community facilities 220 00:19:13.280 --> 00:19:18.700 and roads and infrastructure in these places. There are claims from researchers that the 221 00:19:18.700 --> 00:19:24.980 reason people opt to live in these closed places are fear of disorder and a desire to 222 00:19:24.980 --> 00:19:29.460 control their environment, which they see governments and other authorities as failing 223 00:19:29.460 --> 00:19:29.880 to do. 224 00:19:30.580 --> 00:19:32.440 Now those like me who regard the fact that the local government is not a place for social 225 00:19:32.440 --> 00:19:35.440 ization the the the 226 00:19:35.440 --> 00:19:41.120 the essence of urbanity, will oppose the increase in numbers of such estates, seeing them as the 227 00:19:41.120 --> 00:19:46.920 ultimate in cross-class segregation of a kind we've not seen much before in Australian cities. 228 00:19:47.760 --> 00:19:53.180 Important urban writers such as Brendan Gleeson also criticised them for closing off resources 229 00:19:53.180 --> 00:19:59.600 from the public realm. Of course, some local councils, especially those who don't give rebates 230 00:19:59.600 --> 00:20:05.000 to residents on local council rates, find these estates attractive because of the council expenditure 231 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:11.120 they save. So the residential preferences of the Australian middle class, aided and abetted by 232 00:20:11.120 --> 00:20:16.080 developers of course, make for interesting thinking about diversity in the city and the limits to our 233 00:20:16.080 --> 00:20:21.720 tolerance of it. Gentrification has excluded lower income residents in countless cities around the 234 00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:27.960 world. Urban policy analysts express concerns that the so-called revitalisation of public housing 235 00:20:27.960 --> 00:20:33.420 estates will exclude public housing tenants from the locations, often the accessible locations, 236 00:20:33.620 --> 00:20:34.940 they've long called home. 237 00:20:36.560 --> 00:20:41.600 Masterplanned estates for the wealthy turn their backs utterly on those of lesser resources. 238 00:20:42.140 --> 00:20:48.660 These trends can limit the possibilities of diversity in the city being known by its residents in their daily lives. 239 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:54.620 And certainly the appearance of masterplanned estates demonstrates clearly the anxieties of some 240 00:20:54.620 --> 00:20:58.660 about different ways of living amongst their neighbours, their distant neighbours. 241 00:20:59.340 --> 00:21:04.980 Rowan Atkinson, the British urban analyst now in Tasmania, has proposed that the 242 00:22:04.940 --> 00:22:10.500 diversity should be most valued, one would think. And in the big events of a city's life, people do 243 00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:15.660 come together from all over the city to congregate and celebrate. In the presence of security guards, 244 00:22:15.700 --> 00:22:21.620 it's true, but even so they are together. There are indications from some evidence about cities, 245 00:22:21.720 --> 00:22:27.940 however, that public space is becoming increasingly stressed at times, especially in those central 246 00:22:27.940 --> 00:22:33.720 cities which have implemented the 24-hour city policy and in which late-night alcohol consumption 247 00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:40.140 is a growing civic problem. One could think that this problem and the need to reduce it is in fact 248 00:22:40.140 --> 00:22:45.740 a product of allowing too much diversity to flourish in the entertainment market. But in fact, 249 00:22:45.760 --> 00:22:51.100 the opposite could be true, that too little effort has been put in to ensuring that the central city 250 00:22:51.100 --> 00:22:56.160 streets and entertainment premises are of appropriate scale and mix, such that a variety 251 00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:02.540 of groups are attracted to them and their surrounds. Urban public space is an increasingly blurred 252 00:23:02.540 --> 00:23:03.700 notion in any context. It's a problem that we have to address. It's a problem that we have to address 253 00:23:03.700 --> 00:23:08.180 in any case, for it's often actually private space that's accessible to the paying public, 254 00:23:08.460 --> 00:23:14.160 rather than freely available public space. Think about shopping malls, which groups of young men 255 00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:19.580 or anyone trying to take a photograph will often find out readily enough are under close surveillance 256 00:23:19.580 --> 00:23:25.780 by security guards. Order and security are priorities in these commercial premises. The 257 00:23:25.780 --> 00:23:31.680 consumer actively purchasing things is the desired visitor. Other forms of use are not preferred. 258 00:23:31.960 --> 00:23:33.420 And some of the students, 259 00:23:33.700 --> 00:23:38.600 we interviewed in the study I talked about at the beginning, indeed found these spaces very safe 260 00:23:38.600 --> 00:23:44.660 and reassuring. In these spaces, as with the master-planned communities, order is sought, 261 00:23:44.880 --> 00:23:50.860 fear is the enemy of urban diversity, the visible presence of the other or the different is seen to 262 00:23:50.860 --> 00:23:57.360 be risky. And so the middle-income consumer becomes the best recognised citizen in this context. 263 00:23:58.040 --> 00:24:03.180 My colleague Kurt Iverson has written of a famous case in Perth in the 1990s, 264 00:24:03.180 --> 00:24:03.680 in which he said, 265 00:24:03.700 --> 00:24:09.600 which urban public spaces in the central city were felt by the city council to be compromised 266 00:24:09.600 --> 00:24:15.000 by the influx of young people from the northern suburbs on a new train light, which in fact had 267 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:21.360 been built to link those very northern suburbs to the city. As he describes it, refurbishment of the 268 00:24:21.360 --> 00:24:27.060 central city's public spaces was undertaken in the early 1990s by local and state governments. 269 00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:33.140 But despite planners claiming a rich and diverse environment resulting from this remaking, 270 00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:33.680 some of the urban public spaces were not. And so the central city council was not. And so the 271 00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:38.180 some groups of young people, particularly, as I say, from the northern suburbs, were unwelcome. 272 00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:41.420 So I quote Kurt Iverson for you. He said, quote, 273 00:24:41.500 --> 00:24:46.780 Under pressure from politicians, councillors and retailers, police used their powers under child 274 00:24:46.780 --> 00:24:52.220 welfare legislation to remove young people not accompanied by their families from the central 275 00:24:52.220 --> 00:25:00.040 area. The JAG team, which stood for Juvenile Aid Group, mounted operations in 1994 under code names 276 00:25:00.040 --> 00:25:03.660 such as Operation Sweep and Operation Family Vagabonding. 277 00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:13.680 The JAG team, which stood for Operation Sweep and Operation Family Vagabonding, was not. And so the 278 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:18.600 young people were detained for being in areas where Aborigines were thought to congregate. 279 00:25:19.520 --> 00:25:25.420 Diversity for planners was alfresco dining, shoppers and workers and tourists intermingling, 280 00:25:25.580 --> 00:25:30.900 jazz bands and farmers markets. Planners saw it as predictable, controllable, unquote. 281 00:25:31.620 --> 00:25:33.660 So those planning for diversity were not. And so the JAG team, which stood for Juvenile Aid Group, 282 00:25:33.660 --> 00:25:38.700 could design it. Imagine what it looked like in their own minds, said Kurt Iverson. But when 283 00:25:38.700 --> 00:25:44.120 groups of people came using the public spaces in their own ways that did not comply with the 284 00:25:44.120 --> 00:25:49.620 planning vision, this was not appreciated. So is there then, sometimes in our planning and design 285 00:25:49.620 --> 00:25:55.460 of urban public spaces, a relatively narrow aesthetic and a narrow expectation of who the 286 00:25:55.460 --> 00:26:00.440 public is that fails sometimes to capture the differences of groups within the population 287 00:26:00.440 --> 00:26:03.080 and what they might want of their built environment? 288 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:05.680 So I think that's a really important point. 289 00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:12.440 To my final comments on deinstitutionalisation of people with mental illnesses or an intellectual 290 00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:20.120 disability who then live in that community. And I've just got a quote here of a statement from 291 00:26:20.120 --> 00:26:25.120 the Victorian Premier about a year ago about the final redevelopment of the site of a huge 292 00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:32.720 institution in Kew. So thinking about people whose days include spending time just being there in 293 00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:33.640 urban public spaces, I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important 294 00:26:34.760 --> 00:27:01.440 one the 295 00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:07.100 residential units or of facilities for people requiring support services. People using these 296 00:27:07.100 --> 00:27:12.560 services may become visible outsiders in a suburban residential area or a shopping centre, 297 00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:19.160 those public spaces. A decade ago, a PhD student of mine, Melissa Permazel, examined the extent to 298 00:27:19.160 --> 00:27:24.300 which local neighbourhood houses in Kew in Melbourne, site of this institution the Premier 299 00:27:24.300 --> 00:27:30.180 is talking about, were able to integrate in their activities a range of groups of people with 300 00:27:30.180 --> 00:27:33.840 different characteristics. Some of those people were recent immigrants to the area 301 00:27:33.840 --> 00:27:38.820 from different countries, some were long-standing immigrants to the area, some were people 302 00:27:38.820 --> 00:27:43.420 undertaking retraining in hopes of improving their job readiness, some were people with 303 00:27:43.420 --> 00:27:48.820 intellectual disabilities who lived in local residential care on the site of this former 304 00:27:48.820 --> 00:27:54.080 institution for those with intellectual disability. And what she found, this student of mine, was that 305 00:27:54.080 --> 00:27:59.620 cross-difference social interaction occurred more readily between all groups than it did between 306 00:27:59.620 --> 00:28:00.160 any group of people. And so, she found that there was a difference between all groups of people 307 00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:02.540 and the people with intellectual disabilities. 308 00:28:04.100 --> 00:28:09.300 Okay, thanks, Andrew. In the same established Melbourne suburb of Kew, where once stood a very 309 00:28:09.300 --> 00:28:14.680 large custodial institution and where now expensive housing is being developed on the past grounds of 310 00:28:14.680 --> 00:28:19.500 that very institution, there are now emerging the occasional complaints from new residents 311 00:28:19.500 --> 00:28:24.360 about the loitering of people with intellectual disabilities around the new residential area. 312 00:28:24.660 --> 00:28:29.780 For, as I've said, a series of community residential units have been retained in the new suburban 313 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:36.580 suburb of Kew, and the current residents of the new suburb of Kew are now living there still. 314 00:28:37.180 --> 00:28:42.260 Now, in the last couple of decades, some of those residents of the institution at that time did 315 00:28:42.260 --> 00:28:47.280 indeed walk around the local streets and shops in the daytime, and they're continuing to do that now 316 00:28:47.280 --> 00:28:52.100 that they're residents of the new units. In the past, they were known about by shop owners and 317 00:28:52.100 --> 00:28:56.660 local residents, and the institution from which they came, which was really very prominent in the 318 00:28:56.660 --> 00:29:03.440 suburb, was understood as a very large presence there. So what one surmises is now happening is 319 00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:10.100 that new residents, occupants and purchasers of the expensive new housing are surprised at the 320 00:29:10.100 --> 00:29:15.040 presence of occupants of the community residential units in the public spaces of the suburb. 321 00:29:15.140 --> 00:29:19.500 Presumably, developers of the new housing did not advertise this fact to them. 322 00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:26.400 In some countries, in the wake of public disquiet over the deinstitutionalisation of those with 323 00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:26.640 intellectual disabilities, there are now many people who are not able to live in the suburb of Kew. 324 00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:26.900 In some countries, in the wake of public disquiet over the deinstitutionalisation of those with 325 00:29:26.900 --> 00:29:31.420 intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses, and their more visible public presence in cities, 326 00:29:31.620 --> 00:29:37.660 grand policy statements have been made proposing confinement as a viable option again, 327 00:29:37.900 --> 00:29:42.560 this time to preserve public safety. So back to the institution for some people. 328 00:29:42.940 --> 00:29:48.320 Graham Moon, a British geographer, has written compellingly on this question in that national 329 00:29:48.320 --> 00:29:54.940 context, observing through the 1990s that mental health policy in the UK was reflecting public 330 00:29:54.940 --> 00:29:56.620 concern about possible and possible health problems. So, in the late 1990s, the government 331 00:29:56.620 --> 00:29:56.800 proposed a new policy that would allow people to live in a suburb of Kew, and that would be 332 00:29:56.800 --> 00:30:02.220 possible violent offences by people with mental illnesses. He argued that confinement of people 333 00:30:02.220 --> 00:30:09.160 was being presented anew as a policy option and a strategic response to the so-called failure of 334 00:30:09.160 --> 00:30:14.120 community care policy strategies. And he opens one of his papers, this British geographer, 335 00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:20.240 with the following quote from the UK Department of Health in 1998. Quote, care in the community 336 00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:26.040 has failed because while it improved the treatment of many people who were mentally ill, it left far 337 00:30:26.040 --> 00:30:26.600 too many people with mental illnesses. So, in the late 1990s, the government proposed a new policy 338 00:30:26.600 --> 00:30:32.500 walking the streets, often at risk to themselves and a nuisance to others, unquote. So, this view of 339 00:30:32.500 --> 00:30:37.760 the UK Department of Health, of course, raises the question of on whom it is that the risks of 340 00:30:37.760 --> 00:30:43.220 community care policy, that policy of community residential living and treatment in day programs 341 00:30:43.220 --> 00:30:49.120 for people who in previous times would have been in custodial institutions, on whom is it that the 342 00:30:49.120 --> 00:30:54.400 risk of these programs falls? Is it the recipients of those forms of care, or is it the members of 343 00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:56.580 the public who have to be aware of that risk? And, of course, the risk of those forms of care is 344 00:30:56.600 --> 00:31:03.180 occurring by having people, having its recipients walking the streets or in the public spaces of the 345 00:31:03.180 --> 00:31:10.480 city. So, I think the interesting feature of this British policy discussion of a decade ago is the 346 00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:16.420 attention it pays to the concerns of the public who see mental illness in their public spaces as 347 00:31:16.420 --> 00:31:24.700 never before and find it discomforting. So, in conclusion, I've touched on a few forms of diversity 348 00:31:24.700 --> 00:31:26.580 that are expressed among the public. And I think it's important to note that the risk of mental 349 00:31:26.580 --> 00:31:29.400 illness is a very important factor amongst the population in our cities. I've touched on 350 00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:34.380 differences of ethnicity, cultural background and immigrant status, differences of income as 351 00:31:34.380 --> 00:31:39.540 expressed in housing choices and attitudes to the design of public spaces, and differences of 352 00:31:39.540 --> 00:31:44.540 intellectual ability and mental health. There are, of course, many other forms of diversity in cities 353 00:31:44.540 --> 00:31:50.580 that we could draw out. For example, the distinctions between higher and lower density suburbs and the 354 00:31:50.580 --> 00:31:56.240 debates between their proponents. So, what then do we conclude from this review and commentary of mine? 355 00:31:56.920 --> 00:32:02.760 Note that I have not presented a view that there are more forms of diversity now than there were in the 356 00:32:02.760 --> 00:32:08.360 past, or that we're less willing to embrace diversity in our daily lives now than we were in the past. 357 00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:13.500 But I have tried to claim that analysts are starting to think a bit more about these questions of 358 00:32:13.500 --> 00:32:19.880 diversity than in the past. What I do think it is important to note as we think about our limits in 359 00:32:19.880 --> 00:32:25.840 accepting diversity in the city is the way these limits do seem sometimes to be associated with 360 00:32:25.840 --> 00:32:26.560 anxiety and anxiety. And I think that's a very important point. And I think that's a very important 361 00:32:26.580 --> 00:32:26.780 point. And I think that's a very important point. And I think that's a very important point. 362 00:32:26.780 --> 00:32:32.820 Fear and perceptions of risk, increasing with the presence of the unfamiliar, which is paradoxical 363 00:32:32.820 --> 00:32:38.620 because we are, most of us in our cities here, wealthier than we've ever been, more familiar with 364 00:32:38.620 --> 00:32:42.860 difference in all its manifestations because of our knowledge of the rest of the world and the way 365 00:32:42.860 --> 00:32:47.500 that that knowledge is beamed into our lives through the media with great efficiency. We are 366 00:32:47.500 --> 00:32:54.160 full participants in globalisation. And yet there is fear and anxiety present in some of our reactions 367 00:32:54.160 --> 00:32:56.560 to the presence of diversity in the city. And I think that's a very important point. And I think that's a very important point. 368 00:32:56.580 --> 00:32:56.840 Fear and assumptions of risk, increasing with the presence of diversity in the city. And I think that's a very important point. 369 00:32:56.840 --> 00:32:57.300 Fear and assumptions of risk, increasing with the presence of diversity in the city. And I think that's a very important point. 370 00:32:57.300 --> 00:33:02.300 Perhaps we can only conclude that the limit to our living with diversity better in the city is our fear of it. 371 00:33:02.380 --> 00:33:08.000 But then there's the case of the local students that I discussed at the start of my remarks for whom 372 00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:12.920 neutrality towards students from different backgrounds is more characteristic than fear. 373 00:33:13.280 --> 00:33:20.760 Many just aren't interested in engaging. So normalising diversity so that it seems more and 374 00:33:20.760 --> 00:33:26.160 more natural to engage with it and it is not feared will be a long-term societal project 375 00:33:26.160 --> 00:33:29.300 but very much worth pursuing. Thank you. 376 00:33:34.800 --> 00:33:35.680 Thank you. 377 00:33:41.240 --> 00:33:47.860 Now it's my pleasure to open up the floor for questions or comments to Ruth. Preferably questions I would think. 378 00:33:48.300 --> 00:33:52.560 It is a little bit dark so you might have to put your hand up a long way for me to see you. 379 00:33:52.600 --> 00:33:53.920 So who would like to start off the questions? 380 00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:56.140 The gentleman over there and the gentleman further down. 381 00:33:56.160 --> 00:34:03.020 Given the issues that you've raised, how do we actually get good public policy made 382 00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:09.580 that it's given that there is this fear and anxiety in the community which is only exacerbated 383 00:34:09.580 --> 00:34:11.940 by the way that we're using the phrase as an issue? 384 00:34:14.180 --> 00:34:17.680 Well, I mean that's a big question and an interesting one. 385 00:34:17.780 --> 00:34:23.260 I think there's probably two ways I'd want to respond to that. 386 00:34:23.680 --> 00:34:26.140 One is that I think it's... 387 00:34:26.160 --> 00:34:30.300 I think it's really important in our planning and community development policies, 388 00:34:30.660 --> 00:34:36.980 our social planning policies that are the ways in which we approach changing cities, 389 00:34:37.140 --> 00:34:42.840 that we do look at questions of the nature of the population, not just see the population 390 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:46.820 as a number. Not just look at the growth of the city as... 391 00:34:46.820 --> 00:34:50.780 I forget what the number was in your new plan that's just been released on Monday. 392 00:34:51.000 --> 00:34:56.140 Some 500,000 new people in Adelaide or something by in 50 years. 393 00:34:56.160 --> 00:35:02.120 I think it's really important that we think about the characteristics of the population 394 00:35:02.120 --> 00:35:04.240 that live in different parts of the city. 395 00:35:04.480 --> 00:35:06.580 So that's the first thing. 396 00:35:06.700 --> 00:35:12.120 So for example, in the study I talked about in the city of Melbourne, it was really news 397 00:35:12.120 --> 00:35:17.060 to a lot of policy makers that half the population of the city of Melbourne, the central municipality 398 00:35:17.060 --> 00:35:17.740 is students. 399 00:35:17.900 --> 00:35:19.140 Half the population. 400 00:35:19.340 --> 00:35:24.920 So really then in thinking about planning for the population, cities are about people. 401 00:35:24.980 --> 00:35:26.140