Walking with communities: local government and community responses to local area renewal

2005

Community strengthening approaches that emphasise local solutions to local economic, social and environmental challenges now receive significant government support. This paper examines the theoretical basis which underpins community building and place based development. It identifies a philosophy towards supporting communities that begins with a clear commitment to discover a community’s assets and capacities rather than focussing on deficiencies and problems. The focus then shifts to examining how information and communication technology (ICT) can be used creatively in a community strengthening context, introducing the Neighbourhood Renewal (NR) program, which involves a whole-of-government response in partnership with 15 local communities across Victoria, Australia. In particular, the paper presents a case study of community engagement through the provision of support for NR Employment and Learning Coordinators (ELCs) in conducting local community resident skills surveys. The purp...

Social Work With Groups, 2009

2000

In this report, we present feedback from 3 different events on the Social Exclusion Unit's National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. It covers the views of residents, practitioners and academics, giving a unique combination of perspectives on how we can best help ...

Communities and Local Government, 2010

Chapter 1 The NDC Programme: Involving local people Chapter 2 Resident involvement: policy context, strategies, spend and interventions Chapter 3 The extent of community involvement Chapter 4 The impact of resident involvement Chapter 5 Conclusions and key policy implications 4 | Involving local people in regeneration: Evidence from the New Deal for Communities Programme Acknowledgements We would like to thank all members of the evaluation team for their continuing involvement in the 2005-2010 second phase of the NDC national evaluation. Thanks are especially due to the following:

Understanding neighbourhood renewal through people-based outcomes: setting up a longitudinal panel study at Bonnyrigg, NSW, 2011

Under Housing NSW’s Living Communities Project, the southwestern Sydney suburb of Bonnyrigg, NSW, is being transformed from a socio-economically deprived neighbourhood dominated by public housing into a mixed tenure community. Learning from other neighbourhood renewal projects in Australia and overseas, Housing NSW is committed to better understand how the residents of renewal areas are affected before, during and after the renewal process. This is particularly significant for three reasons. First, the Bonnyrigg Living Communities Project will be the first of its kind in Australia to be delivered through a Public Private Partnership model, involving a consortium of five public, private and non-profit partners. Second, it is also significant given the long timeframe (30 years) of (re)construction and tenure transfer to and management by the non-profit partner, St George Community Housing Association, reflecting diversification of public housing provision and the rise of the community housing sector in Australia. Third, there will be a sizeable increase in housing density, where expected population will increase from the current 800 households to more than 2,000, with much of the detached houses that now dominate the suburb replaced by triplexes and four-unit apartment blocks. With these major changes anticipated, three monitoring mechanisms were devised to review the progress and outcomes of Bonnyrigg’s renewal program. This paper showcases one of these mechanisms, a longitudinal outcome based research on changes (whether actual or perceived) to the quality of life and life chances of current and future residents. This longitudinal research, which commences in mid-2011, will be comprehensive by taking a resident panel approach, involving one-fifth of the suburb’s households, and spanning a minimum of five years. An oft excluded though highly perceptive group of residents – children and teenagers – are also included as part of the research in order to gain insights into the longer-term impacts of the neighbourhood’s renewal.

2003

Planning Theory & Practice, 2014

2020

This document is part of a series of four project briefs (CaDDANZ briefs 8-11) which collate distinct but interrelated sets of key findings from a research project that examined how older adults of 65 years and above create and maintain a sense of home and community in the Auckland neighbourhood of Northcote. This study forms part of a wider suite of projects within the MBIE-funded CaDDANZ research programme which collectively investigate facets of population change and diversity in a range of different contexts. Overall, CaDDANZ aims to develop greater understanding of how diversity affects society and how, in turn, institutions and communities can better respond to diversity. This neighbourhood-based study sits within a growing body of social science scholarship that has recognised the importance of 'the local' because this is where diversity is lived and negotiated in everyday interactions. While much of the academic literature and policy discourses tend to focus on ethnicity and culture, we would like to stress that diversity is complex and multiply determined by a broad range of factors, including gender, age, ability and socioeconomic status. We selected Northcote 1 as a research site for a number of reasons. Situated on Auckland's North Shore, Northcote is typical of Auckland's suburban landscape insofar as it largely features standalone homes in a residential area serviced by a local town centre. Its resident population of approximately 8,000 can be described as diverse with respect to socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, professions, age groups and ethnic profile but the demographic profile of the suburb has shifted over time and there is significant geographic variation in the area. Northcote is a medium-income suburb but median personal incomes range from approximately $22,000 in Akoranga and Northcote Central to $39,000 in Northcote South and Tuff Crater. These intra-neighbourhood discrepancies largely reflect the presence of a significant public housing tract and are also evident in neighbourhood deprivation scores which are 8 and 10 respectively for Akoranga and Northcote Central but only 3 for Northcote Tuff Crater and Northcote South. As housing has become less affordable, home ownership among Northcote residents has decreased from 56 per cent to 40 per cent between 2001 and 2018. Northcote's population is age-diverse but there is a higher-than-average presence of residents aged 65 and over. In Akoranga, home to a large retirement village, the median age is 43.9 years and 56 per cent of the resident population are not part of the labour force. With respect to migrant populations and ethno-cultural and linguistic diversity, at the time of the last available Census in 2018, more than 43 per cent of all Northcote residents were overseas-born. 1 For the purposes of this project Northcote comprises the Statistical Areas (SA2) of Akoranga, Northcote Tuff Crater, Northcote Central and Northcote South. See Figure 2 for details.

BMC Public Health, 2012

Background: Urban renewal programs aim to target both the physical and social environments to improve the social capital, social connectedness, sense of community and economic conditions of residents of the neighbourhoods. We evaluated the impact of an urban renewal program on the health and well-being of residents of a socially disadvantaged community in southwestern Sydney, Australia. Methods: Pre-and post-urban renewal program surveys were conducted with householders by trained interviewers. The urban renewal program was conducted over 16 months and consisted of internal upgrades (including internal painting; replacement of kitchens, bathrooms and carpets; general maintenance), external upgrades (including property painting; new fencing, carports, letterboxes, concrete driveways, drainage and landscaping), general external maintenance, and social interventions such as community engagement activities, employment initiatives, and building a community meeting place. The questionnaire asked about demographic characteristics, self-reported physical activity, psychological distress, self-rated health, and perceptions of aesthetics, safety and walkability in the neighbourhood. We used the paired chi-square test (McNemars test) to compare paired proportions. A Bonferroni corrected p-value of <0.0013 denoted statistical significance. Results: Following the urban renewal program we did not find statistically significant changes in perceptions of aesthetics, safety and walkability in the neighbourhood. However, post-urban renewal, more householders reported there were attractive buildings and homes in their neighbourhood (18% vs 64%), felt that they belonged to the neighbourhood (48% vs 70%), that their area had a reputation for being a safe place (8% vs 27%), that they felt safe walking down their street after dark (52% vs 85%), and that people who came to live in the neighbourhood would be more likely to stay rather than move elsewhere (13% vs 54%). Changes in psychological distress and self-rated health were not statistically significant. Conclusions: We found an increase, in the short-term, in the proportion of householders reporting improvements in some aspects of their immediate neighbourhood following the urban renewal program. It will be important to repeat the survey in the future to determine whether these positive changes are sustained.