In this already acclaimed history of Commonwealth Government involvement in housing policy Pat not only analyses the origins, rise and fall of public housing, but also explains how it has come about that Australia’s housing is among the most expensive in the world.

Planning policy is deeply implicated here. In Pat’s own words “this is a story about how rational consideration of the way we develop our cities succumbed to a pre-occupation with accommodating the short-term needs of the development industry and the rise of political ideologies antagonistic to the idea of public intervention”.

Accommodating Australians: Commonwealth Government Involvement in Housing is published by Federation Press.

At the recent European Network for Housing Research conference in Norway, City Futures staff presen-tations drew on a wide array of recent and ongoing projects. Connected with work on older people and housing were papers given by Hazel Easthope ‘Good urban governance? The role of retirees in the fourth tier of governance’, and by Bruce Judd ‘Down-sizing: Myths and realities concerning the movement of older people in the housing market’. Bruce’s paper was co-authored with colleagues including Edgar Liu who also presented his own paper, ‘Long term impacts of migration on housing consumption: a case study of Sydney, Australia 1981-2006’.

Drawing on the Centre’s social housing research and incorporating international comparisons were the papers co-presented by Vivienne Milligan ‘The old and the new: comparing strategic positioning of third sector housing organisations in the Netherlands and Australia’ and given by Hal Pawson ‘Ending security of tenure for social renters: opening the door to ‘ambulance service’ social housing?’

Meanwhile, crunching through a record-breaking number of slides, Bill Randolph’s presentation ‘Suburbanising disadvantage in Australian cities: housing markets and social change in an era of neo-liberalism’ (jointly drafted with Andy Tice) charted the links between Bill’s earlier work on this topic and the Centre’s currently ongoing AHURI-funded study ‘Addressing concentrations of disadvantage’.

Full versions of papers will be available on the ENHR website later in 2012.

In 2011 CF’s Enabling Built Environments Program (EBEP) won a large ARC grant to research bathroom design. Running in partnership with GWA Bathrooms & Kitchens (formerly Caroma Dorf), this Linkage partnership is a natural one as GWA products have been widely used for over 60 years.

The GWA flagship brand Caroma is credited with inventing the world’s first dual flush toilet, saving millions of litres of water each year. The project is especially significant given the historically limited level of R&D investment in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

As a first step in the project we are establishing an older persons co-design group to advise on data collection methods and to participate in collaborative design workshops to help evaluate the safety, usability and attractiveness of our autonomous bathroom prototypes. The research will also involve a national consumer survey on bathroom design priorities.

Spanning the disciplines of architecture, industrial design, engineering and health science, the research will establish the design fundamentals needed to develop more flexible, more innovative and safer bathroom fixtures and domestic bathroom environments for older Australians. Additionally, the research will assist in incorporating human factors and computational knowledge obtained in partnership with older people.

Jointly led by Stephen Cummings of Caroma and EBEP’s Catherine Bridge, the research team will also include Russell Lowe, Oya Demirbilek, Peng Gang-Ding (Electrical Engineering) and Stephen Ward (Caroma Industries).

© Copyright 2012 - Caroma Industries Limited

We are delighted to announce the publication of the second edition of Planning Australia: An Overview of Urban and Regional Planning. This book is edited by Healthy Built Environments Program (HBEP) Director, Associate Professor Susan Thompson, together with planning colleague Associate Professor Paul Maginn from the University of Western Australia. The first edition was an award winner and widely adopted as a planning text across Australia.

Fully revised and updated, this edition of Planning Australia features contributions from a mix of established and early career academics, together with practising planners. Many of the chapters are authored by staff from the Planning Program of the Faculty of the Built Environment.

On 14 July, the NSW Government released a Green Paper entitled ‘A New Planning System for NSW’. This seeks to reform planning so that it is ‘simpler, strategic and transparent’. It forms the third phase in the ongoing NSW planning system review – the most significant in 30 years. The City Futures Healthy Built Environments Program (HBEP) has been working alongside the NSW Premier’s Council for Active Living to engage stakeholders committed to a planning system promoting healthy living.

At a recent HBEP forum involving government, NGOs and professionals we workshopped an initial Green Paper response and were encouraged by Department of Planning and Infrastructure's comments that the review team seeks assistance in implementing the principles outlined in the Green Paper.

The establishment of a NSW Healthy Planning Expert Advisory Group to offer advice to the NSW Government was a major outcome of the forum.

Key recommendations emerging from the forum will be reflected in HBEP’s Green Paper submission. Firstly, it was agreed that health must be an explicit objective of the Planning Act. Secondly, community participation, proposed as a foundation of the new system, must be robust and adequately resourced to ensure that all groups are effectively represented.

Green Paper submissions are being sought by the Government until 14 September prior to the release of a White Paper later in 2012. Previous HBEP submissions on the Planning Review can be found on our website – very soon to be joined by our Green Paper submission.

17 August:
Prof George Galster (Wayne State University, Detroit, USA) - 'Neighbourhood Social Mix: Right Diagnosis; Wrong Prescription?'

26 September:
Dr Jenny Muir (Queens University, Belfast, UK) -The 'competitive waterfront' in the neoliberal city

29 August:
Prof Christine Whitehead (London School of Economics, UK) - Comparative Studies of the Private Rental Housing in Europe

10 October:
Dr Alasdair Jones (Hertfordshire University, UK) - Sustainable by design, sustainable in practice? Comparing living practices in 'eco-developments'

12 September:
Dr Bruno Parolin (formerly UNSW) - Economic impacts of town bypasses - is there life after a bypass?

21 November:
David Lilley (Department of Finance & Services, NSW Government) - Place making as a response to concentrations of disadvantage

Dr Araz Taeihagh recently joined the City Futures Research Centre from University of Oxford to work with Professor Michael Neuman and
support activities of the Australian Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Settlements and Infrastructure (ACCARNSI) node. 
Dr Taeihagh's doctoral work in Oxford was on novel approaches for development of policies in socio-

-technical systems. He currently focuses on issues relating to sustainability, infrastructure systems and application of complexity science in policy design and planning.