Professor Bill Randolph and Dr Hazel Easthope were honoured to receive the Strata Community Australia (NSW) President’s Award at the 2012 Strata Community Awards for Excellence on 19 October (pictured with David Ferguson, SCA (NSW) President).

Presented by the NSW Board of Strata Community Australia (peak body for the sector), the award commemorated the growing canon of City Futures work on strata scheme management and governance and its contribution to the strata industry and community.

City Futures extends a warm welcome to Ianina Rubinsztein and Danielle Del Pizzo – our new administrative support team. With six years' experience in the finance and consulting sector, Ianina (Centre Financial Administrator) has already worked for a year in the Enabling Built Environment Program (EBEP) team within CFRC. She is also currently completing a Masters degree in Commerce. Danielle (Administration Assistant) is a returning UNSW staff member previously employed at the Centre for Health Informatics (Faculty of Medicine) and at the London office of the Wellcome Trust, a health research foundation.

We also bid a fond farewell to Maria Schwensen, outgoing CF office manager, who deserves a huge vote of thanks for keeping the show on the road for the past 7 years. We wish Maria every success in her new role as administrator of the Faculty’s recently-set up Cooperative Research Centre on Low Carbon Living.

The Planning Institute of Australia (NSW  branch) has celebrated the contribution of CFRC’s Healthy Built Environments Program (HBEP) with the recent award of several commendations for HBEP work. Honouring her career-spanning contribution to the planning discipline and profession, HBEP Director Associate Professor Susan Thompson was elected as a Fellow of the Institute, while the HBEP Healthy Built Environments: A Review of the Literature won the Cutting Edge Research and Teaching Award. Also, HBEP’s Jennifer Kent and designer, Jodi Lawton, were honoured for the scholarship and practical policy relevance of both the Review and the more recently released set of Fact Sheets (all downloadable from the HBEP website). Meanwhile, casual HBEP Research Assistant and urban planner,

Andrew Wheeler was awarded the Outstanding Student Project for his student thesis Planning for Urban Health: An analysis of Metropolitan Strategic Planning in Australia. And, over in Western Australia, the State PIA branch has commended the second edition of Susan Thompson and Paul Maginn’s Planning Australia: An overview of urban and regional planning.

Originally collated on behalf of Housing NSW, the City Futures report Social housing strategies, financing mechanisms and outcomes: an international review and update is now downloadable from the CF website. Researched in late 2011, the report investigates post-GFC developments in the development, funding and regulation of social and affordable housing in a range of advanced countries including Austria, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA.

October 2012 saw the Australian launch of Building Inclusive Cities: Women’s safety and the right to the city, a new text on planning and liveability co-edited by CF Research Associate, Dr Crystal Legacy. In a series of chapters authored by practitioners, activists and researchers, the book documents practice and research around a rights-based approach to planning. Initially presented at the 2012 World Urban Forum in Naples in September, it aims to inform planning and urban management.

Copies of Building Inclusive Cities: Women’s safety and the right to the city can be ordered directly from the publisher, Routledge.

28 November:
Dr Imriyas Kamardeen (UNSW BE) - 'Collaborative OHS Management Portal for Construction'

5 December:
David Lilley (NSW Land and Housing Corporation) - Re-thinking place making as a response to locational disadvantage

City Futures is delighted to welcome visiting Professor Peter Sainsbury. A medical graduate with a doctorate in sociology, Peter has already made a significant contribution to the Healthy Built Environments Program in his role as Chair of the HBEP Advisory Board. Currently Director of Population Health in South Western Sydney and Sydney Local Health Districts, NSW Health, Peter has longstanding interests in inequalities in health, the social determinants of health. In his day job, he works with local councils, Housing NSW, Landcom and other agencies to create healthier built environments. We look forward to working with Professor Peter Sainsbury in his new CFRC role.