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Demand and supply factors in housing affordability in australia
General essay on urban sprawl
General essay on urban sprawl
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2.0 Literature Review
Urban sprawl does have major impacts that effects urban fabrication positively and negatively. These major impacts will be explored under the categories of housing affordability, suburban lifestyle and health. In this section, the literature reviewed is predominately studies of Australia, United Kingdom and United States of America. Within each of the section of the literature review positive and negative impacts of lifestyle will be explored.
2.1 Housing Affordability
Urban sprawl has opened the door and created opportunities for households to be able to be able to afford to purchase and rent housing. Currently in Australia and around the world, groups of society are facing housing and financial stress. This section of the literature review explores housing stress in Australia and the effectiveness of master planned communities and the connection of housing affordability to urban sprawl.
2.1.1 Housing Stress in Australia
It is important to understand the housing stress and lack of affordable housing and how urban sprawl has enabled improved affordable housing. Lack of affordable housing has been an on-going issue in Australia over a substantial amount of time. Housing choice and affordability has been negatively affected low to moderate income earner in particular, due to inflation over the last ten years (Berry 2003, Berry and Hall 2001, Randolph and Holloway 2002). Furthermore, within the capital cities of Australia, the rapid housing price inflation has increased at a faster rate than the average income and benefits (Berry and Dalton 2004) (see figure 1). Berry and Dalton (2004) argue that the significant rise in housing prices is a major contributor to the causes and difficulties in economic and soci...
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...ng arguments for and against urban sprawl and the impacts it has on lifestyles. Urban sprawl can be seen as a mechanism to reduce housing stress and enable increased access to affordable housing. Australian society values suburban living and urban sprawl allows for larger houses to be built upon larger lots than in Brisbane’s metropolitan area. In reference to health, car dependency plays a strong role in the lack of physical activity that causes increase obesity rates. To encourage more activity in low density living it requires sensitive planning of urban design that promotes walkability. Theses lifestyle components of housing affordability, suburban lifestyle and health have major impacts of quality of life in which urban sprawl plays a role in. Further research is needed to have more of an in-depth understanding on the benefits urban sprawl has on lifestyle.
The lack of available social housing is mainly due to stock levels steadily diminishing each year since 1980, after tenants bought nearly half-a-million council houses under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme. This coupled with the decline in house building; which is currently at its lowest level since 1946, has brought about a shameful lack of affordable public housing (Turffrey, 2010).
Housing Affordability in Australia has become the focus point for urban planners in recent years. In particular, South East Queensland (SEQ) has experienced significant pressure as the demand for property and affordable dwellings increases and population growth in the region continues. The issue has come to the forefront in discussions for local governments in the region and there is a real need to address the problem of housing affordability. The subject of affordability is complex and is contributed to by a number of factors including the impost created by Council processes, which is the scope of the HAF-T5 Project.
At the very backbone of the body of reasons for which sprawl has accelerated so much in recent decades is the changing social culture in America. One must remember that sprawl is all about people, and one of the greatest factors that drive the trends of their behavior is culture. It is true that there are many other factors (I.E. economic) at play in the manifestation of sprawl, but the factor of culture is what lies at the very core of the entire issue. This core is the argument that Americans have gradually moved toward a socially and individually isolated culture. Essentially, the American community has become more disjointed and impermanent, creating an atmosphere in which living in a more dense population has become undesirable.
Affordable housing refers to housing units that are affordable by that section of society whose income is or below the median household income. For example, affordable housing should address the housing needs of lower or middle income households. And for sustainable communities, it is one that is economically, environmentally, and socially healthy and resilient.. According to the Western Australia Council of Social Services (WACOSS): "Social sustainability occurs when the formal and informal processes; systems; structures; and relationships actively support the capacity of current and future generations to create healthy and livable communities.” As we can tell, all affordable housing, sustainable community, and social sustainability are
Rounds, a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Gillings. School of Global Public Health, “the way we design our communities discourages physical. activity such as walking and cycling, contributes to air pollution, and promotes pedestrians. injuries and fatalities” (PHGR). “One of the cardinal features of sprawl is driving, reflecting a well established, close relationship between lower density development and more automobile.... ...
The reasons behind urbanisation in Australia include the standard of living, job opportunities as well as education.
It is often easy to castigate large cities or third world countries as failures in the field of affordable housing, yet the crisis, like an invisible cancer, manifests itself in many forms, plaguing both urban and suburban areas. Reformers have wrestled passionately with the issue for centuries, revealing the severity of the situation in an attempt for change, while politicians have only responded with band aid solutions. Unfortunately, the housing crisis easily fades from our memory, replaced by visions of homeless vets, or starving children. Metropolis magazine explains that “…though billions of dollars are spent each year on housing and development programs worldwide, ? At least 1 billion people lack adequate housing; some 100 million have none at all.? In an attempt to correct this worldwide dilemma, a United Nations conference, Habitat II, was held in Istanbul, Turkey in June of 1996. This conference was open not only to government leaders, but also to community organizers, non governmental organizations, architects and planners. “By the year 2000, half the world’s people will live in cities. By the year 2025, two thirds of the world population will be urban dwellers ? Globally, one million people move from the countryside to the city each week.? Martin Johnson, a community organizer and Princeton professor who attended Habitat II, definitively put into words the focus of the deliberations. Cities, which are currently plagued with several of the severe problems of dis-investment ?crime, violence, lack of jobs and inequality ?and more importantly, a lack of affordable and decent housing, quickly appeared in the forefront of the agenda.
The third listing for the definition of sprawl in the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is as follows: “to spread or develop irregularly”. Unfortunately, this is the pattern, or lack thereof, with which America’s development is following. Every single day the world population rises, and these new babies have to live somewhere. Due to the fact that the birth rate is larger than that of the death rate in America (http://www.bartleby.com/151/a24.html), new homes and communities must be developed to accommodate all of the incoming people. This fundamental concept is coupled by another very powerful driving force prompting people to live in the suburbs of America, and that is greed. The economy makes available to the country a degree of ownership never before matched in our history, and people are taking advantage of it. This idea drives people to move from the congested, smoky, and frantic cities to the serenity of the countryside, where they have the opportunity to own much more land and live a more peaceful life. For a time this worked very nicely as portrayed in the incredible success of the communities created by William Levitt. Levittown was a dream of William Levitt, which encompassed the idea that all Americans can afford a home in the country. It was a success in the time of its creation, but we are beginning to see the dangers that this type of super growth brings along with it. Urban sprawl is an issue that will require much attention in the future, to prevent the negative effects that are already taking their toll.
Of the many problems affecting urban communities, both locally and abroad, there is one issue in particular, that has been victimizing the impoverished within urban communities for nearly a century; that would be the problem of gentrification. Gentrification is a word used to describe the process by which urban communities are coerced into adopting improvements respective to housing, businesses, and general presentation. Usually hidden behind less abrasive, or less stigmatized terms such as; “urban renewal” or “community revitalization” what the process of gentrification attempts to do, is remove all undesirable elements from a particular community or neighborhood, in favor of commercial and residential enhancements designed to improve both the function and aesthetic appeal of that particular community. The purpose of this paper is to make the reader aware about the significance of process of gentrification and its underlying impact over the community and the community participation.
‘City Life – What’s the Plan for Melbourne’ written by Rod Urban, the senior director of Zenith Construction, is an article published in a weekend lifestyle magazine issued by a large newspaper. It tries to convince the reader that instead of having ‘random’ suburban estates full of excessively large houses we should have a well-planned inner city. The audience for this professional and assertive sounding piece are Melbournians who love their city.
Sprawl is basically the uncontrolled horizontal growth of cities. It needs to be managed because it eats up the necessary, adjacent agricultural lands that are the valuable part of the local food system. Additionally, the travel times to work and recreation are significantly increased, with higher dependencies on personal vehicles.
Housing affordability problems in Australia persevere due to real housing costs have raise over time and because of a decrease in the supply of housing stock at the low-cost end of the private rental
The urban infrastructure is the physical manifestation of our social values and, as such, it reveals the underlying problems with the current urban form. In recent decades, population growth and rural-urban migration have increased urban sprawl, resulting in more numerous and rapidly growing cities, which have become vibrant centres of culture and commerce. There is a flip side, however. Higher levels of consumption create mountains of waste; population growth and the inequitable distribution of wealth also lead to more slums and homelessness; and the addiction to the automobile encourages urban sprawl to the detriment of downtown areas and neighbouring farmland. The urban issue is exacerbated by the fact that 79 percent of Canadians live in urban areas,
The Negative Effects of Urbanization on People and their Environment As our world becomes increasingly globalized, numerous people travel to urban areas in search of economic prosperity. As a consequence of this, cities in periphery countries expand at rates of 4 to 7 percent annually. Many cities offer entrepreneurs the potential for resources, labor, and resources. With prosperity, cities also allow the freedom of a diversity of ways of life and manners (Knox & Marston, 2012). However, in the quest to be prosperous, increasing burdens are placed on our health and the condition of our environment.
Urbanization is the process of becoming a city or intensification of urban elements. Since modernization, the meaning of urbanization mostly became the transformation that a majority of population living in rural areas in the past changes to a majority living in urban areas. However, urbanization differs between the developed and developing world in terms of its cause and the level of its negative outcomes. Korea, as one of the developing countries, experienced what is called ‘ overurbanization,’ and it experienced a number of negative consequences of it, although it could achieve a great economic development by it. This paper examines how urbanization differs between the West and the rest of the world, the characteristics and process of urbanization in Korea, problems sprung from its extreme urbanization, and government policies coping with population distribution.