NEIGHBOURHOOD RENEWAL AND GOVERNMENT BY COMMUNITY

Abstract

This article reviews the expectations associated with wired community schemes – efforts to bridge the digital divide and promote social cohesion within neighbourhood renewal programmes. Such initiatives exemplify the strengths and limits of neo‐liberal modes of government through community. They use community consultation and participation within a managerial technology that persuades people to be self‐governing and adapt their aspirations, interests and conduct to accord with the ends of government – in this case, to accord with the aims of neighbourhood renewal programmes. Yet are wired community initiatives best assessed in terms of their capacity to promote community participation and social cohesion? These questions are explored through a central case study: the Reach for the Clouds project based in Atherton Gardens, a high‐rise public housing estate in Melbourne, Australia. Initial research suggests that the educational implications of the project will be more significant than its capacity to build community.

Keywords:

• wired community
• information technology
• neighbourhood renewal
• housing
• community
• multi‐ethnicity

Notes

One instance is the American Camfield Estates/MIT Creating Community Connections Project; see www.camfieldestates.net/ and web.media.mit.edu/∼rpinkett/papers/camfield‐mit.html. The United Kingdom has a parallel project: the Wired Up Communities scheme developed by the national Department for Education and Skills; see www.dfes.gov.uk/wired/index.shtml.

See www.camfieldestates.net/ and web.media.mit.edu/∼rpinkett/papers/camfield‐mit.html.

C3 uses ArsDigita Community System, an open‐source software platform (see Pinkett, 2002a).

See www.dfes.gov.uk/wired/index.shtml.

See www.dfes.gov.uk/wired/over.shtml.

See “Wired up communities”. Available online at: www.makingthenetwork.org/common/wuc.htm, accessed 28 February 2003.

See www.infoxchange.net.au/index.html.

See www.greenpc.com.au/.

See the electronic‐Atherton Gardens Enterprise website at: www.highrise.infoxchange.net.au. See also www.infoxchange.net.au/ to investigate the background to InfoXchange’s activities. Publicity from partners in the project can be found at Victorian Department of Human Services website at: www.dhs.vic.gov.au/peoplefocus/mar01/website.htm and on the City of Yarra website at: www.infoxchange.net.au/yarraweb.

There are limits to how much is known about life on the Atherton Gardens estate, or about the social profile of the residents. Some information is available through census data. At the last census, two collector districts (the smallest areas for which aggregated data is available) were exclusively based on Atherton Gardens, providing information on some 882 residents (roughly half the population). The rest of the estate is included in collector districts that are not exclusively the estate. The information from the two Atherton Gardens’ collector districts is valuable in its own right and as a means to verify the results from our own survey of residents, discussed below (see ISR 2003a, 2003b).

See www.atherton.org.au/.

The survey was undertaken by ISR staff over six weeks starting 27 May 2002, in face‐to‐face interviews usually in residents’ own homes. Interviewers who could speak Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Macedonian Turkish and Arabic were employed to administer the survey. A total of 269 households were contacted, with around 70 declining to be interviewed, resulting in 199 responses. The response rate to the questions was high: 74% for those households contacted (see ISR 2003a, 2003b; Meredyth & Ewing 2003).