The Role of Social Infrastructure in Achieving Inclusive Liveable Communities: Voices from Regional Australia

ABSTRACT

What makes liveable communities inclusive is an important question for planning research, policy and practice, yet one that has not received significant attention. This article explores this question through the lived experiences of two spatially marginalised groups – people with disabilities and seniors. Using the photovoice technique, the findings visually and textually demonstrate the importance of universally accessible social infrastructure in enabling inclusion and active participation in a community in regional Australia. The findings suggest that inclusion should be a central focus of liveability, along with co-design processes with people experiencing spatial marginalisation to achieve inclusive liveable communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Liveability
• disability
• seniors
• inclusive communities
• infrastructure

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by University of the Sunshine Coast Collaboration Grant RCG/007. We wish to acknowledge the Bendigo Regional Council and the participants and organisations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Attachment 1

Briefing for taking photos

We would like you to take at least 5 photos of things in the neighbourhood that are helpful for you as you age and 5 that are barriers (e.g. to getting around). We would also like you to take at least 5 photos of things in a housing setting (not necessarily your own) that help and hinder you as you age.

We’ll then invite you to come together and share your photos in a group so we can identify the range of themes and common elements.

There is no right or wrong way of taking photos for this project. We are not looking for the perfect photo but about what you want to communicate.

When you look through the frame, the view will suggest different images. When you see an image, ask what is it saying to you. What do you want to communicate? Try to make that the dominant image or the key focus in the frame.

You might want to show a relationship between elements by taking a scene in the distance rather than a close-up.

There are different ways of taking photos of people. If you want to protect an individual’s anonymity, you might take a crowd scene, a silhouette, from behind, or even a part of their body such as a foot, so their face isn’t revealed.

You might want to make notes about why you took the photo, to explain later to the researcher.

Notes

1. ‘New Urbanism’ promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. ‘Smart growth’ encourages a mix of building types and uses, diverse housing and transportation options, development within existing neighbourhoods, and community engagement.

2. Social Infrastructure is a subset of the public infrastructure sector that facilitates social services and well-being. For the purposes of this study, it includes assets such as schools, hospitals, community housing, parks, public facilities such as toilets, and public transport.

3. Lawn bowls is a sport in which wooden balls are aimed to be as close as possible to an initial ball. In Australia it is usually played on an outdoor bowling green which has a natural grass surface.

4. A bollard is a sturdy, short, vertical post, which functions as a traffic calming and safety measure, installed to control road traffic. In this case the vertical post shown in the photo is used on a pedestrian path near a busy intersection to ensure vehicles cannot mount the curb, enter the sidewalk, and hit pedestrians.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of the Sunshine Coast [RCG/007]