The Community is Not a Place and Why it Matters—Case Study: Green Square

Abstract

Analyses of planning documents and a recent survey of practicing planners in NSW reveal that most planners treat ‘the community’ as a place or as place based. This usage is widespread and underpins most urban design principles and practice. The place‐based approach is associated with a focus on what happens within a place, what it contains, and on built or physical infrastructure. The language is of connectivity, legibility, permeability, access, the public domain and so on. However, sociological research does not support this interpretation of community as place. Recent neighbourhood studies, for example, consistently find that social and economic networks are not primarily place based except for a small number of identifiable population groups. Meanwhile, other strands of social research have been reporting for years that what matters in terms of the health and social wellbeing of a society or a city is relativities—the comparative status between neighbourhoods, the effects of relative deprivation, the impacts of relative inequality. Treating community as place and social wellbeing as primarily place based obscures the importance of these critical factors in social wellbeing and social sustainability. Recent planning initiatives for Green Square, including the Green Square Town Centre Masterplan provide current examples. The article concludes by demonstrating that if planning were to proceed on the basis that communities of interest and attachment are more important than communities of place and that relative equality is the key to health and social wellbeing, some current planning shibboleths would need to change. But the role for planners in social sustainability would also become clearer.

Keywords:

• social sustainability
• social planning

Notes

Correspondence Address: Alison Ziller, PO Box 873, Neutral Bay, NSW 2089, Australia. Fax: [phone]; Tel.: [phone]; Email: [email protected]

An earlier version of this article was presented at the State of Australian Cities National Conference, December 2003, http://www.uws.edu.au/about/acadorg/caess/uf/conference

These were the 1998/9 Annual Report of the NSW State Government's Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (DUAP), DUAP's 1999–2000 Strategic Directions document, DUAP's Affordable Housing Strategy Background Paper (2000), DUAP's Area Assistance Scheme Policy and Procedure Guidelines (1999) (the Area Assistance Scheme is a community self‐help grants program administered by the Department); the Green Square Draft Structural Masterplan prepared by the firm Stansic, Turner/Hassall in 1997, and a Report of the Policy Action Team 4, put out by the UK Cabinet Office's Social Exclusion Unit—a unit whose output was at the time significantly influencing public planning and social policy in NSW.

Planners who responded to an invitation to participate issued by a senior officer in each of: Penrith, Camden, Warringah and Liverpool Councils, and attendees at the Royal Australian Planning Institute's 2001 annual conference. Twenty‐eight fourth year students at the University of NSW also completed the survey.

On the Thames at Greenwich, London.

The colours on the balconies of expensive riverside flats nearby are eye catching.

Including occasionally its excellent design. For some examples of excellent, but conspicuous, design and excellent but inconspicuous design consult City West Pty Ltd.

Personal communication with City West staff.

See, for example, the Green Square Affordable Housing DCP: “the Green Square Affordable Housing Scheme aims to provide, as development proceeds over the next 15 to 20 years, a rental stock of up to 330 units for very low to moderate income households in the Green Square area” (www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au)

Ecologically sustainable development, see Barton et al. (1995) and Barton (2000) for example.

The social role of shops is alive and well in planning. In October 2003 the NSW Minister for Western Sydney and assistant Planning Minister launched a plan for the commercial and retail centre at Rouse Hill saying “it will be a traditional sort of town with a main street where people meet, eat, chat and shop” (Nichols, 2003, p. 6). What was she talking about other than the myth that shops=community? Indeed the paper referred to the Rouse Hill regional centre as a ‘community hub’. Whereas the Rouse Hill regional centre will have nothing to do with social relationships except for the minority of people who work there or, in the unlikely event (not mentioned in the article) that there is a significant educative or cultural facility there.

Recognition of the role of coffee shops in excluding people with limited means is long overdue.

Not just schools and hospitals but education and professional qualifications and relative access to networks and connections related to work and political influence.

When 12 Community Development Projects were announced by the Home Office.

According to Professor Ian Cole, Director of Housing Research, Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK at a seminar in NSW Premiers Department in July 2002.

Sydney Morning Herald, 12–13 June 2004.

Are the responsibility of a government's Treasury for example.

The phrase used in the survey.

That is, shopfront access to betting on various forms of racing.

As a precursor to an Intranet for Green Square with extensions to neighbouring areas and a brief to foster and support social, economic and cultural development in the wider area (e.g. acting as a noticeboard, swap shop, etc.).

To canvas such issues as a Green Square jobs brokerage (for jobs in the development phase), and we had also hoped that this Strategy would result in opportunities for local school kids to visit sites as they were being developed and to have aspects of urban development included in their curricula.

With a pricing policy that would facilitate use by residents of nearby areas.

See note 8.

Although recently an Employment and Skilling Taskforce has been established.

Recently amalgamated with the City of Sydney.

Employment brokerage is not a traditional local government responsibility and a council which is periodically amalgamated and de‐amalgamated with the City of Sydney is unlikely to take up an optional new function requiring specialist skills.

The Introduction to the Masterplan even says that the Town Square will be the “heart of the Town Centre”.