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The Role Innovative Housing Models Play in the Struggle Against Social Exclusion in Cities: the Brisbane Common Ground Model

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The Role Innovative Housing Models Play in the Struggle Against Social Exclusion in Cities: the Brisbane Common Ground Model Social Inclusion (ISSN: 2183-2803) 2015, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 62-70 Doi: 10.17645/si.v3i2.68 Article The Role Innovative Housing Models Play in the Struggle against Social Exclusion in Cities: The Brisbane Common Ground Model Petra Perolini Design Department, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, South Bank, Qld 4103, Australia; E-Mail: [email protected] Submitted: 15 May 2014 | In Revised Form: 21 January 2015 | Accepted: 27 January 2015 | Published: 9 April 2015 Abstract The history of housing in Australia is a textbook example of socio-spatial exclusion as described, defined and analysed by commentators from Mumford to Lefebvre. It has been exacerbated by a culture of home ownership that has led to an affordability crisis. An examination of the history reveals that the problems are structural and must be approached not as a practical solution to the public provision of housing, but as a reshaping of lives, a reconnection to community, and as an ethical and equitable “right to the city”. This “Right to the City” has underpinned the Common Ground ap- proach, emerging in a range of cities and adopted in South Brisbane, Queensland Australia. This paper examines the Common Ground approach and the impacts on its residents and in the community with a view to exploring further devel- opments in this direction. A clear understanding of these lessons underpins, and should inform, a new approach to recon- necting the displaced and to developing solutions that not only enhance their lives but also the community at large. Keywords Australian housing; Common Ground; Great Australian Dream; public housing; social exclusion; socio-spatial divisions; urban disadvantage; urban marginalisation Issue This article is part of the special issue “Housing and Space: Toward Socio-Spatial Inclusion”, edited by Dr. Dallas Rogers (University of Western Sydney, Australia), Dr. Rae Dufty-Jones (University of Western Sydney, Australia) and Dr. Wendy Steele (RMIT University, Australia). © 2015 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Introduction structure and rectify poor planning; mixed land-use projects, designed to provide affordable housing, have Today’s cities are faced with the challenges of rapid become trendy and expensive: all these approaches population growth, urban sprawl, housing shortages, failed to provide housing for homeless and displaced urban decay, increasing social segregation and the ge- people let alone the more general challenge of rebuild- ographical, climatic, political and economic displace- ing community. ment of the disadvantaged. Common Ground attempts The greater the social cohesion of a community, the to overcome this historical trend through an inclusive more resilient it becomes (Pelling, 2003). The practical, approach. rapid response of constructing housing in low-cost are- Repeated cycles of government policy designed to as with the addition of a minimum of support services address the problems of adequately housing the disad- therefore exacerbates rather than alleviates the prob- vantaged have only created new nightmares of exclu- lem. Thus, design approaches to housing the homeless, sion. Outer suburban ghettoes have replaced inner city displaced and low-income earners must expand their slums; satellite cities have failed to provide a solution horizon and address the challenge as one of reshaping and consumed millions in attempts to retrofit infra- lives, reconnecting community, and providing an ethi- Social Inclusion, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 62-70 62 cal and equitable “right to the city”. From the 1960s, additional approaches to exploring In the last decade academics and social movements urban fragmentation have drawn upon the work of have framed this social injustice to housing struggles in Marx and Engels, where the capitalist city, in the accu- terms of “The right to the city”. “The right to the city mulation and circulation of profit, produces class based cannot be conceived of as a simple visiting right or as a upon social divisions (Engles, 1968). Scholars such as return to traditional cities. It can only be formulated as Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells and David Harvey, de- a transformed and renewed right to urban life” spite their theoretical, methodological and political dif- (Lefebvre, Kofman, & Lebas, 1996, p. 158). ferences, all share a concern to understand the ways The challenge then is to explore possibilities outside which urban communities, under capitalism, are com- of pragmatic solutions and encourage a new urban, modified. one that aims to deliver reconnected and inclusive cit- In particular, modernist architectural thinking ies that offer a renewed sense of place, purpose and comes under intense criticism from Lefebvre, as work- future. Housing plays a central role in this social justice ing from an externalised perspective with little refer- debate and affordable housing initiatives are becoming ence to lived experience (habiting—not simply inhabit- more important globally. Relevant responses must start ing) (Lefebvre et al., 1996, pp. 152-154). Lefebvre with that outcome in mind and work to overcome the singles out Le Corbusier, whom he describes as, “a obstacles that resist its delivery. The Common Ground good architect but a catastrophic urbanist, who pre- approach meets a number of these requirements. vented us from thinking about the city as a place where This paper aims to contribute to the debate of ur- different groups can meet, where they may be in con- ban social exclusion and offers a range of lessons and flict but also form alliances, and where they participate potential solutions that form an essential input into the in a collective oeuvre” (Lefebvre et al., 1996, p. 207). development of future urban design approaches. The David Harvey is equally critical of the roles of archi- paper focuses first on a theoretical review of urban tecture and urbanism in structuring the urban, blaming theory before examining the “right to the city” in an investment and financial reasoning, built upon a con- Australian historical context leading to a discussion of tinuous cycle of long waves of investment: over accu- Brisbane’s Common Ground. Finally, the paper argues mulation, devaluation, loss of exchange value, buying that the dialectic between urban policies, the shapers at bargain prices and back to investment again (Harvey, of our urban centres and the emergence of social initi- 2002). Further, Neil Brenner expands upon Lefebvre’s atives need to be brought into alignment with the im- theories of urbanization as an increasingly global phe- perative of an ever increasing divide. nomenon, no longer relating only to industrialized towns and cities, but as the “stretching of an ‘urban 2. Developing the Urban fabric’, composed of diverse types of investment pat- terns, settlements spaces, land use matrices, and infra- To understand the challenge facing inclusive approach- structural networks, across the entire world economy” es to urban design such as Common Ground it is essen- (Brenner, 2012, p. 21). tial to understand the forces underpinning historical The Common Ground approach attempts to leap- urban development. frog these limitations by directly addressing the issues City planners have long explored the balance of of integration and inclusion rather than focusing on power in the city and the role played by capitalism in structure and infrastructure. socio-spatial fragmentation. American historian, soci- ologist and critic Lewis Mumford contends that by the 3. Spatial Exclusion in Australia 17th century, capitalism had changed the balance of power of the Western city. The Common Ground experiment in Australia attempts to address the challenges facing the homeless and dis- That focus on profit moved land from a system of advantaged in a rich country with a high proportion of feudal tenure (a long-term generational lease system home ownership and large amounts of open space with reciprocal duties between landlord and tenant) leading to sprawling, low density cities. into a commodity, a means of making money. The Although “the bush” has defined Australia’s historic disadvantage thus fell on the poor. As rents escalat- identity, today’s population is heavily urbanised, with ed, properties simultaneously fell into disrepair; land- approximately 88% of Australians now living in metro- lords made no long term obligations to tenants, over- politan areas. One of the wealthiest nations globally, crowding became rife and so arose the first slum- Australia is no stranger to problems of poverty and ex- housing. On the outskirts of the city, farms coming out clusion. Disadvantage can be found in almost every city of tenure were divided into building lots, and by the and larger regional centre (Communities, 2011). early nineteenth century indefinite expansion be- From the late 19th century, “progressive” planning came possible within a laissez faire approach to movements have asserted the value of home owner- property ownership (Mumford, 1961, pp. 474-475). ship and a suburban “Great Australian Dream” as a Social Inclusion, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 62-70 63 method of remedying social issues of densely populat- bad press soon led inevitably to social stigmatisation ed areas. Following US and British trends, high-density (Cox et al., 2011). housing was stigmatised as “slum” housing. Social re- By 1968, the greenbelt had been abandoned due to formers of the “Garden City” and “City Beautiful” rapid population growth. The Sydney Regional Outline movements were concerned with promoting health Plan developed, based upon a European linear model and vitality in urban living (Butler, 2012). of railway corridors with each corridor to be made up In 1909 a Royal Commission for the improvement of a collection of new towns with primarily detached of Sydney recommended the creation of garden sub- dwellings (Cox et al., 2011). Satellite towns such as urbs for the working classes, resulting in the country’s Campbelltown, 50 km south of Sydney were reinvented first regional plan (Cox, Graus, & Meyer, 2011).
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