Houses Built on Sand: Rethinking Cultures of Homemaking, Nature and Finance in a Coastal Master-Planned Estate
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University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 2017+ University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2017 Houses built on sand: Rethinking cultures of homemaking, nature and finance in a coastal master-planned estate Charles Gillon University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1 University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. 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Recommended Citation Gillon, Charles, Houses built on sand: Rethinking cultures of homemaking, nature and finance in a coastal master-planned estate, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong, 2017. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/195 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Houses built on sand: Rethinking cultures of homemaking, nature and finance in a coastal master-planned estate. Charles Gillon Bachelor of Science (Advanced) (Honours Class I) 2012 This thesis is presented as part of the requirements for the conferral of the degree: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Supervisors: Doctor Leah Gibbs Professor Chris Gibson The University of Wollongong School of Geography and Sustainable Communities August 2017 This work © copyright by Charles Gillon, 2017. All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, in any form of by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author or the University of Wollongong. This research has been conducted with the support of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. ii Certification I, Charles Gillon, declare that this thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the conferral of the degree Doctor of Philosophy, from the University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. This document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Charles Gillon August 31, 2017 iii Declaration and Statements of Authorship The following publications, completed during my candidature, are reproduced in this thesis. Each publication is accompanied by a statement of authorship to clarify the nature and extent of co-authorship with my supervisors, Dr Leah Gibbs and Professor Chris Gibson. Chapter 4 Gillon C & Gibbs L 2017. Selling surf and turf: throwntogetherness and real estate advertising on the suburbanising east Australian coastline. Social & Cultural Geography. Epub ahead of print 22 May 2017. DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2017.1328737 Gillon was the primary author, responsible for conception and design of the research and the manuscript, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, and handled the revisions process. Gibbs assisted with study design and development of argument and structure, and critically reviewed multiple drafts of the article as it went through submission and each round of revisions. Chapter 5 Gillon C 2017. Under construction: how home-making and underlying purchase motivations surface in a housing building site. Housing, Theory & Society. Epub ahead of print 12 June 2017. DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2017.1337650 Gillon was the sole author on this paper. Chapter 6 Gillon C & Gibbs L (under review) Coastal exposure: how homemaking, house materials and salt water interrogate cultures of nature in a coastal master-planned estate. Paper submitted 13 September 2017. Gillon was the primary author, responsible for conception and design of the research and the manuscript, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data. The idea for this paper developed through ongoing discussions between Gillon and Gibbs during the candidature. Gibbs contributed to study design, supervised the research, and critically reviewed drafts of the article. iv Chapter 7 Gillon C & Gibson C (under review) Calculated homes, stretched emotions: unmasking ‘rational’ investor occupier subjects in a coastal master-planned estate. Paper submitted 4 August 2017. Gillon was the primary author, responsible for collection, analysis and interpretation of data, and the majority of conceptual development. Gibson critically reviewed drafts of the article for expression and editing, and also sharpened the conceptual framing. The text in the original articles has been reproduced for results chapters in the thesis. Figure and section numbers have been altered to suit the flow of the thesis. v Abstract Notwithstanding concerns about land availability and housing affordability, the Australian dream of a detached, family oriented home in low-density suburbs persists as a cultural desire. Overlaying this dream is the shared desire by Australians to live by the coast. These cultural norms magnify ideals of home and what they portend to include: how meanings for home are made in reference to tenure, cultures of nature, and relationships with finance, and with what consequences. The knotted yet discordant threads woven between certain types of housing, owner-occupation, understandings of nature and growing influences of finance, warrant critical scrutiny. This thesis responds to this task. In it, I ask: how does rethinking housing as a process contribute to understanding Australian home cultures, and the associated practices of homemaking, within the context of Australian cultural myths of owner- occupation and coastal lifestyle? Conceptually the thesis is guided by recent developments in critical cultural geography that view home as a product of relations: attending to practices, routines, emotions, temporalities, materialities, and more-than-human encounters. At the same time, the thesis also draws upon concepts from cultural-economy that view such relations as mediated by governmental rationalities, calculations and subjectivities. Master- planned estates (MPEs) are sites that enable owner-occupation and a securitised living of the Australian dream, while they are also sites of economic performances: of accumulation, speculation and ‘rational’ financial decision-making. The thesis explores resulting tensions that emerge in time and space, between an idealised coastal MPE as a pre-eminent ‘calculative’ space of prestige and investment, and the ‘throwntogetherness’ of the lived experience of the place, as it is actually built and inhabited, dwelled within. The coastal MPE, I argue, is a distinctive material-geographical place, shot through with calculation and governmentalities/ideologies, but also made in contingent ways (by humans, money, salt spray and sand). The coastal MPE is situated in a biophysical setting under stress and facing growing uncertainty, emotional resonances that also reverberate in the lived human experience of dwelling there. In this place, owner-occupation sets certain precursors, certain conditions, and these enrol together nature and money in distinctive configurations. The thesis draws critical attention to how such places are conceived, and homes within them made. It is attentive to cultural norms and calculations, but crucially, also focused on how prosaic place-making proceeds, at the home/household scale—how investing, building and vi dwelling in this place actually unfurls, with all its resulting material-cultural and emotional entanglements. This thesis is structured in a compiled format, with four results chapters taking shape in the form of four academic journal articles. As a result, the branches of the thesis stretch at different angles, and share collective roots in a critical framework of relational materiality. The four results chapters follow threads that emanated empirically, over a four-year period, from one coastal master-planned estate: Greenhills Beach, in southern Sydney. Research focused at the household scale, and the decisions, rationales, circumstances and everyday experiences of homemaking and place. Twenty-one households participated in semi- structured interviews, incorporating a ‘home tour’, that focused on purchasing decision, building a new home, and early homemaking practices. This methodology was buttressed with analysis of advertising material, place histories, and an interview with a developer representative. As a new build housing development, in a prestigious coastal site, and in a strong housing market, Greenhills Beach is an exemplar setting