Swinburne Cities Housing and Environment (CHE) Program

Research

Current Projects

• Public Sector Housing - Rethinking Housing Submarkets
  
  This 2008 project is funded by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) and seeks to evaluate the relevance of the concept of ‘housing submarket’ as used in the private sector for social housing analysis. The concept of submarkets has been much used in the analysis of private sector market dynamics, but because social housing is not market priced the concept has been little used for such analysis. Using an administrative data base of large Australian public housing authority funded with other secondary date, e.g. census data, the study uses cluster and classification analyses to identify whether there are distinctly different social housing submarkets. It then looks at the policy and program instruments available to social housing agencies, such as allocations, rent setting, asset management, to manipulate social housing outcomes where there is considerable diverge between social housing submarkets. Authored by Terry Burke and Maryann Wulff.
  
  
• Understanding what motivates households to become and remain investors in the private rental market
  
  This 2007-2008 project is funded by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) and seeks to explain the motivations for investment in the private rental market. A joint study with the University of Queensland and UNSW the study interviews  a sample of estate agents and investors on a series of questions designed to draw out why people invested,  what’s the attraction of property over other areas of investment, where they got their information on, what is the intended durations of investment and where they invested. The study found that any picture of the sophisticated, well-informed and economically rational investor does not well-describe the norm among rental investors. A mix of ‘bounded rationality’ and ‘emotional opportunism’ is perhaps a better descriptor of how people approach the housing market as prospective rental investors. Authored by Tim Seelig Alice Thompson, Terry Burke, Simon Pinnegar, and Alan Morris.
  
  
• Political and social factors in the decline of mass transit: and investigation of failed policies to rebuild Melbourne's mass transit.
  
  This 2008 PhD thesis by John Stone documents and analyses the reasons for the failure to reverse the decline in Transit use in Melbourne since the 1950s. The thesis compares Melbourne public transport performance with that of Perth and Vancouver (Canada) and uses several levels of political science to explain Melbourne’s poor relative performance. This research was funded by the Australian Research Council. Authored by John Stone.
  
  
• Sustainability Through Socio-technical Innovation
  Peter Newton is exploring supply side solutions to sustainability primarily via technological innovation (water, energy, material use, urban transport, etc) across 3 innovation Horizons ranging from the currently available to those that may be 30+ years from widespread implementation. Also focuses on the socio-technical barriers to change. Construction and property focus.
  
  
• Sustainability Through Planning and Design
  
  A convergence of design science, engineering, sustainability science, building science and social science can provide avenues to sustainability in the property sector of an order necessary to overcome many of the challenges that currently face urban Australia in terms of eco-efficiency performance of buildings and cities. This is being progressed through virtual design and automated sustainability assessment of design performance of urban infrastructures. Researcher Peter Newton.
  
  
• Sustainability Through Behaviour Change in Consumption
  
  A study by Peter Newton to understand resource consumption behaviour of individuals in the context of households, dwellings and urban location with a view to winding back the current pattern of unsustainable consumption.