Communication & Creativity Research Flagship - Projects

Wired High Rise

Project Code: ARC SPIRT grant 2000

The focus of this three-year project is a new "wired community" in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy.

Residents of inner high-rise public housing estates, often characterised by low income and diverse ethnic backgrounds, tend to suffer the interrelated problems of unemployment, poverty, violence, crime and technological disadvantage. The "Reach for the Clouds" project is attempting to break this cycle of disadvantage by providing free computers and software, internet and intranet access to every household in four high-rise towers on the Atherton Gardens public housing estate. The estate is wired up to give everyone broadband intranet access and tenants are given extensive hardware and software computer training with the ultimate aim of eventually passing control of the technology and its use over to the residents themselves. The network aims to break the cycle of social exclusion and isolation by building skills and linking residents to community organisations, government services and local businesses.

The Swinburne Institute's task is to provide an analysis and evaluation of the network. While governments and policy commentators around the world have looked to information technology to redress problems of social exclusion, little detailed empirical work has been done. This is the first detailed examination of a low-income wired community in Australia, and one of the first in the world.

The research project is a partnership with InfoXchange, a non-profit internet service provider, multimedia developer and training organisation, and the Victorian Department of Human Services. Two elements of the department have an interest in the research: the Office of Housing, which manages the estate, and the Aged and Community Health Branch, as part of the government's primary care partnerships strategy.

Research Team

Chief Investigators: Prof Denise Meredyth, Prof Julian Thomas, Mr Scott Ewing and Dr Liza Hopkins

Publications and Other Research Outputs

Research Programme

The Australian Research Council (ARC) awarded its second-largest social science grant for the year 2000 to The Swinburne Institute for Social Research to carry out a three-year research project, "Wired High Rise", to evaluate the success and effectiveness of "Reach for the Clouds".

The research team is particularly interested in assessing the effects that access to this network of communication and information has on communication patterns and the sense of community among the very diverse group of estate residents.

The first phase of primary research included focus groups and a survey of tenants, both on the Atherton Gardens estate and on a comparable estate in Collingwood. This was designed to give us some baseline social information about the residents in terms of their social networks, their friendships on the estate, trust of other residents and feelings of community, belonging, safety and empowerment. Preliminary results from both focus groups and surveys show that language and cultural differences are major barriers to the development of a sense of community among tenants. People's social networks and support structures are firmly based within linguistic and ethnic enclaves.

By repeating surveys on both estates in two years' time, it is hoped that measuring changes in the community and communication will provide some empirical details as to the usefulness of computer technologies and networks in improving life for both online and offline communities on the estate.

Other primary research has focused on the history of the public housing estate, comparable Australian and international projects and issues around working in a multilingual, multiethnic community. Also, in-depth interviews with the key players in the project have been undertaken to gain their views on the complexities of implementing and managing this kind of public-private partnership.

Wired High Rise will also evaluate the effectiveness of using a volunteer training program to teach and support the residents in the use of the new technologies. More than 60 members of the general public have offered their services as volunteer trainers for the program, including some estate residents who were trained early in the project and who are now training other residents, particularly in community languages.

Project Outcomes

Current status and possible futures

There are 800 flats within the estate and so far more than 300 people have gone through training and more than 500 computers have been given out. Of these, more than 400 have a network connection which enables them to send and receive email as well as access an intranet with local content in English and other community languages. In addition, 270 of these households have an internet account which provides low-cost, high-speed access to the world wide web. Internet access is also available to residents through the public access computer training room on the estate, and classes in computer use continue to be run in English, Chinese and Vietnamese.

The Reach for the Clouds project is now known as e-ACE or the electronic–Atherton Community Enterprise. Everyone involved in the project is committed to the ultimate outcome of empowering a disadvantaged community to take control of their lives. Information from Wired High Rise will give an in-depth evaluation of the success of and gaps in the project and demonstrate to present and future state and federal governments the clear and tangible benefits that innovative partnerships and risk-taking can bring to struggling sections of our society.

The project also has the potential to be ongoing in a number of different directions. One possible future element will be a closer focus on the educational potential and influence of home computer access for children from low-income and disadvantaged families. Investigating changing patterns of media consumption and technology usage is another area in which this project has great potential.

Final report

Wired High Rise: A Community Based Computer Network (PDF file)

Links

E-Ace
InfoXchange
Office of Housing, Victorian Department of Human Services
Primary Health branch, Victorian Department of Human Services.

Publications (to xref Research Bank)

Measuring Social Capital in a Networked Housing Estate
Denise Meredyth, Liza Hopkins, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas

The New Social Policy and the Digital Age: A Case Study of a Wired High Rise Public Housing Estate
Scott Ewing, David Hayward, Liza Hopkins and Julian Thomas
Just Policy, no. 29, April 2003

Wired High Rise: Using Technology to Combat Social Isolation on an Inner City Public Housing Estate
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Denise Meredyth, Liza Hopkins, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas
in Marshall, Stewart, Taylor, Wal and Yu, Xinghuo (eds), Using Community Informatics to Transform Regions, Idea Group, Hershey, Penn, 2004

Neighbourhood Renewal and Information Policy: The Atherton Gardens Network
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Denise Meredyth, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas
International Journal of Cultural Policy Studies, vol. 10, no. 4, March 2004

Wired Community: Neighbourhoods, Networks and Communities of Interest
Denise Meredyth
Paper prepared for Building the E-Nation: A Social Science Symposium, April 2003, Sydney

Virtual Renewal: Can a Network Build Community?
Scott Ewing
Paper prepared for Building the E-Nation: A Social Science Symposium, April 2003, Sydney

Machinery and Community: The Atherton Gardens Community Network
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Liza Hopkins, Scott Ewing, Denise Meredyth and Julian Thomas

Divided Opinions over the Digital Divide
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Denise Meredyth and Julian Thomas
Southern Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2003

Report to Industry Partners 1: Introducing Reach for the Clouds, 2003

Report to Industry Partners 2: Reach for the Clouds: Initial findings and working Hypotheses, 2003

Appendix to Report to Industry Partners 2: Survey Questionnaire

Wired High Rise: Constructing a Virtual Community in an Inner City Housing Estate
Denise Meredyth, Julian Thomas, Scott Ewing and Liza Hopkins
Paper presented to European Sociological Association annual conference, Visions and Divisions Helsinki, September 2001

e-Social Capital: Building Community through Electronic Networks
Liza Hopkins and Julian Thomas

Hopkins, Liza, Thomas, Julian, Meredyth, Denise and Ewing, Scott, "Social Capital and Community Building through an Electronic Network", Australian Journal of Social Issues , vol. 39, no. 4, 2004, pp 369–379

Thomas, Julian, Hopkins, Liza, Meredyth, Denise, Ewing, Scott, and Hayward, David, "Building a Wired Community: Social Partnerships and the Digital Divide", Communications Research Forum 2002, Canberra, 2–3 October 2002

Hopkins, Liza and Ewing, Scott, "Wired High Rise: Using Technology to Combat Isolation on an Inner City Public Housing Estate", "Using IT: Making it Happen" Information Technology in Regional Areas Conference, Rockhampton, 26–29 August 2002.

Meredyth, Denise and Thomas, Julian, "Framing the Issues: The Political Intelligibility of the Digital Divide", 2002 International Conference on the Digital Divide: Technology & Politics in the Information Age, David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, 22–24 August 2002.

Meredyth, Denise, Hopkins, Liza, and Ewing, Scott, "A Networked Housing Estate", VCOSS Social Policy Congress 2002, Melbourne, 31 July –2 August 2002

Meredyth, Denise, Hopkins, Liza, Ewing, Scott, "Measuring Social Capital in a Networked Housing Estate", paper presented to "The Net(s) of Power: Language, Culture and Technology", International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication, Montreal 12–15 July 2002

Hopkins, Liza, Meredyth, Denise, Thomas, Julian and Ewing, Scott, "Social Capital and Community Building through an Electronic Network", Electronic Networking 2002: Building Community Conference, Melbourne, July 2002

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