Media & Communications - Projects
Wired high rise
Denise Meredyth, Julian
Thomas,  Scott Ewing and Liza
Hopkins
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 ISR'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.
More information:
Final report
Wired High Rise:
A Community Based Computer Network (PDF file) |
