Transnational and Temporary: Place-making, Students and Community in Central Melbourne
Chief Investigators: Professor Ruth Fincher, Professor Paul Carter and Associate Professor Paolo Tombesi
Research team: Dr Kate Shaw (Research Associate), Michele Lobo (Research Assistant), Andrew Martel (PhD candidate), Gerard Pinto (Masters by Design candidate)
Web Address: http://www.transnationalandtemporary.com.au/
Funded by: ARC Linkage Project grant 2005–2008
Partner Organisations: Melbourne City Council, the State Department for Victorian Communities and the Department of Sustainability and Environment.
The project is motivated by the question of how place-making — the practice of fostering community in place — can be brought about when many people in that community are transnational and/or temporary. The research is innovative in its guiding contention: that public-private interactions, both in built spaces and in social relations, define the experience of place for those who are new to a locality and community, or temporary members of it, more than they do for long-term residents who are settled in their networks of belonging.
The population of the City of Melbourne is 63,500, of which 23,777, or 37 percent, are students (primarily tertiary students, and primarily from overseas). Our study area — the northern fringe of central Melbourne, which is the location of the University of Melbourne and RMIT University — has a student resident population of closer to 50 percent.
Policy-makers have noted for some time that little is done for students and their cultural experience in Melbourne, despite their increasing numbers. Students are not the only residents of these areas of course, and their housing and recreational activities need to become part of Melbourne's history and future without swamping it entirely. How will this happen? What opportunities are there for interaction between students and the broader residential communities, and between 'international' and 'domestic' students? Most educators acknowledge that a great deal of learning, even the most important learning, occurs outside the classroom. How should the 'university quarter' on the northern fringe of central Melbourne unfold?
We are examining the ways student residents in the study area negotiate these public-private interactions. We are asking, what kinds of social policy, architectural and urban design frameworks can facilitate meaningful experiences of community amongst a transient and diverse population in place? We are developing a place-making strategy that centres on enhancing the public-private interactions residents have in built spaces and in their social relations. By the end of the project, we will have in place alternative frameworks for institutional partnerships, new proposals for the form and design of student housing, and a fresh approach to the design of public space.
Publications to Date
Fincher, R. and Shaw, K. (2006). Transnational and temporary: place-making, students and community in central Melbourne, Planning News, vol. 32 no. 3, pp 12-13
Shaw, K. and Fincher, R. (2006). Towards university-government partnerships in place, paper to Centre for Public Policy conference: Governments and Communities in Partnership, Melbourne Park, September
Fincher, R. and Shaw, K. (2006). Encounter by transnational and temporary residents in place, paper for International Geographic Union meeting, Brisbane, July
Tombesi, P. and Martel, A. (2006). Transnational and temporary: the influence of international students on recent housing developments in Melbourne, paper to the International Sociological Association world congress, Durban, South Africa, July.