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Hobart's eastern beaches : a study of low income households in a semiurban area

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posted on 2023-05-27, 00:57 authored by Bradshaw, M. B.(Matthew Boyd), 1967-
The focus in this study is the position of low income households in the Eastern Beaches, a semiurban area east of Hobart, Tasmania. Influences upon the opportunity constraint spectrum of low income households are considered in this study. Position in the labour market, ideology, state policy, the operation of the land and housing market and the established spatial configuration of the Greater Hobart area interrelate at a particular point in time within the global capitalist system; the result is the location of low income households in isolated and poorly serviced semiurban areas such as the Eastern Beaches. The locational disadvantage of low income households in semiurban areas is raised in both urban research and public policy discussion. A common solution to locational disadvantage put forward in these contexts is urban consolidation. Part of the reason this study was undertaken was to investigate the degree to which understanding of the disadvantaged position of low income households in semiurban areas requires, not a consideration simply of location, but also of established structural relations and inequities in conjunction with causal processes. If public authorities are seriously committed to the principles of social justice and ecologically sustainable development fundamental social structures and processes need to be tackled. The approach used in this study is a realist perspective of Marxian theory set within a broad political economy framework. A summary of a literature review and assessment of contemporary urban issues is followed by the situating of this study within the context of the global economy. This setting forms the basis for an investigation of trends in housing accessibility and affordability in and around Hobart, and for the interviewing of households in the Eastern Beaches to ascertain their nature and views of their position and of local environmental issues. In this study, the location of low income households in semiurban areas was found to disadvantage further low income households, to strain already overstretched and under-resourced state services, and to contribute further to finite fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse gas emissions. The interaction of structure and agency in time and space was found to be important in the location of low income households in the Eastern Beaches. The ideological predispositions of individual households combine with broad structural determinations at a particular time of global capital organisation and state policy and in relation to a particular spatial configuration and operational structure of the land and housing market, to produce a specific sociospatial outcome. Understanding of the interaction of structure and agency in time and space to produce particular sociospatial outcomes, as in the case of the Eastern Beaches, allows the disadvantaged position of certain social groups to be better addressed.

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Copyright 1992 the Author - The University is continuing to endeavour to trace the copyright owner(s) and in the meantime this item has been reproduced here in good faith. We would be pleased to hear from the copyright owner(s). Thesis (M.Env.St.)--University of Tasmania, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-320)

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