theory & practice

Yesterday morning I sat in on a design charrette for the Villawood East Affordable Housing Project, part of an ongoing planning process for a comprehensive community redevelopment project in Western Sydney. In the afternoon, I took the train back to Uni to participate in an investigators meeting looking at the findings of a multi-year study examining the effectiveness of health impact assessment (HIA). It was kind of dizzying jumping from the morning meeting where we spent considerable time discussing the relative merits of a surface versus raised pedestrian walkway at a specific intersection, to the investigators meeting where, to determine 'review groups', I was asked if I identified as a positivist or a constructivist. It was cheering to see how graciously I was afforded a seat at each. And surprising how effortless it has been the last three weeks navigating these kinds of situations. If the Clinton School teaches anything valuable it is something to do with facing ambiguity. I don't mean this in a trivial sense. As public policy practitioners or public servants (or in your daily life) you're faced with uncertainties and ambiguities. Questions of technical or scientific results are primarily issues of certainty and uncertainty. To answer these we look for evidence. Questions of purpose and intent, interpretation of meaning, and ethical and political choice are primarily issues of ambiguity. To deal with ambiguity we look for justification, precedent, tradition, other sources of legitimacy. Facing ambiguity requires the facility to work in a variety of politically and socially interactive processes, translating differing value systems. For me this has meant privileging the communicative process/ stressing how things are framed, always asking who is not in the room and becoming more comfortable with making shit up as I go along. Because people make shit up everyday.

The Villawood Project was not exactly what I expected. Our office was brought along a couple years ago to look at potential health impacts and make recommendations to enhance health benefits/mitigate health risks of the proposed project. The project has had many stops and starts due to funding issues and the politically sensitive nature of the work. Similar to the U.S., the post-war period saw a huge out-migration from Sydney's city center as the suburban bungalow became the new symbol of middle class virtues and values. The government facilitated this out-migration through the construction of huge housing developments, much of it in Western Sydney. Although these developments did form part of an integrated economic strategy where the estates were to be provided with regional shopping centres and work opportunities, this public housing-led form of development turned out to be extremely problematic. The growth expectations of the time were not realised, and industry was slow to develop. Meanwhile, the composition of public housing tenants was changing from working class families to largely welfare-dependant and often single parent families. Public transport and community services were poor or non-existent. As a result of these various developments, when coupled with the high number of new migrants being housed in Fairfield (a suburb in Western Sydney), the location of a major migrant hostel, the South Western and Western Sydney sectors quickly became more stigmatised. Social exclusion of these communities has been further reinforced by economic restructuring over the past 20 years. Half of Villawood's population is first-generation immigrant, with a large Vietnamese and Lebanese population. Villawood the suburb is also associated with the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, a massive detention facility used in the processing of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

This particular meeting, facilitated by the urban planning and design firm overseeing the project, brought in developers, urban designers, representatives from various social services and social housing, and other stakeholders to discuss tentative scenarios the firm had drafted based on community consultations, prior meetings, etc. Our role was to provide a health perspective to conversation. However, much of the health considerations related to the built environment--walkability and active transport, food access, air quality--is already embedded in their plans. Pointing these things out was obvious or redundant. Where an HIA seems to be effective in this situation is to point out issues of equity, disproportional impacts, and the vulnerable communities that might be impacted. At first it seems of little consequence, but just having someone at the table who is raising these issues and helping to steer the conversation can impact the overall process in really meaningful ways. More about the HIA its theoretical underpinnings in the next post.