WELCOME MESSAGE

In maintaining what has now become ‘tradition’ the 4th State of Australian Cities Conference moves to Perth, Western Australia, from 24-27 November 2009 after having been previously held in Adelaide (2007), Brisbane (2005) and Sydney (2003). Furthermore, as with SOAC 3, this year’s conference is a collaborative venture between the four public universities in WA - UWA, Curtin, ECU and Murdoch – who have all provided financial and in-kind support.

This year’s conference has also been generously supported by members of the Australian Sustainable Cities and Regions Network (ASCRN) –Australian National University, Flinders University, Griffith University, University of Adelaide, University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, and University of South Australia. In addition, this year’s conference has also benefited from generous sponsorship from a number of organisations. These include: The Satterley Group, LandCorp, Hames Sharley, Fremantle Ports, City of Perth, and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility.

It is appropriate in light of the meta-theme of the SOAC conference series – City Growth, Sustainability, Vitality and Vulnerability – that SOAC 4 is being held in Perth this year. The resources boom that not only fuelled the Western Australian economy but also the national economy, resulted in phenomenal changes in terms of population growth, house prices and the urban footprint of the Perth metropolitan region. Such changes have invariably raised both academic and policy questions and conundrums about the sustainability – economic, environmental, social and physical - of the Perth metropolitan region as well as the feasibility of providing West Australians with the opportunity to keep pursuing the so-called great Australian dream of home ownership. Other State capital cities and regions, most notably, Brisbane, South East Queensland and the greater Adelaide metropolitan area have experienced similar challenges in the wake of economic and population growth.

At the same time various bodies – eg the Department of Planning, the City of Perth, the Australian Institute of Urban Studies (WA), and CityVision - have been at the forefront of much local discussion and debate about what, if anything, needs to be done to make Perth a more vibrant and dynamic city. Similar debates are now underway in Melbourne in the wake of Rob Adams’ latest paper Transforming Australian Cities and the South Australian Government’s new 30 year plan for Greater Adelaide.

SOAC 4 also takes place in an era where ‘the urban’ is attracting increasing political attention at the Federal level, after a fairly long hiatus, with the setting up of the Major Cities Unit which forms part of Infrastructure Australia. SOAC 4 seeks to ramp up interaction between academic researchers and policy-makers in an effort to ensure that ‘the urban’ is located more squarely and firmly on the policy agenda at all levels of government.

Professor Roy Jones, Dean of Research and Graduate Studies,
Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University of Technology; and