Louise Johnson

The 1970s was a watershed decade in Australia because of the emergence of a local Women’s Liberation Movement. This challenged existing paradigms, social relationships and spatial arrangements, highlighting the absence of women’s concerns and their systemic disadvantage in cities and urban planning. From a surge of grassroots activity to deliver women’s refuges, rape crisis and health centres, there emerged a focus on women’s planning issues – including poor suburban design, unsafe public spaces, inadequate social services and limited mobility, and subsequently a critique of the planning discipline and its practices. These interventions reached their zenith in the early 1990s when feminism itself fractured. While legacy initiatives persisted, along with mechanisms to actively support women within the profession, the 2000s have witnessed a stalling of more radical thinking and actions.

Developing a women’s health index is particularly important in the Indian context due to the pronounced disparities in women’s health across various social, economic, and geographical segments. This paper focuses on the development and validation of a comprehensive Women’s Health Index (WHI) for India. In contrast to previous efforts that predominantly focused on indicators related to pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period, often limited to reproductive or maternal health services, our index adopts a multi-dimensional approach. The WHI comprises 17 variables, representing life stages of women and encompassing a diverse range of factors. Utilizing Principal Component Analysis, we computed the index and conducted statistical tests for internal and external validation. The spatial pattern of WHI reveals substantial inter-district and inter-state disparities. This study thus provides a valuable tool for characterizing women’s health and identifying health inequalities at a smaller administrative level in India.

This paper presents the development, testing, and spatial variation of an innovative India Health Index. Unlike previous approaches that focused on specific health aspects (e.g., health resources, child health, or health coverage), our index takes a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach. It covers indicators across various life stages: child, adolescent, and adult. It encompasses six domains influencing health: socio-cultural factors, health status, health determinants (both risk and protective factors), household environment, and health system and policy. We used data from the latest round of the National Family Health Survey and employed Principal Component Analysis for constructing the India Health Index. Subsequent statistical tests confirmed its internal reliability and construct validity. External validity was indicated by its association with under-five mortality rates, and the sub-national human development index for India. Spatial analyses revealed significant inter-district and inter-state variation in India Health Index scores. The findings underscore the utility of the India Health Index as a measurement tool and its potential for tracking progress and policy intervention for improving health equity in India.

While developing a child health index is of interest, it is particularly important in the Indian context, because of a high burden of poor child health, the disparities in child health between different social, economic, and geographical regions and the absence of such a comprehensive index. This paper focuses on the development and validation of a Child Health Index (CHI) for India. Using publicly available data at the district level and principal component analysis, this index is composed of 16 variables representing six domains namely socio-cultural, child health status, determinants of child health (both risk and protective factors), household environment and health system and policy. Several statistical tests were conducted to provide internal and external validation. The application to predict child mortality confirmed its validation. This study thus provides a new tool for characterising child health and detecting child health inequalities at a district level in India. Consequently, it can be used by policymakers, health service providers and other stakeholders involved in child welfare to monitor and improve child health over time and space.

Geelong’s economic resilience has been evident for decades as it transitioned from a manufacturing to a service centre. This transformation largely unfolded during Australian governments’ embrace of neo-liberal policies which are usually associated with the State’s withdrawal from active economic intervention. A close examination of the Geelong experience, however, shows the State as a key actor, intervening through direct employment, targeted industry support, economic restructuring and decentralisation policies. Our analysis suggests a need to recentre the role of the interventionist State in conceptualisations of economic and social resilience while adding a nuanced regional dimension understandings of neo-liberalism in Australia.

If planning involves the regulation of people and activities in space as well as service delivery, then the definition and management of people with disabilities has intersected at critical points with these systems. From early colonization in Australia, those unable to effectively participate in work were confined to their homes, streets, or prisons. The first planned interventions created large institutions in isolated grounds where those defined as deficient were confined. The regulation of the “disabled” reached its nadir with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. As planning began improving the lives of urban citizens, the effective incarceration of those with intellectual disability continued. Those with physical impairments were gaining freedoms though were still profoundly limited in their participation in planning and society. With a series of United Nations Declarations and the emergence of disability advocates, the rights of people with disabilities were increasingly asserted, leading to deinstitutionalization and more autonomy in accessing services, culminating in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Despite this revolution in the provision of services, inaccessibility in the built environment remains, along with the spatial segregation of many. There is still much to do by planning to ensure access and inclusion within the city.

Within Australian cities there is significant socioeconomic disparity between communities, which is an obstacle to sustainable urban development. There is a voluminous amount research into the causes and some of the ameliorative actions to address socio-spatial disadvantage, though many studies do not localize or systematize their analyses. This paper presents the results of a co-design process conducted with community stakeholders using innovative realist inquiry and system mapping to answer the question: what are the impacts and drivers of socioeconomic and spatial disadvantage in a regional city in Victoria, Australia, and what actions might ameliorate these in three localities? Participants identified 24 separate causes and impacts of acute socioeconomic disadvantage. Using system maps, these community members developed 13 intervention ideas for action with potential to positively impact health and wellbeing, education, housing, employment, and livability, and be translatable to policy positions. The paper therefore presents a unique method of enquiry into spatial disadvantage and a grounded set of strategies for positive action.

Planning in Australia is always occurring on Indigenous lands. However, within the Australian planning canon, our institutions and practices have rarely acknowledged this reality. The lack of historical accuracy in accounts of urban planning histories, and the persistent inattention to the theory and practice of settler-colonialism, has blinded the profession to its complicity with colonial rule and effaced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences. We present in this article a new way of thinking about the history of Australian planning that situates the discipline and practice of planning within Indigenous Australia. This reframing locates the history of planning inside the coexisting geographies and histories that encapsulate the subjugation, survival, resistance, and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. To do so, we analyse the literature and distil key periodizations as represented in the standard planning canon and then contrast them with the histories and geographies of Indigenous peoples to construct a very different periodisation of Australian planning history – one that places Indigenous political, social and cultural concerns at the centre of analysis. This reworked periodisation, which aligns planning histories with major events in Indigenous history and policy, not only provides a more accurate account of the history of planning in Australia but also provides a framework for thinking about the possibilities of more positive and transformative future relationships between planning and Indigenous peoples in Australia.

(2018). Dismantling the Domestic Fortress. Housing, Theory and Society: Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 379-381.