Jago Dodson
urbanizationist.bsky.social
Jago Dodson
@urbanizationist.bsky.social
Professor of Urban Policy, Melbourne, posting/following mostly academically on housing, transport, planning, infrastructure, energy, governance, geography, and climate.

If I followed you it is probably via a starter pack (not personal).

Also @ X, 🐘, 🪡
New paper on migration patterns, labour markets, housing and commuting, in Journal of Transport Geography, by Terry Li and me.

Tl;dr: Metropolitan expansion is driven by existing residents more than new migrants, and weakens housing-jobs connections.

O/A at: doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...
Redirecting
doi.org
October 27, 2025 at 11:38 AM
Congratulations to my cultural studies colleagues for one of the sharpest 'on trend' conference titles ever posed in any discipline.

Details and registration here: csaa.asn.au/csaa-confere...
March 13, 2025 at 3:04 AM
The level of non-performing residential property loans with >90% loan-to-valuation ratios in Australia is rising but at less than $4bn is still very low in the context of the overall $2.2tn value of housing loans in Australia.

Data via AIHW dashboard: housingdata.gov.au
February 10, 2025 at 12:44 AM
The TMK podcast partially addresses the overaccumulation question in discussion around 25:00 onwards.

podcastaddict.com/this-machine...
February 5, 2025 at 8:52 AM
This is very sad news about the death of Professor Michael Burawoy in a hit and run car incident.

www.mercurynews.com/2025/02/04/o...
Oakland resident dead in hit-and-run crash at intersection
The collision happened around 7:10 p.m. Monday near the entrance to Children’s Fairyland.
www.mercurynews.com
February 5, 2025 at 8:42 AM
Reposted by Jago Dodson
🚨 We're hiring! 🚨

Senior Lecturer/Professor in Social and Public Policy.

Lead cutting-edge research, deliver research-led teaching, and engage with external stakeholders.

📅 Apply by: 3rd March 2025

🔗 Apply here: tinyurl.com/4ew5xk2s

#AcademicJobs #SocialPolicy #HigherEdJobs
a yellow sign that says we 're hiring
ALT: a yellow sign that says we 're hiring
media.tenor.com
February 3, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Watching Canada and the US announce mutual tariffs portends a rapid divergence from the economic geography observed in Nth America during the last four decades.

Observers in the 1980s and 1990s described a 'sea change' in political economy in the 1970s. Is this a comparable such moment?
February 2, 2025 at 3:21 AM
Has anyone done an analysis of the AI boom through the framework of Harvey's theory of overaccumulation?

I am hypothesising that the overaccumulation (crisis) of the technology sector has resulted in a capital switch to AI, chips and data centers as a form of built environment.
January 29, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Reposted by Jago Dodson
Even in car-loving cities the demand for #activetransport is there, once you provide low-risk routes and networks. Good news from #brisbane.
www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/que...
The car-free Brisbane bridges now busier than anyone expected
New data reveals Brisbane’s most popular bridges for pedestrians, cyclists and e-scooter riders, as police seek to enforce speeding and helmet laws.
www.brisbanetimes.com.au
January 21, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Request for help on accessing journals via OpenAthens.

My institution has moved to OpenAthens from EZproxy. In Zotero EZproxy would automatically login to publisher platforms to access articles. OpenAthens however requires platform-by-platform manual login for authentication.

Any suggested fixes?
January 20, 2025 at 5:57 AM
A deep breath for the big end of year browser tab closedown...
December 20, 2024 at 12:25 AM
Found this useful DITRDCA summary info sheet on Australian urban and regional statistical geographies that is much easier to review than the ABS summaries.

Time to brush up on your GCCSAs, SUAs, UCLs, RAs and SAs?

[Not clear why UCLs dated 2020?]

www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/defaul...
December 16, 2024 at 5:01 AM
It's the time of the year to catch up on readings.

On my list is James Whitten's 2024 PhD thesis on high speed rail and regional governance in Australia.

As far as I'm aware it is the most substantial scholarly engagement with HSR so far in Australia.

minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/items/fdf3a1...
Transforming spatial governance High-speed rail planning and the regional integration of Hume
Australian governments and private consortiums have been planning high-speed rail since the 1980s by studying different corridor options and railway technologies to connect major cities along the eastern seaboard. Despite the introduction of government policies to promote land use and transport integration, recent proposals for intercity high-speed rail have obtained weak connectivity between station infrastructure and regional settlement systems. In Australia, justification for weak connectivity is typically based on a combination of transport planning and urban design considerations that are said to hinder integration between regional stations and established urban areas. However, recent studies of high-speed rail development overseas suggest that the problem instead has its origins in national systems of multilevel governance. This research takes the Hume Region in northeast Victoria as an illuminative case study to understand the influence of high-speed rail planning on regional governance in Australia between 2008 and 2017. A spatial governance perspective is used to explore the in-between spaces of state planning that embed infrastructure projects into regions to promote their economic and political integration. The conceptual framework draws on Raco’s (2005) understanding of regional integration as a political process that reconfigures power relations and gives rise to hybrid institutional forms. A mix of research methods, including geographic analyses of three high-speed rail proposals and qualitative analyses of interviews with national and regional actors (n=64), government policies and media reports, showed that high-speed rail planning is connected to processes of regional integration by its potential to restructure settlement systems and embed new institutional and political structures into non-metropolitan regions. The research found that regional institutions in Hume coevolved with the institutional structures that governed high-speed rail planning in Australia. This convergence between national and regional-level structures can be explained by the top-down nature of infrastructure planning and regional policy. However, the analysis identified ground-up moments of institutional reform that indicate greater reflexivity between territorial levels than is typically acknowledged in the domestic planning literature. In the case of high-speed rail planning in Hume, institutional reforms were instigated by localised struggles against the partisan structures that govern public investment in critical infrastructure. It remains to be seen if newly empowered regional actors highlighted in the research can secure broad-based outcomes from high-speed rail development because they lack the planning authority and fiscal resources needed to implement integrated planning solutions. In Australia, the forms of regional integration engendered by high-speed rail planning have limited potential to promote sustainable development outcomes in non-metropolitan regions because the strategic goals of the state and powerful non-state actors are privileged over the planning goals and development needs of regional communities. Consequently, high-speed rail planning is transforming spatial governance by reproducing national corporatist structures in non-metropolitan regions. These structures, however, do not engender a regionally integrated approach to spatial planning.
minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au
December 15, 2024 at 11:49 PM
Note to Australian universities*: a good moment to be recruiting talented NZ social scientists.

*at least those not abolishing social science departments - looking at you University of Wollongong.
The New Zealand government is abolishing funding for social sciences and humanities in favour of STEM, to support economic development.

It's a foolish and retrograde step that undervalues knowledge of society, both economically and as a public good.

beehive.govt.nz/release/marsde…
December 4, 2024 at 10:54 AM
The New Zealand government is abolishing funding for social sciences and humanities in favour of STEM, to support economic development.

It's a foolish and retrograde step that undervalues knowledge of society, both economically and as a public good.

beehive.govt.nz/release/marsde…
December 4, 2024 at 8:03 AM
Has your urban BlueSky following peaked? Here's some starter packs to boost your feed:

Aus/NZ urbanists: go.bsky.app/NrzWxjT
Regional and urban economics: go.bsky.app/LHQB6NW
Urban economists/geographers: go.bsky.app/DuTtmrV

Feel free to share any others you come across.

1/2
December 2, 2024 at 10:54 PM
Reposted by Jago Dodson
Two permanent Assistant Professorships in Human Geography at Durham! With expertise in geographies of nature, climate change, & just and sustainable futures...

durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
Assistant Professor in Human Geography (GEOG_01 %26 02)
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
durham.taleo.net
November 28, 2024 at 8:23 PM
I've recently heard an argument in Australian transport circles that because bus network EV transition is slow, we should initially also expand the diesel/gas bus network to more quickly take mode share from ICE cars to reduce emissions, while continuing the slower EV bus transition towards NZE.
November 26, 2024 at 11:34 AM
Here's a good video on the Danish cost-rental social housing financing model, where tenants pay rents tied to the capital cost, then once repaid into a rolling solidarity fund.

www.bbc.com/storyworks/b...

The attached diagram from Norris and Lawson (2022) shows how the capital structure works.
November 25, 2024 at 12:40 PM
An echo chamber, or

A Room That Echoes - Peking Man (NZ, 1986)

youtu.be/yxu0dM89Vm8?...
Peking Man - Room That Echoes
YouTube video by KneesTease
youtu.be
November 23, 2024 at 12:22 PM
Interesting imagery on this Ho Chi Minh City billboard informing citizens of resolution 98/2023/QH15 which devolves to the city authority many national government urban planning and management powers.
November 19, 2024 at 6:19 AM
Calls to utilise vacant housing perhaps misunderstand why houses become vacant and underestimate how difficult this might be to bring them to market. Many dwellings are vacant and unavailable due to probate or settlement. Others are remote and often dilapidated.

www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11...
www.abc.net.au
November 17, 2024 at 11:04 AM
Wow, driver of my #melbourne tram giving an absolute flaming stream of very strong advice about safety to a car that raced past the stopped and open-door tram.

Good on you tram driver!
November 16, 2024 at 5:05 AM
This obscure 30-year-old New Zealand light folk-country track seems to rather jauntily capture the experience of departing the old site and arriving at the new:

Al Hunter "There's a Blue Sky Waiting for Me" (1993)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD0o...
There's a Blue Sky Waiting for Me
YouTube video by Al Hunter - Topic
www.youtube.com
November 15, 2024 at 1:18 PM