Susie Moloney

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at RMIT University

In Australia, local governments are at the forefront of responding to climate change through the development of risk assessments, and mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, the extent and effectiveness of planning for climate change and tracking progress, is difficult to assess. Few frameworks have been implemented at the municipal scale. W...

This paper examines the emerging phenomenon of climate emergency declarations. We focus on the case of Victoria Australia and the 30 councils who have declared a climate emergency with a particular focus on three councils. We explore the drivers, meanings, and implications and to what extent the subsequent plans reflect a reframing of local governm...

Local governments are at the forefront of climate change adaptation planning. Although there is significant research on adaptation planning processes, there is scant empirical evidence of how local governments are completing the adaptation planning cycle by monitoring or evaluating their efforts. This leads to a fundamental lack of understanding ab...

Governments commit substantial time and resources engaging individuals and households to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These approaches, based largely upon behaviour change theories, have been criticised for their limited reach and effectiveness by practice theorists who have offered an alternative approach, broadening the focus beyond ind...

This paper examines the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative in Melbourne and frames this as an experiment in urban resilience governance and planning. We respond to the call from urban resilience scholars to consider the 5Ws (who, what, where, when and why?) of resilience and consider what this means for reframing urban...

Multi-lateral aid come from various Bilateral–aid agencies that play a crucial role in supporting developing nations around the world to address climate change issues. Despite significant effort from aid agencies, it is not clear how aid is received and distributed at local level in recipient countries. This paper highlights some of the challenges...

Climate emergency declarations are amongst the strongest statement from governments in the face of global warming. At least 1217 local governments have so far declared a climate emergency; however, on a national government level, only seven such declarations have been made, most of which were in 2019. The exponential rise of local governments decla...

As we write this piece, the Country to the north, south, east and west of us is burning. While here in Naarm/Birrarung-ga/Melbourne (and for Blanche in Sydney on Gadigal Country) we are at some distance from the worst of the flame, heat, smoke, ash and destruction, the effects are nonetheless present and real. We began writing this piece just as th...

In our state of Victoria, there is currently no central place where people working on climate change related issues across different organisations, research, and sectors can easily and inclusively meet, share research and practice knowledge, develop their capabilities, discuss contentious and challenging issues, and support one another in this shar...

While accounts of urban climate change governance and planning are growing, there is a need for further conceptual and empirical work to better understand processes of change and uptake across a range of local responses. This paper uses the Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment (CASBE) as an urban experiment seeking to influence deve...

The idea that climate change adaptation is best leveraged at the local scale is a well-institutionalized script in both research and formal governance. This idea is based on the argument that the local scale is where climate change impacts are “felt” and experienced. However, sustainable and just climate futures require transformations in systems,...

In the post Paris climate policy context, there is an imperative to effectively monitor and evaluate progress across a range of scales in responding to climate change. In particular the focus on how well we are tracking adaptation progress has been identified as a key challenge (Christiansen, L. et al 2016; Ford et al 2015). While this is particula...

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Australian local governments develop and deliver a range of community engagement programmes designed to reduce household-based greenhouse gas emissions. This article draws on practice theory to analyse how these programmes have changed over time in response to the rapid deployment of a domestic renewable energy technology: rooftop solar photovoltai...

In the late 1990s a group of Victorian local government councils addressed a sustainability void in the building codes and planning regulations by developing capacity to implement Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) via the planning system. What began as a collection of largely independent initiatives progressed to an integrated suite of mec...

As we witness increasing numbers and range of low carbon experiments, attention inevitably turns to how they are sustained and whether they can generate more systemic change in carbon-related consumption. This paper responds to the ‘spatial turn’ in socio-technical transitions, and the ‘practice turn’ in social theory to consider the role of interm...

Local governments are at the forefront of responding to climate change in developing risk assessments and mitigation and adaptation strategies. In the Australian context, local government plans and strategies are emerging, however the extent to which municipalities are planning effectively for climate change and whether they are delivering on outco...

There is growing interest in analysing the role and effectiveness of the local scale in responding to the global challenge of climate change. However, while accounts of urban climate change governance are growing, there is now a real need for further conceptual and empirical work to better understand processes of change and uptake across a range of...

Despite often stated sustainability goals, much of traditional planning practice remains concerned with facilitating the market and maintaining the status quo rather than challenging and transforming it. In this chapter, the planning system is the focus of a sociotechnical systems perspective analysis. This chapter examines strategic spatial planni...

Sustainability under a changing climate requires transitioning away from institutionalised processes, norms and cultures that underpin and reproduce unsustainable practices and development. The volume and diversity of actors, and the closeness and density of interactions and interrelationships, make urban transitions complex, contested and dynamic,...

Carbon and efforts to decarbonize are reconfiguring urban processes and relations. As we witness increasing numbers and ranges of low carbon urban experiments attention inevitably turns to how they are sustained (Castán Broto and Bulkeley, 2013a) and how, as part of this process of sustaining, urban low carbon intermediaries (Guy et al., 2011; Hods...

Regions around the world are facing intersecting challenges associated with economic and industrial restructuring, demographic changes, urbanisation, and climate change. Regional development efforts have primarily focused on an economic agenda but, have struggled to fully integrate environmental and social concerns. Climate change requires an integ...

Urban planning has been described as having two coexisting dimensions: the purposive or ideological function and the procedural or regulatory function. The former, with its origins in the social reformist ideas of the early twentieth century, is about planning as a visionary exercise capable of imagining the kinds of places in which people want to...

Highlights: Asia-Pacific cities are embarking on climate actions with various policies and plans in recent years, however, in many cases these policies and plans are without clear quantifiable city wide targets. Climate actions in Asia-Pacific cities are generally happening on a piecemeal basis and are fragmented at the project level across sect...

Highlights: Climate change actions in cities can be characterised as highly fragmented and divided into vertical silos, therefore, better communication between all branches of government is needed so all aspects related to mitigation and adaptation can be coordinated. Cities must develop a robust framework and indicators to track progress towards...

This report presents the outcomes of a pilot study exploring how the building and planning system is delivering a sustainable built environment in Australia. The study was funded by the Australian Communities Foundation through the Green Cities Innovation fund and undertaken by a team of researchers from RMIT University across the School of Global...

Resilience is a multi-faceted concept frequently used across a wide range of disciplines, practices, and sectors. There is a growing recognition of the utility of resilience as a bridging concept that can facilitate inter-and transdisciplinary approaches to tackle complexities inherent in decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Su...

Melbourne has had the fastest-growing population of any Australian capital city for more than a decade. It is expanding outward while also growing upward through vast new high-rise developments in the inner suburbs. With an estimated 1.6 million additional homes needed by 2050, planners and policymakers need to address current and emerging issues o...

Climate change mitigation remains a contested political and policy issue nationally in Australia. Nevertheless, Australian cities have been actively engaging with low carbon policy for well over a decade and numerous actions and programs have resulted. A question arises as to whether such initiatives can amount to a transition; a systemic change fr...

With regard to responding to global climate change, urban policy and practice is central in relating global standards and knowledge, national and regional climate change scenarios into context-specific and effective action towards sustainable development at the local scale. In this paper we will look at how local government in Sweden and Australia...

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature highlighting the limitations of behaviour change and the emergence of a social practice approach to reframe responses to escalating resource consumption. Drawing insights from interviews with Australian households and workshops with behaviour change practitioners, we demonstrate how the ‘Going...

Discussion Paper for the VCCCAR Strategic Think Tank: Adaptation Research Beyond 2014

This paper focuses on housing affordability, growth area planning and social inequity associated with increasing energy use and transport costs in outer metropolitan Melbourne. A greater degree of housing affordability necessitates ensuring a mix of housing types and prices in a range of locations. It also requires calculations of cost which go bey...

There are many technical innovations for reducing water and energy use in residential housing, predominantly for new homes, but also for existing housing stock (administered through renovations). Alongside this, householders can reduce energy and water use by changing their behaviour. Although Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows Australians...

Transitioning to low carbon communities requires an understanding of community practices and resultant emissions, as well as the technologies, infrastructures and institutions associated with and accessed by communities. Moreover, it requires an understanding of the connections between these integrated system components, its dynamics, a defined tra...

As the focus of western politics shifted sharply to the right during the 1980s and 1990s, planning became one of the many casualties of the trend towards reducing the size and scope of government, privatisation and using economic efficiency criteria to determine public policy. As a result, the social and environmental dimensions of planning often b...