Wired High Rise
Project Code: ARC SPIRT grant 2000
The focus of this three-year project is a new "wired community" in
the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy.
Residents of inner high-rise public housing estates, often characterised
by low income and diverse ethnic backgrounds, tend to suffer the interrelated
problems of unemployment, poverty, violence, crime and technological
disadvantage. The "Reach for the Clouds" project is attempting
to break this cycle of disadvantage by providing free
computers and software, internet and intranet access to every household
in four high-rise towers
on the Atherton Gardens public housing estate. The
estate is wired up to give everyone broadband intranet access and tenants
are given extensive
hardware and software computer training with the ultimate
aim of eventually passing control of the technology and its use over
to the residents themselves.
The network aims to break the cycle of social exclusion
and isolation by building skills and linking residents to community organisations,
government services and local businesses.
The ISR's task is to provide an analysis and evaluation of the network.
While governments and policy commentators around the world have looked
to information technology to redress problems of social exclusion, little
detailed empirical work has been done. This is the first detailed examination
of a low-income wired community in Australia, and one of the first in
the world.
The research project is a partnership with InfoXchange, a non-profit
internet service provider, multimedia developer and training organisation,
and the Victorian Department of Human Services. Two elements of the department
have an interest in the research: the Office of Housing, which manages
the estate, and the Aged and Community Health Branch, as part of the
government's primary care partnerships strategy.
Research Team
Chief Investigators: Professor Denise Meredyth, Professor Julian
Thomas, Mr Scott Ewing and Dr Liza
Hopkins
Publications and Other Research Outputs
 Publications
Media Coverage
Audio Visual Material
Research Programme
The Australian Research Council (ARC) awarded its second-largest social
science grant for the year 2000 to the Institute for Social Research
(ISR) to carry out a three-year research project, "Wired High Rise",
to evaluate the success and effectiveness of "Reach for the Clouds".
The research team is particularly interested in assessing the effects
that access to this network of communication and information has on communication
patterns and the sense of community among the very diverse group of estate
residents.
The first phase of primary research included focus groups and a survey
of tenants, both on the Atherton Gardens estate and on a comparable estate
in Collingwood. This was designed to give us some baseline social information
about the residents in terms of their social networks, their friendships
on the estate, trust of other residents and feelings of community, belonging,
safety and empowerment. Preliminary results from both focus groups and
surveys show that language and cultural differences are major barriers
to the development of a sense of community among tenants. People's social
networks and support structures are firmly based within linguistic and
ethnic enclaves.
By repeating surveys on both estates in two years' time, it is hoped
that measuring changes in the community and communication will provide
some empirical details as to the usefulness of computer technologies
and networks in improving life for both online and offline communities
on the estate.
Other primary research has focused on the history of the public housing
estate, comparable Australian and international projects and issues around
working in a multilingual, multiethnic community. Also, in-depth interviews
with the key players in the project have been undertaken to gain their
views on the complexities of implementing and managing this kind of public-private
partnership.
Wired High Rise will also evaluate the effectiveness of using a volunteer
training program to teach and support the residents in the use of the
new technologies. More than 60 members of the general public have offered
their services as volunteer trainers for the program, including some
estate residents who were trained early in the project and who are now
training other residents, particularly in community languages.
Project Outcomes
Current status and possible futures
There are 800 flats within the estate and so far more than 300 people
have gone through training and more than 500 computers have been given
out. Of these, more than 400 have a network connection which enables
them to send and receive email as well as access an intranet with local
content in English and other community languages. In addition, 270 of
these households have an internet account which provides low-cost, high-speed
access to the world wide web. Internet access is also available to residents
through the public access computer training room on the estate, and classes
in computer use continue to be run in English, Chinese and Vietnamese.
The Reach for the Clouds project is now known as e-ACE or the electronic–Atherton
Community Enterprise. Everyone involved in the project is committed to
the ultimate outcome of empowering a disadvantaged community to take
control of their lives. Information from Wired High Rise will give an
in-depth evaluation of the success of and gaps in the project and demonstrate
to present and future state and federal governments the clear and tangible
benefits that innovative partnerships and risk-taking can bring to struggling
sections of our society.
The project also has the potential to be ongoing in a number of different
directions. One possible future element will be a closer focus on the
educational potential and influence of home computer access for children
from low-income and disadvantaged families. Investigating changing patterns
of media consumption and technology usage is another area in which this
project has great potential.
Final report
Wired High Rise:
A Community Based Computer Network (PDF file)
Links
E-Ace
InfoXchange
Office of Housing, Victorian Department of Human
Services
Primary Health branch, Victorian Department of
Human Services.
Publications (to xref Research Bank)
Measuring
Social Capital in a Networked Housing Estate
Denise Meredyth, Liza Hopkins, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas
The New Social Policy
and the Digital Age: A Case Study of a Wired High Rise Public Housing
Estate
Scott Ewing, David Hayward, Liza Hopkins and Julian Thomas
Just Policy, no. 29, April 2003
Wired
High Rise: Using Technology to Combat Social Isolation on an Inner
City Public Housing Estate
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Denise Meredyth, Liza Hopkins, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas
in Marshall, Stewart, Taylor, Wal and Yu, Xinghuo (eds), Using Community
Informatics to Transform Regions, Idea Group, Hershey, Penn, 2004
Neighbourhood
Renewal and Information Policy: The Atherton Gardens Network
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Denise Meredyth, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas
International Journal of Cultural Policy Studies, vol. 10,
no. 4, March 2004
Wired
Community: Neighbourhoods, Networks and Communities of Interest
Denise Meredyth
Paper prepared for Building the E-Nation: A Social Science Symposium, April
2003, Sydney
Virtual
Renewal: Can a Network Build Community?
Scott Ewing
Paper prepared for Building the E-Nation: A Social Science Symposium, April
2003, Sydney
Machinery
and Community: The Atherton Gardens Community Network
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Liza Hopkins, Scott Ewing, Denise Meredyth and Julian Thomas
Divided
Opinions over the Digital Divide
(Draft only: Not for citation)
Denise Meredyth and Julian Thomas
Southern Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2003
Report to Industry Partners
1: Introducing Reach for the Clouds, 2003
Report
to Industry Partners 2: Reach for the Clouds: Initial findings and
working Hypotheses, 2003
Appendix to Report
to Industry Partners 2: Survey Questionnaire
Wired
High Rise: Constructing a Virtual Community in an Inner City Housing
Estate
Denise Meredyth, Julian Thomas, Scott Ewing and Liza Hopkins
Paper presented to European Sociological Association annual conference, Visions
and Divisions Helsinki, September 2001
e-Social
Capital: Building Community through Electronic Networks
Liza Hopkins and Julian Thomas
Hopkins, Liza, Thomas, Julian, Meredyth, Denise and Ewing, Scott, "Social
Capital and Community Building through an Electronic Network", Australian
Journal of Social Issues , vol. 39, no. 4, 2004, pp 369–379
Thomas, Julian, Hopkins, Liza, Meredyth, Denise, Ewing, Scott, and Hayward,
David, "Building a Wired Community: Social Partnerships and the
Digital Divide", Communications Research Forum 2002, Canberra, 2–3
October 2002
Hopkins, Liza and Ewing, Scott, "Wired High Rise: Using Technology
to Combat Isolation on an Inner City Public Housing Estate", "Using
IT: Making it Happen" Information Technology in Regional Areas Conference,
Rockhampton, 26–29 August 2002.
Meredyth, Denise and Thomas, Julian, "Framing the Issues: The Political
Intelligibility of the Digital Divide", 2002 International Conference
on the Digital Divide: Technology & Politics in the Information Age,
David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University,
22–24 August 2002.
Meredyth, Denise, Hopkins, Liza, and Ewing, Scott, "A Networked
Housing Estate", VCOSS Social Policy Congress 2002, Melbourne, 31
July –2 August 2002
Meredyth, Denise, Hopkins, Liza, Ewing, Scott, "Measuring Social
Capital in a Networked Housing Estate", paper presented to "The
Net(s) of Power: Language, Culture and Technology", International
Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication,
Montreal 12–15 July 2002
Hopkins, Liza, Meredyth, Denise, Thomas, Julian and Ewing, Scott, "Social
Capital and Community Building through an Electronic Network", Electronic
Networking 2002: Building Community Conference, Melbourne, July 2002
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