The high-rise housing market in Melbourne has been undergoing dramatic growth in the last ten years. This emerging housing style is in stark contrast to the familiar traditional lowdensity suburban dwelling scouring Australian metropolitan cities. This paper traces the representations of high-rise housing since its first appearance in the 1960s to today. Discourses of high-rise housing that have seen this housing type change from one characterised by urban decay and family disorganisation to that which unproblematically glorifies this new housing form will be explored. These new and inviting images of high-rise living today are juxtaposed with the understandings of high-rise public housing that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. High-rise public housing was once seen as a solution to housing the impoverished and arresting the spread of slum conditions. High-rise housing today is being celebrated amongst government, developers, planners and occupiers as saving the inner city from decay and indicative of a re-vitalised CBD.

Traditionally, migration away from urban centres by those seeking lifestyle changes has been towards beach environments. More recently though, there have been small movements of people to rural environments seeking similar lifestyle changes. These movements to rural locales have been popularly referred to as treechange. Previous research on exurban migration has primarily focused on quantifying the migration process and attributes of the migrators. In contrast, this paper presents some preliminary findings on the impact of urban-rural migration on a small, semi-rural receiving area north of Melbourne. More specifically, it explores the impact that exurban migration has on local housing markets such as increases in house prices, decreases in affordability and declines in rental stock. The research also illustrates the divisions that appear in local communities between traditional residents and 'newcomers' over amenity issues and economic development.

This paper sets the context for the special edition. The themed collection begins to address questions raised about the level of engagement of Geographies of Children and Youth with wider social and cultural theory. We argue that there are some commonalities with critiques levelled at Population Geography, and suggest that dialogue between the two subdisciplines provides a useful way forward. We suggest going beyond the ‘otherness’ of childhood to consider how children, young people, and adults are dissected and connected by axes of difference and similarity which reproduce broader‐scale ‘population’ (in)equalities. Key themes emerging from this dialogue by the papers in the special edition include an emphasis on small‐scale micro‐mobilities (e.g. between the school and home, and around locales), which are essential aspects of everyday life. Despite their importance, these micro‐mobilities have been somewhat neglected by population geographers as they do not create sustained demographic shifts. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The resurgence and visibility of homeiessness since the 1980s have become significant social and political issues, widely debated in academic circles and in the popular press. The composition of tho homeless population has changed markedly in this period, and now includes more women and children, and more of the dcinstitutionalised mentally ill. The lives of street kids in the city of Newcastle, Australia show patterns of structured behaviour and territorial and social organisation. They have a distinctive group identity and moral order. Tlicir subculture is complex with strains of nonpatriarchal and patriarchal relations combined with little tolerance of forms of difference. The mora! code of the youth subculture may be a form of resistance to their histories of abuse but is also conservative in reproducing aspects of the culture that they resist. The social networks generated on the street provide a self-maintaining force which contributes to a culture of chronic homelcssness.