Renee Zahnow
Biographic Data
| ID | 239293 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Renee Zahnow |
| GIVEN NAMES | Renee |
| FAMILY NAME | Zahnow |
| SIGNATURE | ZAHNOW R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5796-9443 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 199 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Influence of Parental Education on Child Health
INTRODUCTION: Parental education has been linked to childhood health and wellbeing outcomes. Intergenerational transfer of parental education into childhood health and wellbeing outcomes operates through multiple pathways, however the mediating influence of neighbourhood conditions remains understudied. METHODS: Drawing on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) (n = 6432, 51% male, ages 14-15 years) we conduct a causal med…
Public open space, adverse live events and psychological distress in Melbourne, Australia
This study replicates and builds on earlier work by Høj et al. (2021) conducted in Montreal, Canada, to examine the extent to which residing in close proximity to open public spaces can buffer psychological distress using survey data from Melbourne, Australia. We find that proximity to public open space is negatively associated with psychological distress with stronger effects evident among participants who have experienced an adverse life event …
Examining Train Stations as Crime Generators and the Protective Effect of “Regular” Riders
Understanding whose eyes make up the ambient population is an important development of crime opportunities research. We hypothesize that regularity at train stations will influence place-awareness and therefore the balance between potential crime offenders, targets, and victims in the ambient population. Drawing on one year of travel card and police-recorded crime data we examine the association between percentage of regular passengers and crime …
The Resettlement Journey
In the context of rising global migration and/or forced displacement, there is a pressing need to consider the well-being and life satisfaction of (im)migrants and refugees during resettlement. Research highlights the importance of social connectedness for (im)migrants and refugees during the resettlement phase. Yet, a critical gap remains in our understanding of the key characteristics through which social connections exert their influence on we…
Climate change inequalities
Understanding the impact of social connectedness on health and well-being among refugees in Australia
The health and well-being of refugees are significant global concerns, yet the specific types of social connectedness that most effectively provide the greatest benefits during resettlement remain unclear. This study investigates the impact of social connectedness, including community participation and social ties, on general health and subjective well-being at different stages of the resettlement process. Using three waves of data from the Build…
From communal places to comfort zones
Familiar strangers, individuals who are visually recognisable yet do not engage in verbal conversations, emerge in communal urban places on the way and in between regular daily activities in the home and workplace. Described as invisible social ties and light touch community, familiar strangers represent an understudied and untapped source of sociality that offer promise by way of an antidote to the global increase in reports of loneliness. In th…
Mapping and measuring neighbourhood social media groups. The case of facebook
Social media is a pervasive part of everyday life. Neighbourhood social media are important community orientated structures that serve as digital platforms where local residents can connect with neighbours, exchange information, and share resources. The current study details an analytic framework to systematically capture, measure and map neighbourhood social media (Facebook groups) presence for a large metropolitan region, Brisbane, Australia. F…
Social infrastructure, social cohesion and subjective wellbeing
Neighborhood physical places that bring people together, referred to as social infrastructure, form the foundation of communities. Studies suggest that by facilitating social encounters, social infrastructure can enhance sense of social cohesion and belonging and may also improve subjective wellbeing. Yet the extent to which wellbeing benefits are mediated through increased social cohesion and belonging is less understood. Drawing on data collect…
Please mind the gap
This study investigates the geographic and annual variations in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and fuel consumption generated by private vehicles across Australia's regions over an 18-year period (2002 to 2020). We examine the influence of vehicle numbers, geography, and time on emissions and fuel consumption using spatial analysis alongside panel regression. Emissions remain relatively high in North Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Sout…
The importance of public familiarity for sense of belonging in Brisbane neighborhoods
Place type or place function
Place attachment at neighborhood places can facilitate social ties and community belonging, reduce social isolation and improve physical and mental health outcomes. Research highlights the benefits of place attachment at traditional third places such as cafes and parks but is yet to examine place attachment across a broader suite of highly frequented neighborhood places. Drawing on survey data from a sample of Australian residents ( N = 892) with…
Locality‐based social media
Locality‐based social media (LBSM) allow members of the community to exchange news, connect with local people, and raise awareness of problems such as crime. This study aims to better understand the influence of LBSM on perceptions of community crime, safety, and crime prevention. Drawing on survey data from 1000 Australians, we assess the extent to which frequency of exposure to crime on LBSM and intensity of engagement on LBSM influence percept…
Virtual reality for nature experiences
Examining regularity in vehicular traffic through Bluetooth scanner data
Regularity is an important property of individual travel behaviour. The ability to measure it enables advances in behaviour modelling, mobility prediction and commuter analytics. The majority of work in this space focuses on regularity in public transport ridership using different sources of big data. Yet, another important consideration is the regularity of vehicular traffic and road users in urban contexts. In this paper we analyse road user tr…
Living Near Violence and Feeling Safe
Crime at train stations
The Effect of Weather on Assault
This paper examines the role of local weather conditions in explaining variations in assault, in sub-tropical Brisbane, Australia. It details the extent to which local variations in weather are important in shaping the necessary preconditions for assault to take place. Results suggest that higher daily temperatures are associated with an increased propensity for assault at the neighborhood level after controlling for seasonal effects. Assaults oc…
Where to next? An exploration of ‘night-out’ location progression and propensity to experience violence in night -time entertainment precincts
Community Neighboring Norms and the Prevalence and Management of Private Neighbor Problems
Neighbor relations are informal social ties that constitute part of everyday urban life. While the benefits of neighborliness are well established, less is known about the manifestation of private neighbor nuisances. Specifically, research examining the influence of community social contexts on the propensity for neighbor nuisances and the resolution of nuisance issues through informal pathways remains limited. Drawing on a stratified sample of o…
Neighbourhood correlates of average population walking
Measuring and visualising ‘familiar strangers’ among transit riders
Exploring the politics of strain
The international criminology and social policy literature have long explored possible connections between social welfare and crime. However, existing studies tend towards high‐level comparisons of crime versus total aggregate welfare spend, overlooking sub‐national contextual differences between and within countries. There are also few studies that deeply explore this link in the Antipodes, including in Australia: a settler colony and (neo)liber…
Community resilience to crime
Understanding and enhancing community resilience is a global priority as societies encounter a rising number of extreme weather events. Given that these events are typically both sudden and unexpected, community resilience is typically examined after the disaster so there can be no before and after comparisons. As such, the extent to which existing community capacities buffer the effects of a traumatic event remains largely unexamined and unteste…
Neighbourhood places, collective efficacy and crime
Neighbourhood places like shops, cafes and parks support a variety of social interactions ranging from the ephemeral to the intimate. Repeated interactions at neighbourhood places over time lay the foundation for the development of social cohesion and collective efficacy. In this study, we examine the proposition that changes in the presence or arrangement of neighbourhood places can destabilise social cohesion and collective efficacy, which has …
Seeing” Minorities and Perceptions of Disorder
Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators–multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals…
Ethnic Diversity and Its Impact on Community Social Cohesion and Neighborly Exchange
Putnam’s “constrict theory” suggests that ethnic diversity creates challenges for developing and sustaining social capital in urban settings. He argues that diversity decreases social cohesion and reduces social interactions among community residents. While Putnam’s thesis is the subject of much debate in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, there is a limited focus on how ethnic diversity impacts upon social cohesion and neighborly exc…
Neighbourhood social conduits and resident social cohesion
Given the importance of the neighbourhood context for residents’ social cohesion, the current study examines the association between types of social and non-social places on three indicators of social cohesion: neighbour networks, social cohesion and neighbourhood attachment. We spatially integrate data from the census, topographic databases and a 2012 survey of 4132 residents from 148 neighbourhoods in Brisbane, Australia, and employ multilevel …
Neighbourhood land use features, collective efficacy and local civic actions
This paper explores the association between neighbourhood land use features and informal social control. More specifically, we examine the extent to which such features in combination with the socio-demographic context of the neighbourhood facilitate or impede collective efficacy and local civic actions. We achieve this through spatially integrating data from the census, topographic databases and a 2012 survey of 4132 residents from 148 neighbour…
A global analysis of the impact of Covid-19 stay-at-home restrictions on crime
The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings s…
Mixed Land Use
This study investigates the effect of mixed land use on violence and property crime in neighborhood block groups while simultaneously considering the presence of criminogenic facilities and sociodemographic conditions. We conduct negative binomial regression to examine the relationship between mixed land use and crime and investigate whether the relationship is moderated by sociodemographic characteristics or the presence of criminogenic faciliti…
Weather and cycling in New York
Disasters and crime
This article explores the effects of a significant flood event on levels of property crime across 400 neighborhoods in a capital city in Australia. It considers the degree to which postflood property crime deviates from expected trends in neighborhoods characterized by different sociodemographic profiles. After conducting time series analysis of property crime at the city level, we classify neighborhoods by disaster vulnerability and employ time …
Neighborhood Structure, Social Capital, and Community Resilience
Objective Whether a community can demonstrate resilience following a disaster largely depends on the pre‐disaster context. Community disadvantage, the concentration of vulnerable and ethnically diverse groups, and high levels of residential mobility in the pre‐disaster environment make it difficult for communities to “bounce back” following a disaster. The lack of social capital in the pre‐disaster context also hinders community resilience. Yet t…
Community social capital and individual functioning in the post-disaster context
Disasters can have severe and long-lasting consequences for individuals and communities. While scholarly evidence indicates that access to social support can ameliorate their negative impacts, less understood is whether or not neighbourhood social capital can facilitate recovery. This study uses two waves of survey data-collected before and after a significant flood in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011-to examine the relationship between the severity …
The Girl on the Bus
Hägerstrand proposed that individuals’ daily mobility is constrained to a particular time–space path by capability, coupling, and authority requirements. This tethering of routine activities to particular places at scheduled times facilitates repetitive bundling of individuals at certain nodes. Associations emerging from repeated, cursory encounters between individuals have been coined familiar strangers. “Familiar strangers” is a unique social p…
Adverse Effects, Health Service Engagement, and Service Satisfaction Among Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Users
There are a number of adverse health effects associated with the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS), ranging from mood disturbances to gynecomastia and impaired sexual function. Despite the potentially serious nature of adverse effects, evidence suggests that users are reluctant to seek medical assistance. This study explores factors associated with health service engagement and treatments related to service satisfaction among a sample of …
Neighbourhood places, collective efficacy and crime
Neighbourhood places like shops, cafes and parks support a variety of social interactions ranging from the ephemeral to the intimate. Repeated interactions at neighbourhood places over time lay the foundation for the development of social cohesion and collective efficacy. In this study, we examine the proposition that changes in the presence or arrangement of neighbourhood places can destabilise social cohesion and collective efficacy, which has …
Transport mode choice in South East Asia
From communal places to comfort zones
Familiar strangers, individuals who are visually recognisable yet do not engage in verbal conversations, emerge in communal urban places on the way and in between regular daily activities in the home and workplace. Described as invisible social ties and light touch community, familiar strangers represent an understudied and untapped source of sociality that offer promise by way of an antidote to the global increase in reports of loneliness. In th…
Understanding the impact of social connectedness on health and well-being among refugees in Australia
The health and well-being of refugees are significant global concerns, yet the specific types of social connectedness that most effectively provide the greatest benefits during resettlement remain unclear. This study investigates the impact of social connectedness, including community participation and social ties, on general health and subjective well-being at different stages of the resettlement process. Using three waves of data from the Build…
Please mind the gap
This study investigates the geographic and annual variations in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and fuel consumption generated by private vehicles across Australia's regions over an 18-year period (2002 to 2020). We examine the influence of vehicle numbers, geography, and time on emissions and fuel consumption using spatial analysis alongside panel regression. Emissions remain relatively high in North Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Sout…
Place type or place function
Place attachment at neighborhood places can facilitate social ties and community belonging, reduce social isolation and improve physical and mental health outcomes. Research highlights the benefits of place attachment at traditional third places such as cafes and parks but is yet to examine place attachment across a broader suite of highly frequented neighborhood places. Drawing on survey data from a sample of Australian residents ( N = 892) with…
Examining regularity in vehicular traffic through Bluetooth scanner data
Regularity is an important property of individual travel behaviour. The ability to measure it enables advances in behaviour modelling, mobility prediction and commuter analytics. The majority of work in this space focuses on regularity in public transport ridership using different sources of big data. Yet, another important consideration is the regularity of vehicular traffic and road users in urban contexts. In this paper we analyse road user tr…
Community resilience to crime
Understanding and enhancing community resilience is a global priority as societies encounter a rising number of extreme weather events. Given that these events are typically both sudden and unexpected, community resilience is typically examined after the disaster so there can be no before and after comparisons. As such, the extent to which existing community capacities buffer the effects of a traumatic event remains largely unexamined and unteste…
Conservation Criminology
The emergence of conservation criminology over the past decade provides a unique insight into patterns of wildlife crime. Wildlife crime has a dramatic impact on many vulnerable species and represents a significant challenge to the management of protected areas around the world. This paper contributes to the field of conservation criminology by examining the travel patterns of fishing poachers in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia. T…
Using routine activity theory to inform a conceptual understanding of the geography of fire events
Ethnic Diversity and Its Impact on Community Social Cohesion and Neighborly Exchange
Putnam’s “constrict theory” suggests that ethnic diversity creates challenges for developing and sustaining social capital in urban settings. He argues that diversity decreases social cohesion and reduces social interactions among community residents. While Putnam’s thesis is the subject of much debate in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, there is a limited focus on how ethnic diversity impacts upon social cohesion and neighborly exc…
Seeing” Minorities and Perceptions of Disorder
Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators–multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals…
Transport mode choice in South East Asia
Neighborhood Structure, Social Capital, and Community Resilience
Objective Whether a community can demonstrate resilience following a disaster largely depends on the pre‐disaster context. Community disadvantage, the concentration of vulnerable and ethnically diverse groups, and high levels of residential mobility in the pre‐disaster environment make it difficult for communities to “bounce back” following a disaster. The lack of social capital in the pre‐disaster context also hinders community resilience. Yet t…
Using routine activity theory to inform a conceptual understanding of the geography of fire events
Queensland Alcohol-related violence and Night Time Economy Monitoring project (Quantem)
The information gathered through this project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Policy and to draw on these findings to inform future prevention and enforcement approaches by policy makers, police, and venue staff
Disasters and crime
This article explores the effects of a significant flood event on levels of property crime across 400 neighborhoods in a capital city in Australia. It considers the degree to which postflood property crime deviates from expected trends in neighborhoods characterized by different sociodemographic profiles. After conducting time series analysis of property crime at the city level, we classify neighborhoods by disaster vulnerability and employ time …
Adverse Effects, Health Service Engagement, and Service Satisfaction Among Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Users
There are a number of adverse health effects associated with the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS), ranging from mood disturbances to gynecomastia and impaired sexual function. Despite the potentially serious nature of adverse effects, evidence suggests that users are reluctant to seek medical assistance. This study explores factors associated with health service engagement and treatments related to service satisfaction among a sample of …
Short-term changes in nightlife attendance and patron intoxication following alcohol restrictions in Queensland, Australia
Earlier cessation of alcohol sales and stopping the sale of rapid intoxication drinks after midnight was associated with people arriving in Fortitude Valley earlier. Though legislative loopholes allowed some venues to continue trading to 5 am, the proportion of people in the precinct who were highly intoxicated decreased after the restriction. Further measurement will be required to determine whether the reduction has persisted
Identifying a typology of men who use anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS)
The results of this study demonstrate the need to make information about AAS accessible to the general population and to inform health service providers about variations in motivations and associated risk behaviours. Attention should also be given to ensuring existing harm minimisation services are equipped to disseminate information about safe intra-muscular injecting and ensuring needle disposal sites are accessible to the different types
Injecting drug use
The impact of drug policy liberalisation on willingness to seek help for problem drug use
A mapping review of evaluations of alcohol policy restrictions targeting alcohol-related harm in night-time entertainment precincts
Mixed Land Use
This study investigates the effect of mixed land use on violence and property crime in neighborhood block groups while simultaneously considering the presence of criminogenic facilities and sociodemographic conditions. We conduct negative binomial regression to examine the relationship between mixed land use and crime and investigate whether the relationship is moderated by sociodemographic characteristics or the presence of criminogenic faciliti…
Neighbourhood land use features, collective efficacy and local civic actions
This paper explores the association between neighbourhood land use features and informal social control. More specifically, we examine the extent to which such features in combination with the socio-demographic context of the neighbourhood facilitate or impede collective efficacy and local civic actions. We achieve this through spatially integrating data from the census, topographic databases and a 2012 survey of 4132 residents from 148 neighbour…
Not all those who Wander are lost
Since the 1970s, activity diaries have been the principal source of data used by geographers and urban planners to capture human mobility patterns; however, memory recall requirements and participant burden are limiting features of this approach. While handheld GPS devices were initially used to simply validate activity diaries, the ubiquity of smartphones makes GPS-based technology a viable alternative for collecting human mobility data. This re…
The Impact of Liquor Restrictions on Serious Assaults across Queensland, Australia
Aims : This study aimed to explore the relationship between a 00:00 liquor restriction, introduced on 1 July 2016, and alcohol-related harm by examining its impact on serious assault numbers during high-alcohol hours (20:00-6:00 Friday and Saturday night), from 1 January 2009 to 30 June 2018. Methods : Two types of locations only impacted by the liquor restriction were identified: designated safe night precincts (SNPs) and other local government …
Weather and cycling in New York
Neighbourhood social conduits and resident social cohesion
Given the importance of the neighbourhood context for residents’ social cohesion, the current study examines the association between types of social and non-social places on three indicators of social cohesion: neighbour networks, social cohesion and neighbourhood attachment. We spatially integrate data from the census, topographic databases and a 2012 survey of 4132 residents from 148 neighbourhoods in Brisbane, Australia, and employ multilevel …
Conservation Criminology
The emergence of conservation criminology over the past decade provides a unique insight into patterns of wildlife crime. Wildlife crime has a dramatic impact on many vulnerable species and represents a significant challenge to the management of protected areas around the world. This paper contributes to the field of conservation criminology by examining the travel patterns of fishing poachers in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia. T…
Community social capital and individual functioning in the post-disaster context
Disasters can have severe and long-lasting consequences for individuals and communities. While scholarly evidence indicates that access to social support can ameliorate their negative impacts, less understood is whether or not neighbourhood social capital can facilitate recovery. This study uses two waves of survey data-collected before and after a significant flood in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011-to examine the relationship between the severity …
Motives and Correlates of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use With Stimulant Polypharmacy
Individuals who use anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) may engage in concurrent psychoactive drug use recreationally and/or as an additional training aid. Aside from cannabis, individuals who use AAS most commonly report concurrent use of stimulants such as amphetamines and cocaine. In this study, we examine demographic characteristics, frequency of heavy drinking, and nightclubbing in a sample of 993 men from the Global Drug Survey 2015 who repo…
Transport-related walking among young adults
The findings of this study show how the proposed data collection and analytic approach can inform urban design to enhance walkability at locations that are likely to generate walking trips. This study's insights can help to shape public education and awareness campaigns that aim to encourage walking trips throughout the day by suggesting locations and times of the day when engaging in these forms of exercise is easiest and least intrusive
Developmental transitions during adulthood and neighborliness
Neighborliness plays a critical role in promoting social integration, and is known to positively influence health and psychosocial adjustment. We examined variation in neighborliness based on developmental transitions as well as on the neighborhood context. We examined the direct and moderating role of neighborhood factors, to determine whether the neighborhood context modified the influence of developmental transitions on neighborliness. We anal…
The prospective impact of 10‐day patron bans on crime in Queensland's largest entertainment precincts
Sociology (32 works) · Psychology (31 works) · Geography (26 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (20 works) · Medicine (19 works) · Political science (19 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Urban Transport and Accessibility (15 works) · Engineering (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works)