Carbon rights, customary land, urban planning, common property, the Republic, and even the sex industry will be under scrutiny by the University of Technology, Sydney's latest research venture.

The Asia-Pacific Centre for Complex Real Property Rights (APCCRPR), unique in the Southern Hemisphere for the way it embraces the challenge and diversity of contemporary property rights, will be opened by His Honour Justice Peter McClellan, Chief Judge at Common Law in the NSW Supreme Court, on 29 April 2009.

“The most distinctive feature of the Centre is its transdisciplinary nature at the juncture of people, place, and property.

“It embraces the intense dynamic and complex legal, economic, political, environmental, sociological, and managerial processes that take place between people and institutions in planning, developing and managing built and natural assets in a digital age. We realise that these are issues that cannot be answered by one discipline in isolation from the others,” said Professor Spike Boydell, Foundation Director of the Centre.

The APCCRPR will inform the built environment professions, government and the community in promoting excellence in research, scholarship, education and innovation relating to:

• property rights in land and buildings;
• politics and economy of emerging property rights, such as carbon, water and biota;
• urban planning and compensation;
• leasehold issues, including expiration and renewal;
• institutional arrangements and land trusts;
• the financial management of inalienable customary land in Australia and the South Pacific; and
• the challenge of common property in urbanised areas.

“Researchers in the Centre already have a track record of expertise in these areas, including advisory work for government and UN agencies, aid donors, and collaborations on submissions to the Productivity Commission on water, and to the ACCC on carbon trading,” said Prof Boydell.

The APCCRPR is the first UTS Centre for Enterprise Research and Community Services (CERCS) to be located in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building. Professor Spike Boydell has been appointed Foundation Director, supported by Adjunct Professor John Sheehan, while research members come from across UTS areas of expertise in law, economics, sustainability, sociology, planning and development, business and governance.

The APCCRPR officially opened by Justice McClellan on Wednesday 29 April 2009 in the UTS Chancellery Function Area, Tower Building 1, Level 4A.