Mr Ahmad Yazdanian
Research project:
The Emergence of Forever Renting in Brisbane in the Lead-up to the 2032 Olympic Games
Project description:
This project examines constrained long-term renting in Brisbane in the lead-up to the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, focusing on how housing pathways, rental insecurity and policy preparedness are being reshaped in a context of rapid urban transformation. While renting in Australia has historically been understood as a temporary stage before home ownership, rising house prices, increasing deposit requirements, rental stress, labour-market insecurity and unequal access to intergenerational wealth mean that many households now remain in the private rental sector for extended periods despite preferring homeownership or another more secure tenure. The project conceptualises this condition as forever renting, not as an individual failure to save or progress through the housing system, but as a structural outcome produced through the interaction of housing markets, finance, policy settings, wages, rents and wealth inequality.
Brisbane provides a critical case for examining these dynamics because the period leading to 2032 is likely to involve major infrastructure investment, redevelopment, population growth and shifting housing demand. The research will investigate how constrained long-term rental pathways are produced, how their consequences vary across households and locations, and how planning and housing policy can better support affordability, stability and security for renters before, during and beyond the Games. In doing so, the project treats Brisbane 2032 not as the original cause of long-term renting, but as a key urban and policy context through which existing rental pressures may be intensified, redirected or mitigated.
Research interests:
Housing, Land use planning, Spatial Conflicts, Genealogy, Social and Spatial Justice, Urban Policy, Political economy of space
Principal Supervisor:
Ali Cheshmehzangi
Publications:
Ahmad Yazdanian. (2026). Social conflicts of the Olympic Games in Australia: winners and losers. The Fifth Estate. https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/social-conflicts-of-the-olympic-games-in-australia-winners-and-losers/
Ahmad Yazdanian. (2026). Stories of cities: living in the edge. The Fifth Estate. https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/stories-of-cities-living-in-the-edge/
Ahmad Yazdanian. (2026). How Menzies built social order through homeownership. The Fifth Estate. https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/how-menzies-built-social-order-through-homeownership/
Ahmad Yazdanian, Zahra Rahmati. (2025). Space of Politics; Sense of Belonging and Spatial Agency, ATLANTIS Magazine, TU Delft, 36.1 Agency, Space, Society.
Zahra Rahmati, Ahmad Yazdanian, Ali Cheshmehzangi. (2025). Territorialisation and Deterritorialisation: A Topography of Conflict in the Tehran University Development Plan, Iran. Journal of Urban Regeneration & Renewal Vol 19 No 2. https://doi.org/10.69554/QKLH2649
Ahmad Yazdanian, Zahra Rahmati, Ali Cheshmehzangi. (2024). Transformations in urban gardens: Neoliberal influences and land use conflicts in Shiraz’s Qasr al-Dasht Gardens. Land Use Policy. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837724002643.
Contact Email
a.yazdanian@uq.edu.au
External Profiles
Googlescholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=pjY0OiAAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmad-yazdanian-551ab8239/
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ahmad-Yazdanian?ev=hdr_xprf