Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemThe order of housing things : public housing policy discourse in New Zealand and Australia, 1983-1999( 2001)The purpose of this thesis is to examine discourses of housing assistance to understand how empirical knowledge came to be effected in the state housing assistance arrangements of New Zealand and Australia. To achieve this purpose a discursive methodology was crafted to account for both the constitution of empirical knowledge, and the bureaucratic apparatus by which housing assistance is administered. By pursuing the theoretical insights of US pragmatist thinkers, and recent French post-structuralist authors, empirical knowledge in the thesis was understood as a series of regular relations between abstract categories of 'things' or 'statements', as enunciated in the utterances of housing assistance policy actors and agents. Similarly the state was viewed as a discursive apparatus, which operates to constitute reality through the enunciation of this empirical order of things. The results of the methodological strategy were to be found in the empirical case studies of housing assistance in New Zealand and Australia during the period 1983 to 1999. In New Zealand a regular arrangement of housing policy discourse operated. until 1990. This 'order of housing things' constituted its subjects as unable to operate effectively in the housing market, thus requiring direct intervention via the housing assistance apparatus to ensure their needs were met. After 1990, this arrangement was replaced by an order in which the market was constituted as able to efficiently allocate housing to those in need, with maintenance of an adequate income becoming the sole basis for state action. In Australia, the order of housing things has consistently been one in which the directly provided subsidised state housing is the enunciated and practiced 'truth' of housing assistance. While alternative orders have been enunciated, such as the provision of assistance solely through an income payment, none of these alternatives obtained the status of the incumbent order during the study period. The thesis contributes to social scientific understanding through the careful and extensive empirical analysis of public housing policy in the two countries under consideration. Added to this understanding are the detailed theoretical explorations, which tease out recent post-structural approaches to discourse and the state, and which provide methodological solutions to questions of the nexus between empirical reality, language, practice, subjects and government policy.
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ItemProcess dynamics : buffer management in building project operations( 2000)The management of uncertainty and complexity is necessary for performance in the management of building projects. This thesis explores lean production and its engagement of uncertainty and complexity to ascertain the means by which lean thinking can best be used to enhance building project performance. As uncertainty and complexity impede performance, they are often managed in ways that will minimise their impact. Buffers like excess inventory and deliberate delays have been used to shield operations from the effects of uncertainty and complexity to improve levels of performance. However, lean thinking argues that the use of buffers to shield uncertainty and complexity from operations is wasteful and induces operational inertia. It eliminates these buffers and utilises operating capacity as an alternative to enable a more efficiently responsive engagement of uncertainty and complexity. Thus, the purpose of buffers changes in lean operations from that of a shield to that of enhancing accommodative capabilities. Buffers are therefore considered necessary, and the concept of process dynamics is introduced to consolidate the management of buffers. Process dynamics encapsulates the insight from lean thinking about the efficiently responsive accommodation of uncertainty and complexity. Building projects require the provision of choice and variety under conditions of considerable uncertainty. Projects structures are arranged to provide variety, yet contend poorly with the uncertainty and complexity present. The consequence is waste that leads to prolonged duration and increased costs. The provision of choice and variety means that some degree of uncertainty and complexity is intrinsic to high levels of performance. Consequently, approaches that better accommodate, rather than shield uncertainty and complexity can improve time and cost performance while still enabling the provision of wide product variety. Levels of wasteful practice in building projects are described through the meta-analysis of past studies into deficient practices in building projects. This analysis confirmed the high levels of waste. The process dynamics concept is tested through a simulation model. This model indicates the performance improvement from deploying buffers under the process dynamics regime. The results indicate that process dynamics provides the means for utilising lean thinking in the management of building projects to maximise performance outcomes.
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ItemHousing and migration : a study of housing needs in Geelong with particular reference to influence of migration( 1968)The study of housing and migration had occupied the mind of the author from the time he emigrated from his home town, Oshodi, to Lagos - the Federal Nigeria capital in search of regular employment. His own personal experience, those of friends and relatives, and the ever-increasing number of young rural migrants moving into the few industrialising centres in his country plus the various reports on similar problems in most of the developing countries of the world have induced him to begin to think of how the problem of housing, most especially migrant housing, can be solved. Australia is the second largest migrant receiving country in the world, and so faces a considerable amount of migrant housing. Her method of tackling the problem offers an excellent opportunity for its solution to many of the developing nations which now face a growing problem of rural-urban migration. This particular -housing study on Geelong is an attempt to review and evaluate the housing problem in- a very important migrant centre in Australia. It is geared towards an assessment of the problem, how it is tackled and how the State and the National housing policies and programmes can be adopted, with modifications where necessary, to suit the solution of similar problems especially in the developing countries of the world. I acknowledge the graduate scholarship granted to me by the Australian Commonwealth Government without which this study might not have been possible. The basic survey of this research was in the form of postal questionnaire, it was conducted in the months of Sally to September 1966, The author's thesis committee members and Dr. S. B. Hammond of the Department of Psychology were particularly helpful with suggestions in connection with the preparation of the questionnaire while the department secretariat was co-operative with the arduous task of its arrangement and typing. The number of persons involved with the gathering of data for this study is too large for complete enumeration. The Geelong Municipal. Councils rendered very valuable financial and moral assistance. The Geelong Advertiser and the local 3GL radio were helpful in enabling the project to reach all the homes involved before the questionnaires were distributed. The office of Buchan, Laird, Buchan e Architects m and most especially Mr. Colin Munro, was very co-operative in giving the author an insight into the planning problems in the Geelong Urban Area.- The history of Geelong was most comprehensively narrated by Messrs P, L. Brown and Roy H. Holden. To them all I express my very sincere thanks. Any housing questionnaire would scare most householders off unless it is accompanied with a subtle covering letter. For this I acknowledge the freely given services of Mr. John Handfield of the Image Australia. Pty. Ltd. It was not without difficulty that a reasonable number of the questionnaires was received back duly completed. In some cases, it involved door-to-door visits and in this respect the contributions of Misses Mary Wilton and Jenny Hall will long be remembered. My very humble but sincere thanks goes: to the staff of the Education Research Department of the University and most especially to Mrs. L.D. Jones. who patiently put me through the computer analysis of the data; to the staff of the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics in Melbourne and Canberra for providing the statistical data particularly of the 1966 unpublished census, and to the Housing Commission, Victoria for providing me with the detailed plans of their houses in Geelong.
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ItemRural road management using visual assessment techniques( 1991)This thesis explores the management of rural road landscapes using information derived from visual assessments of these landscapes. Visual assessments of landscapes have previously been mainly restricted to investigating scenic/aesthetic matters. However the methods used in these assessments seem to be appropriate for assessing other matters and have potential for application in the management of multi-use resources in rural roadsides. In this thesis, the responses to rood landscapes of three expert groups and a public user group are considered. The expert groups responded to the rural road landscapes with reference to their areas of expertise - landscape architects evaluated for scenic beauty, ecologists for ecological significance and fire experts for fire hazard potential. The public group responded to the landscape scenes for their preference (for a Sunday afternoon recreational drive). Based on these responses, estimation values, which are numerical representations of the importance of landscape scenes relative to each other, are derived. Policies - multiple linear and non-linear regression equations which statistically represent the average responses of each of the groups to various roadside features - are also developed. Policies make explicit the relationship between changes in selected landscape features and groups' responses to those landscapes. As this study has a management focus, only measurable and manageable landscape features of rural road reserves are considered in developing policies. In exploring the application of estimation values and policies in the management of rural road reserves, the relationship between the responses of individuals and those of the groups to which the individuals belong is examined, using a technique called policy capturing. The results of this study indicate that for the four main groups, within group differences exist in the way in which group policies can be used to describe people's responses. The results of this study indicate that the average response of the experts accounts for the majority of their group's members' response but this is not the case for the public group. It is also found that, given the same landscape features, the amount of variance (multiple R2 value) associated with a group's policy was generally larger than that associated with those policies for its individual members. The findings in the present research complement those in non-landscape research, but contrast with the only other landscape research application of policy capturing. Finally, this study shows ways in which information based on the group policies can be used in the management of rural roads. Five theoretical courses of action are investigated with respect to two landscapes - annual burning, annual slashing, tree planting, road widening, and do-nothing. These five courses of action are referred to as management options, and are theoretically applied over ten- and fifty-year planning periods. Only one management option, annual slashing, is found to be successful. The results seem to indicate that, for the landscapes examined, often the best option may be to do nothing.
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ItemTowards the development of a transport energy policy for Australia( 1983)The existing pattern of transport energy use in Australia has been established and the feasibility of reducing such energy use by various strategies has been assessed. Constraints have been identified, and the role of governments and industry in the implementation of such changes by fiscal and regulatory policies has been examined and recommendations made for their adoption by Australian state and national governments.
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ItemThe valuation of road safety for public decision making : with application to Australia( 1982)This study investigates the proper valuation of the social and economic consequences of road accidents in guiding public decision-making and policy on accident research and road safety. The work is in three stages: (i) a review and assessment of road accident cost studies; (ii) the estimation, presentation and appraisal of comprehensive social costs of road accidents for Australia in a recent year; and (iii) a critique of the theoretical and empirical economic literature on the 'value of life', and its implications for the valuation of road safety. The theme of the study is the conflict between the two approaches to the valuation of safety: the practice of treating road accidents as social costs and the alternative concept of direct economic valuation of life and the avoidance of risk. Neither approach has yet produced definitive empirical results and there remain unresolved valuation problems affecting public sector assessments of safety. 1978 Australian accident costs are estimated in a modified 'societal' cost framework which is proposed as a compromise between the two valuation approaches. The composition of this framework Is examined, especially the valuation of fatalities in terms of foregone income. Problems identified include the income concept chosen, the treatment of those not earning, the effects of the age distribution of the accident sample, and the role of the discount rate. The study gives particular attention to the skewed distributions of average accident costs which renders them misleading in use. A method is proposed to simulate accident cost distributions according to injury severity by fitting probability distributions. Finally a critique of the extensive recent literature on the economics of the value of life and safety is undertaken to assess the relevance of this approach to public sector decision making, and its relationship to accident cost studies. This approach, proposes willingness to pay for reduction in risk of death as the correct safety valuation concept, with suggested application in road safety, public health, and environmental pollution policy. Recent empirical studies using this valuation concept are examined, and appear to produce plausible results. A useful but controversial suggested elasticity relationship between willingness-to-pay valuation of life and the foregone income method is also discussed. Some preliminary conclusions are presented about the conceptual and empirical feasibility of valuing road safety, and about the limitations of the 1978 Australian estimates as parameters to guide public policy on road safety.
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ItemPublic transport policy and land use in Melbourne and Toronto, 1950 to 1990( 1997-01)This study examines the reasons behind the decline in public transport patronage in Melbourne between 1950 and 1990, through a comparison with Toronto. The share of urban travel undertaken by public transport has declined since the Second World War in all developed countries, but public transport patronage in Melbourne appears to have declined more rapidly than in most other industrialised cities. Public transport has, however, gained or held ground in Toronto, where the form of development is similar in many ways to Melbourne. Most accounts of Toronto’s success (particularly in Australia) regard transport/land-use integration as the critical factor. The contrasting analysis maintains that Melbourne’s urban form has changed over this period to a dispersed, car-oriented pattern. This study evaluates a different interpretation of the ‘Toronto model’. This is that Toronto has undergone similar urban changes to Melbourne since the war, but has found a way of operating public transport successfully in a relatively dispersed environment. The contrast with Melbourne, then, is not primarily in land-use patterns, but in policies towards the operation of public transport.