Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemThe implications of urban land policy towards housing development in Indonesia : Surabaya as a case study( 2002)There have been predictions that urban populations will increase dramatically around the globe, especially in developing countries. Cities become sources of progress, and urban productivity is crucial to national development. In developing countries, especially in Asia, cities often double in size and population within a decade. Despite being engines of socio-economic development, most Asian cities are, unfortunately, also sources of poverty and centres of environmental deterioration. As a consequence of the above facts, land inevitably becomes an important factor, and usually the most critical problem, in urban development. In Indonesian cities the development of land is managed through a system of permits, the first of which is the so-called location permit. The objective of this permit is to ensure that the intended investment is in line with the socio-economic policy of the government. It also gives the holder the right to invest in the property and leads to the right to buy land, wholly or partially, from whoever owns it. In practice, the permit confers a 'monopoly to purchase', and accordingly the permit holder can put pressure on the landowners by offering a very low price for the land that might be impossible for them to accept. In most cases, the permit holders can control the best part of the urban land, while low-income people are pushed to fringe areas. Access to urban land for housing activities by low-income people can thereby be restricted. At the same time the system appears to lead to fragmented, inefficient development and environmental degradation. The objective of this research is to explore alternatives for a land permit system that will be better suited for urban housing development in Indonesia. A case study approach was chosen, and Surabaya was selected as a case study city. There were four types of respondents for this research, namely government officials, staff of Real Estate Indonesia, housing developers and landowners. The research was done through the following steps. First, a desk study was carried out to gain sufficient information about the location permit process. This was used to prepare questionnaires for interview purposes and to identify potential respondents. Second, interviews were done with government officials connected with the location permit system, and with members of the Real Estate Indonesia association. By comparing these interviews, respondents from among the housing developers were selected and interviewed. In selecting the developers, the exact case study areas could be specified and the previous landowners could also be identified. The next interviews were carried out with the previous landowners as respondents. The interview results were then tabulated and analysed, and conclusions were extracted from this analysis. From the analysis it was found that the location permit system itself is not the whole problem. It is closely related to other problems, such as inconsistency in law enforcement, poor management, incompleteness or lack of regulations, ill-paid civil servants, and/or collusion and nepotism. If accountability and transparency were maintained while relevant laws were properly enforced, many of the above problems could be overcome. However, it is clear that the location permit system is so open to abuse that it would be sensible to explore alternatives that would achieve the desired ends without suffering the problems.
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ItemAppropriate interventions for rehabilitating degraded tropical uplands( 1993)Land degradation is one of the most serious environmental and developmental problems in the upland regions of developing tropical countries. Immense efforts have been made, with considerable international cooperation, to rehabilitate this land and increase its productivity. However, the achievements of these efforts have been disappointing, largely because of unsuitable technology and implementation strategies. The aim of this study was to establish what are appropriate interventions for rehabilitating degraded tropical upland. Agroforestry was specifically studied because it is the most promising family of rehabilitative technologies for biophysical and economic reasons. 'Appropriate' in this work refers to that which is consonant with principles of sustainable development while being pragmatically aware of current geopolitical constraints on following these principles. An 'intervention' is not only the technology applied at the ground-level to rehabilitate land, but also the necessary institutional and organizational changes for its implementation. A case study of the uplands of Sri Lanka, involving one year's field work, was undertaken to achieve this aim. While adopting a broad human-ecological perspective, the case study employed agroecological and politico-ecological methods to diagnose the causes of land degradation, to prescribe interventions for rehabilitating that land, and to evaluate and plan for the implementation of likely agroforestry interventions. Specifically, it evaluated the 'analog forest' (an agroforestry system which is structurally and functionally analogous to the natural ecosystem) and planned for its implementation in an existing management program in the Upper Mahaweli watershed. Based on the experience gained through this case study, it was concluded that: (1) there is no universally appropriate intervention; (2) the appropriateness of interventions is determined at three nested politico-ecological levels, namely the biophysical, the socio-economic, and the politico-cultural; and (3) it is at the politicocultural level that most difficulties are likely to be found in determining an appropriate intervention. A corollary of the third finding is that international development efforts need to be directed to improving the functioning of national resource-management organizations in developing countries.
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ItemEnvironmentalism and land-use planning( 1985)This dissertation considers the research question: Can land-use planning attain the goals of environmentalism? The research question instigates the development of models for environmentalism and land-use planning, test of their congruence, analysis of institutional means to join them, case study of the specific method of lifestyle zoning for Nature conservation, international comparisons, and suggestions for the implementation of the ideology of environmentalism by the techniques of land-use planning. An applied planning orientation guides methods from political science, sociology, anthropology and geography to structure the theoretical and empirical studies. Comparison among the industrially advanced anglophone countries of Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States of America enable cross-cultural insight into environmentalism, land-use planning, and measures for the protection of dedicated areas. The evaluation of the fit between the environmentalism and land-use planning, considers their origins, values, operating principals, programs and problems. This social-policy analysis reveals substantial concurrence, particularly regarding concern for the unintended consequences of technical and social policies, human interaction with the physical environment, care in resource use, urban and Nature conservation, the importance of open space, rational forethought, the long-term, regional view, environmental diversity, government intervention, need for co-ordination in government, use of experts, citizen participation, self-actualization, equity, and generic as well as substantive definition of the fields by their supporters. The ideological outline of contemporary environmental planning provides a framework for detailed analysis of the case study of an "Environmental Living Zone" on the fringe of urban Melbourne, Australia. Historical research, interpretation of planning schemes, maps and aerial photographs, interviews, and observation provided insight into the social and environmental factors in residential conservation. From the empirical and theoretical analyses, the work suggests implications for practitioners- and directions for further research.