Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemReducing greenhouse gas emissions from residential buildings in Australia : impact, opportunities and barriers impeding progress( 2003)The quest underlying this research is improved understanding of greenhouse gas reductions attributable to residential buildings in Australia. Past efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from residential buildings in Australia focus predominantly on operational energy and to a lesser extent CO2 emissions attributable to energy embodied in the building structure, i.e. an individual dwelling and its site. The emissions and corresponding opportunities associated with the life support systems servicing the dwelling, e.g. water supply, food supply, sewage disposal, are still relatively unexplored. The first part of this research takes a wider view by including the life support systems. As a demonstration of how the impact of the life support systems can be studied, water supply and sewage disposal are explored in detail. Once potential opportunities for reduction are identified, these opportunities also need to be realised. Both the theory and practice of energy conservation in residential buildings worldwide, and in Australia, have been there since the 60s and 70s. However, there is evidence that implementation in Australia has not transferred into the mainstream as yet. Efforts have been made to identify the barriers impeding progress to energy efficiency. These are mostly based on personal observation. Structured methods based on empirical data are restricted to individual key players such as architects or householders. Empirical studies of a limited cross section of the key players have been carried out overseas but are restricted to commercial buildings. These studies have also been isolated attempts and not as part of an overall management strategy. In the second part of this research a diversity of needs and barriers faced by a wide cross section of key players is identified empirically, as part of an overall management strategy aimed at achieving energy and related CO2 reductions from residential buildings in Australia. Energy reduction is taken to include operational energy, embodied energy and the energy associated with the life support systems of a dwelling. It is proposed that both these domains of opportunity identified present opportunities for significant reductions in CO2 emissions from residential buildings in Australia.
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ItemSex and the slum : imperialism and gender in nascent town planning, Australia and New Zealand, 1914-1919( 2003)This thesis explores early 20th century town planning discourse in two of Britain's dominions, Australia and New Zealand. It uses the first national town planning conferences held in Australia and New Zealand (1917, 1918 and 1919) as a vehicle for examining themes of imperialism and gender within town planning discourse. In both dominions, women had a visible presence and an increasing voice in the nascent town planning movement. The women planning advocates were predominantly middle-class, they supported the continuation of women's traditional domestic role and they celebrated women's position as the `mothers of the race'. They wanted improved housing standards in order that women could undertake their important work of mothering to better effect. Similarly, they wanted more extensive kindergarten and playground facilities in order to shape and mould the citizens of tomorrow. But more than this, the women who took the most active role in the Australian and New Zealand town planning conferences were imperialist, win-the-war loyalist and in some cases even militarist. It was the imperial race that was at stake. The term `planning's imperial aspect' has been used by others to describe the initiatives of imperial powers in exporting town planning to their colonies and dominions. However, in view of the Australian and New Zealand enthusiasm for importing town planning, and the extent to which Australian and New Zealand planning advocates promoted town planning in terms of its potential to benefit the imperial race, this thesis expands the usage of the term to encompass colonial/dominion initiatives in importing town planning from the relevant imperial power, in this case from Britain. The thesis shows that in early 20th century Australia and New Zealand, the activities of women planning advocates clearly demonstrate planning's imperial aspect. This is because the women recognised the particular plasticity of children's bodies and minds and the consequent opportunities that infancy and youth provided for the instillation of middle-class values and behavioural norms, and thus focused their attention on the sites and activities that had the greatest potential to positively modify the fitness, health and morality of children - the imperial soldiers, workers, wives and mothers of tomorrow.