Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemPlanning as a democratic practice : antinomy and mediatisation( 2004)The thesis seeks to reconcile planning with its role as an aspect of democratic governance in liberal societies. Planning is directly considered as an instrument through which people seek to govern themselves. Planning problems are seen as analogous to the problems of democracy, using the idea of antinomy - that democracy contains internal contradictions between its various desirable precepts which tend to 'pull' against each other as irreducible dilemmas, requiring trade-offs to be made. Focusing upon democratic antinomy allows the essential qualities of a given democratic system, including planning, to be revealed. However, an assessment of the traditions of urban planning indicates that in practice and theory, planning has not dealt with the antinomy of democracy in any comprehensive fashion, leaving it impoverished in terms of its role and meaning in liberal democracy. The body of work loosely described as communicative planning, however, provides the basis for a reappraisal of planning as a democratic practice, based on the work of Jurgen Habermas, to account for the antinomy of democracy. Two central concepts of Habermas's work are focussed upon. Firstly, the idea of democracy as knowing and steering is used as an overall ideal. To know itself, a people must understand the challenges and opportunities it faces, and inclusively determine what outcome they wish to achieve. To steer, a people must have the capacity to act in the knowledge they inclusively developed. Secondly, however, Habermas suggests that the central impediment to democracy is mediatisation - the increasing influence of instrumental logics, such as law or money, upon the manner in which we manage collective affairs. The planning systems of The Netherlands and Singapore are used to ground the theoretical basis of the research, establishing that distinct planning systems can be characterised as particular resolutions of democratic antinomy. Further, these planning systems are used to establish that certain media do appear to be deployed in distinct ways in each system, and that this influences the 'communicativeness' of these systems. Building upon this grounding, the planning system of Victoria, Australia is subsequently examined in detail to demonstrate the manner in which media influence knowledge and steering in the chronically repeated processes of Victorian planning. This analysis, focussing on local planning, suggests that certain resolutions of democratic dilemmas are better, tested against the ideal of knowing and steering, and that the deployment of media in a planning system is integral to these resolutions of democratic dilemmas. It is concluded that communicative planning could be modified to include understandings of mediatisation, allowing it to address the practical difficulties of planning as an aspect of democratic governance.
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ItemDesiring docklands : Deleuze and urban planning discourse( 2003)This thesis is about urban planning processes associated with the Melbourne Docklands area, some 220 hectares of public land and water adjacent to the central city of Melbourne. More specifically, it is about how these processes make sense of the world and how this `making of sense' has worked to order the Docklands' landscape. More specifically still, it is about fundamental changes in the form and content of Melbourne Docklands planning discourse, between 1989 and 1999, which would seem to represent a radical departure from planning's `normal paradigm', the rational comprehensive model. The thesis draws on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to provide an account of these changes, considering how Deleuze's concepts provide a certain `orientation' for thinking about urban planning practice, one which directs thought towards immanent engagement with the virtual forces (of desire, of movement, of time, amongst others) underpinning the production of space. It examines how these forces are expressed in Melbourne Docklands planning discourse, with a view to understanding how the discourse `works' to support processes of social desiring-production and the exercise of control power under capitalism. In the analysis of this discourse, the thesis outlines an account of urban planning practice as flows of desire and capital. It will show how such discourse moved from a grounding in site, history and community, through an unbounded, ungrounded and dream-like phase of deterritorialization, to a process of reterritorialization with the production of new identities and desires. The thesis concludes with an examination of what this analysis entails for understandings of; urban planning practice; urban planning's relationship to capital; the exercise of power in urban planning; the 'discursive turn' in urban studies; the relationship between theories of space-time and urban planning; and the relevance to urban planning of certain key Deleuzean concepts.
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ItemDevelopment of a visual compatability model for suburban landscape : a pilot study in City of Melbourne and its eastern suburbs( 2003)The aim of this research project is to develop a procedure which will lead to the development of a landscape model, applicable to the urban and suburban landscape in Melbourne or other cities. Such a model will enable landuse planners to deal with the intricate problem of conflicts between visual character of a place and the threat of development impacts likely to impinge on the character. The author is interested in identifying and quantifying the visual characters and gauging the public perception of these characters so that a landscape model can be developed. It can be in the form of a set of equations, a list of significant factors in quantitative or descriptive format, a measuring scale of preference scores or a combination of these. The intent is to devise a comprehensive method which would be useful as a tool in assisting landscape planners and designers in decision-making about preserving existing landscape character subject to development pressure or changes. The landscape model may consist of predictive, quantitative, descriptive or perceptual landscape sub-model or some combination of these sub-models. Its role is to provide a yardstick for planners to process development proposal by comparing how the potential impacts would affect the original site with the standard landscape model. Firstly, it is necessary to look at how to identify the landscape character of residential landscape. From literature review and site analysis, five key visual landscape factors contributing to the landscape characters were identified. The factors are Vegetation, Land, Density, Design and View, most of which can be quantified under a set of criteria in any specific residential area. Amongst these factors, Vegetation has been the most popular subject in past literature in landscape assessment studies. There were other landscape studies involving some aspects of the factors of Land and View. However, very little research has explored components of the Density and Design factors. Public perception surveys are also a useful means of measuring residents' preference about their living environment which is considered to be a more objective or rigorous valuation procedure. Field and public perception surveys combined with expert judgments are employed to identify the following: the visual characteristics of a place ; the landscape types of residential suburbs in Melbourne; the public perception of visual characteristics of these suburbs ; the development of a Composite Landscape Model consisting of the following landscape sub-models: 1) Predictive Landscape Sub-Model 2) Quantitative Landscape Sub-Model 3) Descriptive Landscape Sub-Model 4) Perceptual Landscape Sub-Model From analysis of the field and perception surveys, sixty streets from fifteen eastern suburbs in Melbourne have been classified into three groups of residential landscape types. Quantitative factors showing significant correlation with suburban visual appeal were identified from correlation and regression studies. Categorical and descriptive factors were analyzed by paired t-test, ANOVA and multiple response analysis. Multi-dimensioning scale analysis is used for identifying the extent of variation in certain characteristics of suburbs and their groupings. The results of perception surveys from Melbourne and Hong Kong were compared and found to be highly correlated which is consistent with other cross-cultural preferences studies elsewhere in the past and therefore were combined for further analysis. The results formed the basis for the development of Composite Landscape Models for the study area as a whole and landscape sub-types for sixty streets from fifteen suburbs within it. These landscape models and types can be developed by quantifying the key factors contributing to visual characteristics and by carrying out public perception surveys in specific areas. This would lead to the development of Visual Compatibility Models (VCM). The application of these ICI would be useful in comparison of the possible changes caused by the proposed development with the predetermined VCM landscape models. It will assist landuse planners to assess the merits and demerits of any development whether it would contribute to the existing visual characteristic and how well. Therefore this procedure would be useful in decision making in dealing with development and planning proposals. The findings of the research appear to be promising in the determination of visual characteristics and landscape types and demonstrate its potential in developing a landscape model aiming at preserving or even enhancing the visual character of a place. This research appears to be timely given that the Victorian Government intends to consolidate the sprawl of residential areas around Melbourne by increasing the density of residential landuse in the suburbs which would have implications for the visual character of these suburbs.
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ItemPlanning's colonial culture: an investigation of the contested process of producing place in (post)colonial Victoria( 2004)Planning, as a form of state action that continually produces and regulates place, was (and remains) central to the colonial project. The particular technologies of place production employed in colonial Victoria made Aboriginal relations with place both invisible and redundant, so that Victorian landscapes could be re/imagined in imperialist terms. Yet the voices of Aboriginal people, always present, are now more widely recognized than ever before and are making challenging claims upon the Australian nation-state, and environmental planning in particular. Those voices claim a unique identity-position for Aboriginal people as the traditional owners of country in Victoria, and the rights that should flow from this recognition. As such, they challenge widely-held assumptions in environmental planning discourse about management objectives and techniques. This thesis investigates the nature of these challenges and the complex and shifting (post)colonial relations that result in two case studies of protected areas in Victoria, Australia - Nyah State Forest and Gariwerd National Park. In Nyah, Aboriginal people are attempting to re-negotiate the application of management tools so that they better reflect the meaning of special places within the Forest. In Gariwerd, Aboriginal people have achieved a significant re-thinking of the park plan of management to more centrally reflect their rights and interests. These challenges question the philosophical assumptions and epistemological premises that underpin the planning canon. They highlight culturally different ontologies and epistemologies and make visible where and how planning remains complicit in the colonial domination of place-production. The thesis finds that Aboriginal people in Nyah and Gariwerd aspire to a more complex (post)colonial politics of difference where their practices, knowledge and rights can be recognized and respected in planning processes. However, because those rights and interests are not formally recognized by the Victorian Government, Aboriginal people remain on the margins of environmental planning and management practices. This is directly achieved by the daily practices of state-based planning which continues to utilize enduring colonial tropes about Aboriginal identity, the authenticity of claims to country, and the legitimate locations within the dominant planning framework where Aboriginal interests can be recognized. The thesis finds, however, that there are opportunities for transforming (post)colonial relations in Nyah and Gariwerd. Achieving those opportunities requires specific strategies to begin a decoIonisation of planning and its culture, in order to more justly attend to Aboriginal rights and aspirations.