Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemThe effects of employment decentralisation on travel behaviour and welfare: a study applying the capabilities approach( 2018)This thesis examines how individuals’ travel behaviour and households’ travel welfare changed in response to the policy of government-led job decentralisation to new towns in China. These decentralisation policies are often referred to as government job relocation (GJR) programs and currently being implemented in cities across China. The GJR policy is characterised by the relocation of local government offices from the central city to new towns in the urban fringe. The GJR policy has been widely adopted as a key strategy to stimulate population and employment decentralisation to new towns in China. However, at present little is known about the transportation outcomes of the GJR policy. More specifically, at the individual level, it is unclear how workers’ commuting behaviour changed after their jobs were relocated to new towns. At the household level, it is yet to understand in which ways and to what extent the policy intervention of job resettlement affected workers’ household travel welfare. This research aims to enhance the current understanding about the effects of employment decentralisation on commuter behaviour and household welfare, by conducting a case study of the GJR policy implemented in Kunming, China. In this study, two main research questions are addressed: 1) What changes occurred in individuals’ commuting behaviour after their jobs were relocated to a peri-urban new town? and 2) How did household travel welfare shift in response to the policy intervention of job resettlement? Through integrating key concepts of the Sen-Nussbaum Capabilities Approach, this thesis develops two innovative modelling frameworks to measure the effects of Kunming’s GJR policy on workers’ commuting choice behaviour and their household travel welfare. First, the study proposes a discrete choice modelling framework that incorporates the concept of having capability to choose (having real freedom to choose) and variations in values (the importance placed on different aspects of travel activities) into the analysis of workers’ commuting mode choice behaviour after job resettlement. Second, the study proposes a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) structure that defines and evaluates travel welfare in the space of capabilities and functionings related to travel activities. Travel capabilities refer to having real opportunities or freedom to achieve valuable doings and beings in people’s travel activities. Travel functionings can be understood as the selected doings and beings that people have reason to value for their travel activities. In other words, travel functionings are the active realisation of one or more travel capabilities. Accordingly, longitudinal survey data were collected and analysed. At the individual level, this study suggests that the GJR policy results in a substantial shift to car commuting and lowered capabilities to choose sustainable transportation modes. In addition, choice modelling results indicate that there are likely two latent segments underlying employees’ mode choice behaviour after job resettlement. This suggests that individuals are likely to respond differently to the GJR policy intervention when making commuting mode choice. Moreover, estimation results show that perceived capabilities to choose different transportation modes are not only important factors to characterise the behavioural meanings of the latent classes in employees’ mode choice behaviour, but also significant predictors to explain variations in the choice behaviour across different classes. The first latent class is characterised by new town co-locators who are more inclined to move housing to the new town after job resettlement, insensitive to travel time but value their capabilities to choose car and active transport. The second class is featured by city dwellers who have greater tendency of living in the central city after job resettlement and are sensitive to travel time and car availability. At the household level, this study finds that the GJR policy has direct, negative effects on all hypothesised dimensions of household travel welfare. These include the quality of commuting experiences of each wage earner in the affected households and the quality of travel experiences on household non-work trips. In contrary to the initial hypothesis, the hypothesised indirect causal link via residential location choice (mediator) is not supported by the sample data. This indicates that the magnitude of the GJR policy on household travel welfare is unlikely to be mediated by adjusting where to live after government jobs were moved to the new town. These results are not expected by classic location choice theories. Key results from this study offer three important implications for transportation planning and research. First, this study suggests that more tailored supporting policies are needed to ensure that job decentralisation can generate the expected transportation outcomes, such as to shift car commuting towards more sustainable transportation modes, shorten travel time and reduce travel demand. Second, in relation to mode choice analysis, the significance of capabilities indicators revealed in this study sheds light on the need to place an explicit emphasis on individuals’ freedom of modal choice, rather than relying on the conventional assumption that all individuals have full access to all alternatives in the a priori choice set. Third, this study demonstrates that while the Capabilities Approach is predominantly applied to measure welfare outcomes of public policies outside the urban planning domain, it does offer important insights for transportation researchers into developing enhanced ways to measure travel welfare outcomes of urban policies. Upon discussing main limitations of the research, this study provides several recommendations for future applications of the proposed modelling frameworks.
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ItemPlanning for dogs in urban environments( 2016)Dogs are the most common pet in Australia and increasingly occupy both social and cultural norms. There is a growing interest in more-than-human geography and my thesis extends this critical concern to the planning of urban environments as a human habitat. Contemporary literature in more-than-human geography typically and unconsciously anthropomorphises the experience of those other species and in turn accounts for other species from a human perspective. My thesis recognises this gap and endeavours to provide a critical account of planning for dogs through a lens of justice for animals. My research problem is predicated on the basis that Australian society lacks consensus on the appropriate treatment of dogs in urban environments, reflecting in local differentiation of opportunities available to dogs and yielding different outcomes of justice for dogs. My thesis accordingly examines how institutions and planners affect such freedoms through their language and actions. My thesis comprises a similar systems case study design that examines the phenomenon of planning for dogs using the case of Melbourne, a city of four million people and the capital of the state of Victoria, Australia, through the institutional discourse of eight representative councils (local government authorities). In order to critically address the fundamental uncertainty of anthropomorphism introduced by the dependent companion relationship, I elect to examine the discourse of government institutions as a credible, consistent and comparable reflection of society. Themes and theory emerge from the data through a disciplined application of qualitative content analysis underpinning a grounded theorisation of planning for dogs in cities. An operational framework describing justice for dogs is developed from first principles, suggesting the importance of animal management, open space planning and urban planning professions in planning for dogs. These roles demonstrate a clear ontological distinction, with the dominance of ontology shown to be exceedingly important to understanding planning for dogs. In operationalising a justice for dogs, I capture the pervasive anthropocentrism of planning which manifests in the animal management practices of councils and in how human agency is defined and exercised in the process and outcomes of planning for dogs. Whilst my thesis is ostensibly about planning urban environments and the role of local government, it also contributes to the social sciences more broadly. My approach distinguishes from what may be typical to other more-than-human geography literature through its treatment of planning for dogs as attending to underlying considerations of justice for dogs. A natural concordance with the justice as capabilities (derived from the Capabilities Approach espoused by Sen and Nussbaum) emerges, suggesting more authentic and just outcomes for dogs than in the utilitarian anthropocentric tradition where actions are guided by the demarcation of humans from animals. My thesis is a valuable contribution to this growing body of more-than-human geography literature and advances the philosophy of planning of urban environments beyond humanity, in doing so strengthening the bonds which connect the broader social sciences.