Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemUrban planning for honeybees: The gap between science and policy( 2021)Honeybees are important to our cities because they provide essential ecosystem services and contribute significantly to our food production systems. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that they are in decline, particularly within urban settings, and that they can differ on a subspecies level in their resilience to urbanisation. The ability to successfully plan for the conservation of urban honeybees depends on urban policy and strategies that meaningfully engage with the science. However, literature demonstrates that some urban planning policies and strategies tend to fail to consider the best science. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis is to determine if the City of Melbourne’s (CoM) current policies and strategies for urban bee conservation consider the differences between honeybee subspecies in their resilience to urbanisation. Documents relevant to the CoM’s urban bee conservation planning were examined using a list of guiding questions and a coding system influenced by similar studies. It was found that not only do the CoM’s current policies and strategies for urban bee conservation fail to consider the discrepancies between honeybee subspecies in their resilience to urbanisation, they also fail to engage with the science on a meaningful or specific level. This is an important finding as it suggests that Melbourne is not effectively planning for the conservation of honeybees and is exposed to the adverse environmental, social and economic impacts of a declining urban honeybee population.
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ItemBuilding resilience through Community Bike Workshops: the grassroots case of The Bike Shed in CERES( 2021)In light of the urban challenges to overcome the climate change crisis, car dependent societies require an urgent behavioural shift in the transport paradigm. Supporting this aim, Community Bike Workshops (CBW) seek to empower existent and potential cyclists through technical bike educational strategies, increase their sense of security on the streets and provide a space to foster a community. Based on Sustainable Transition approaches, these niche innovations may contribute to large-scale urban transitions by increasing on street cycling demand and pressuring top down efforts for more and better cycling infrastructure. CBW could potentially trigger deep substantial system change for building the required adaptive capacity of societies in a changing climate. Despite their multiple benefits, they are poorly acknowledged and lack support from transport strategies and general top-down efforts. Intertwined to the outcomes of these environmentally friendly initiatives, is the slippery yet useful concept of Resilience, a key aspect in climate change management. This notion has guided policymakers in understanding cities’ vulnerabilities and opportunities to orient their strategies, plans and projects. Through an adapted mixed evaluation method, developed based on the analysis of resilience at three measurement scales -City, Community and Socio Ecological System- this research seeks to answer to what extent CBW are influencing the resilience of cities. Building on the experience of my own community as a case study -The Bike Shed in CERES-, this protocol will help understand how these community organisations are influencing the adaptive capacity of the wider city scale and potentially provide policymakers the incentives to further support these initiatives. Considering the dynamic nature and ethos of these types of organisations, and to further promote the identified potential of CBW, this research and general recommendations aim to improve the resilience of the communities that gather toward cycling activism.