Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
-
ItemThe retreat from public planning in Melbourne 1972-1999( 2001)This thesis investigates the shift towards market-led urban policy and planning practice in Melbourne over recent decades with a particular focus on the 1990s when the Liberal-National Coalition were in office in Victoria. In the context of inter-city competition and the emergence of neo-liberalism there has been a retreat from public planning and the pursuit of social and environmental goals in shaping the city. The choices and strategies adopted in other cities reveal that the purpose and process of planning does not necessarily require the exclusion of social and environmental goals despite the pressure for governments to become more entrepreneurial. Public sector planning has experienced a number of challenges to the extent that its meaning or purpose has become uncertain. In its modernist guise, planning was a state-led technocratic activity largely concerned with the physical dimensions of urban development. During the 1960s and 1970s planning was criticised from both the right and the left, for attempting to impose a static order on a complex and changing world and for not accounting for difference and the needs of the community in its decision making process. As the focus of western politics shifted sharply to the right during the 1980s and 1990s, planning became one of the many casualties of the trend towards reducing the size and scope of government, privatisation and using economic efficiency criteria to determine public policy. As a result, the social and environmental dimensions of planning have become sidelined in favour of economic growth goals and market principles. This study shows how planning in Melbourne has been particularly shaped by the ideology of the right or neo-liberalism during the 1990s as well as the shift toward urban entrepreneurialism and place-marketing practices. A selection of choices and strategies adopted by the State Government and Melbourne City Council are examined and contrasted with similar metropolitan and central city planning initiatives in two comparable cities, Vancouver and Copenhagen. While Melbourne has chosen a narrow economic growth model for developing urban policy and planning practice, Vancouver and Copenhagen have maintained a more balanced agenda in determining the shape of their cities. The research shows that public participation, inter-governmental and inter-agency co-ordination and the pursuit of social justice and environmental sustainability are critically important in `revaluing' urban policy and planning in the future for the purpose of creating the `just-city'.
-
ItemSelling the city : retail planning and Central Melbourne( 2001)This thesis investigates the effects that recent economic and political changes in Melbourne have had on the practice of strategic urban planning. In particular, it focuses on the multiple challenges of inter-city competition, academic critique and neo-liberalism have had on the practice of planning, through a case study, that of planning for retailing within the central city. Public sector planning has been subject to many pressures and challenges in recent years. The notion that cities are competing with each other for the attraction of mobile capital has led to pressure on planning to remove regulatory requirements. The urban agenda of many cities has become dominated by entrepreneurial strategies focusing on large scale projects and events, around which city marketing campaigns are run. The adoption of neo-liberal economic policies reached its height in Victoria under the Kennett Government, during the years 1992 to 1999. Neo-liberal styles of governance are essentially at odds with public planning, concerned as it is with directing investment and shaping development in the urban environment in pursuit of some conception of the collective good. This study shows how the adoption of the neo-liberal agenda in Melbourne has affected both the ability of planners to plan, and the range of policy choices available to them. The current climate of inter-city competition and urban entrepreneurialism focuses particularly on the promotion of central cities as the sites for both investment and consumption. Within this city retailing has a critical role to play both as a symbol of economic success and desirable lifestyle. Yet there has been a persistent discourse within Melbourne that the metropolitan area will develop an urban form similar to that seen in many cities within the US. In this scenario retailing within the CBD will inevitably decline under competition from suburban shopping malls, which will ultimately result in a doughnut-shaped city with an empty centre. Without an economically viable retail sector the central city would be reduced merely to its business function threatening its cultural, social and symbolic place in the life of metropolitan Melbourne. There are strong environmental grounds for supporting the retention of retailing within the CBD, as the Melbourne city centre is at the hub of the radial public transport network, and achieves by far the highest public transport usage rates. A close examination of available data shows that whilst central city retailing in Melbourne declined in significance during the 1960s and 1970s, the decline has all but halted. The way the threat of decline has been both conceived and responded to, provides insight into the current state of public sector planning. An analysis of planning strategies for the central city of Melbourne since the 1950s demonstrates a steady move away from the interventionist, relying increasingly on marketing and promotion as tools to assist economic development. The cities of Toronto, Copenhagen and Manchester are investigated here as three different models of more positive and interventionist planning. These examples show that there is room to move within the constraints of the competitive global economy. These cities provide alternative possibilities for strategic planning in the future, and the knowledge that alternative strategies can be successfully followed without compromising economic competitiveness.
-
ItemThe practice of citizenship: place, identity and the politics of participation in neighbourhood houses( 2001)How people enact citizenship and participate as active and engaged citizens in the communities and society in which they live is a vexed question in the 2lst Century. As Australian cities such as Melbourne become increasingly socially, culturally and economically diverse and polarised, how people fulfil their personal needs and aspirations whilst at the same time, feel part of and contribute to community becomes more complex. This dissertation takes up the themes of engendering participation in urban environments through a focussed study on how people enact citizenship in Neighbourhood Houses of Melbourne. The role of citizenship is gaining increasing attention as both a juridical and moral tenet through which the dilemmas of participation and notions of inclusivity are waged. A major problem with juridical citizenship, however, is its inability to relate to people's everyday experiences of participation. As a result, there is a substantial gap between the formal and informal enactment of citizenship. This undermines its political and everyday application as well as its capacity to be a mechanism through which formal improvements to the participatory experience can be made. Rather than abandoning citizenship, however, this dissertation argues that it is better re-conceptualised as practice and informed by people's everyday experiences. This could be achieved by understanding the informal machinations of participation including how and where people negotiate their identities and gain the necessary skills and knowledge to participate. To explore the practice of citizenship, the dissertation examines the role Neighbourhood Houses in urban localities of Melbourne play in enabling a range of people to achieve the endeavours of citizenship: that is, to be active and engaged individuals who feel part of community and society. Neighbourhood Houses are non-government community initiated organisations located in urban streets throughout Australia. Through a range of formal and informal activities, they attempt to respond to the educational and social support needs of local residents within a geographical area. By examining the role of Neighbourhood Houses, this dissertation makes a theoretical and practical contribution to understanding the functionalities of enacting citizenship. In particular, it brings new light to the role of geography by exploring the relationship between place and identity at the local scale. The socio-spatial relations brought to bear in the neighbourhood house context shows that the presence of informal, low-cost forums in urban streets are critical mechanisms that ameliorate certain barriers to participation and in doing so, facilitate a positive citizenship experience for a range of individuals and groups. People begin to regard themselves as active and engaged citizens who are also part of a community. Importantly, however, whilst supportive social networks are established in the neighbourhood house context, the range of people passing through their doors also facilitates the establishment of communities of difference. In doing so, the understanding of citizenship is broadened to include those who are often excluded but who form part of the heterogeneous public of Australian cities.