Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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A data-driven investigation on urban form evolution: Methodological and empirical support for unravelling the relation between urban form and spatial dynamics

Tumturk, Onur ( 2023-06)

Investigating the patterns of urban development and transformation and unravelling the principles behind these processes are critical for understanding how cities evolve under different physical conditions. While socio-economic, political and cultural forces undeniably shape the patterns of spatial change and persistence, urban form should not be perceived as a passive resultant or a mere consequence of these processes. Quite the contrary, urban form plays a determinant role in establishing the spatial conditions that influence future development patterns by constraining some choices while facilitating others. Recognising the scarcity of systematic, diachronic and quantitative studies on urban form evolution, this thesis is driven by an interest in understanding the relationship between urban form and spatial change. It aims to develop theoretical, methodological and empirical support for unravelling the influential role of urban form in guiding spatial dynamics. The thesis develops a diachronic and quantitative methodological framework to investigate how urban form conditions created by plots, buildings, streets and land uses affect the patterns of change and persistence in three different grid cities: Midtown Manhattan, New York (US); City Centre, Melbourne (AUS); and Eixample, Barcelona (Spain). As part of the research, three longitudinal morphological datasets were generated, drawing upon a rich array of historical cartographic resources and geospatial databases to enable a comprehensive assessment of urban form evolution within each city between the 1800s and 2000s. Through quantitative analysis of urban form and its association with spatial dynamics, the thesis demonstrates that urban form conditions have a measurable impact on the patterns of physical and functional change. This understanding contributes further to the fact that design does not exclude the possibility of change but may even favour it under particular conditions. A rigorous and evidence-based understanding of the interplay between urban form conditions and patterns of spatial change empowers practitioners and policymakers to choose particular forms and structures over others, guide the long-term evolution of urban form and improve the adaptive capacity and resilience of the built environment.
Rethinking the Inflexible City: what can Australian planning learn from successful implementation of ‘temporary uses’ across the world?

Perkovic, Jana ( 2013)

Temporary uses have been identified as a low-cost, participatory, and economically beneficial method of managing urban change. As planning practice increasingly deploys temporary use, good outcomes require an understanding of how the two interact. Using the case study methodology, this thesis examines the ways in which formal planning practice can encourage, support, complicate and hinder informal temporary urbanism. The thesis does this by analysing the experiences of four agencies facilitating the implementation of temporary uses worldwide, examining their interaction with the planning system, and identifying common constructive and obstructive policy mechanisms. Temporary use projects can be initiated without high levels of support from formal planning; however, having to comply with the formal planning process is a significant hurdle. Traditional planning does not make provisions for short-term urbanism, imposing costly and time-consuming processes incommensurate with the short duration and low cost of the temporary use. Applications for change of use, requirements for building safety triggered by the planning process, and the perceived arbitrariness of the decision-making process are the biggest hurdles that formal planning imposes on temporary use. Temporary uses are best supported through dedicated processes, staff, and relaxed regulations. The findings confirm that temporary uses are a successful method for finding opportunity in situations of uncertainty and crisis. Formal planning practice can strategically deploy temporary projects to achieve long-term planning objectives. These findings should spark more debate about, research on, and experimentation with temporary uses.
Healthy Public Space: Assessing the contribution of green space policy & design in Melbourne

Shr, Jiun Rung ( 2023)

Green spaces provide many benefits for the urban environment and for human health. Strategies in different countries are placing growing emphasis on green areas, and the City of Melbourne is following suit. Melbourne's current strategic planning document advocates the need for sustainable cities and promotes the planning and design of green spaces in the city. However, how policy influences the design of green space and the extent to which policy and practice are aligned for green space is not clear in Melbourne. This thesis first examines the relationship between strategic planning documents and green space, and understands which environmental factors contribute to the green space design. It then, analyses the consistency between policy and design by assessing three parks in Melbourne. The strategies analysed in this research are the Urban Forest Strategy, Open Space Strategy, and Nature in the City Strategy; and the three green spaces in Carlton, are University Square, Lincoln Square and Argyle Square. The analysis shows that there is a high degree of consistency between the three strategies and the three green space plans, with the exception of Argyle Square, where there is some inconsistency in its policies. In addition, University Square and Argyle Square have inconsistencies between their policies and the implementation of designs. The ultimate results of the research indicate the degree of consistency between the policy, plan, design, and actual implementation of the three green spaces. It was also found that Argyle Square, with the oldest park plan, lacks the design features that can more effectively support the delivery of green space benefits and functions. As such, the research highlights the roles of maintaining up-to-date park planning and design, to ensure parks can continue to support healthy public spaces.
For what is Artificial Intelligence likely to be useful in Victorian urban planning?

Wang, Siyu ( 2023)

The prevalence of artificial intelligence has led to various industries expanding their use of AI technology to assist them in their daily work. However, there is currently no precedent for the use of AI in urban planning in Victoria. In a wide range of sectors, it has been demonstrated that artificial intelligence can assist personnel and help them achieve outstanding results. Would people better contribute to urban sustainability and use AI to revolutionise urban planning with the assistance of AI? This article focuses on the prospects for the use of AI in the Victorian planning system. The article uses pattern matching, seeking examples and interviews with people from different parts of the Victorian planning system. Through the mix-method, it assesses whether AI might be able to navigate 'what planning does' and 'planning challenges' better than current methods. According to research, artificial intelligence can assist with urban planning in Victoria. This can be accomplished through the provision of support in the identification of spatial environmental factors, the improvement of consultation efficacy with various planning institutions, the facilitation of policy formulation and planning decision-making, and ultimately, the mitigation of planning risks. The lack of widespread adoption of AI in planning systems and the constraints of AI technology contribute to a lack of public confidence in AI, which is one factor impeding its advancement in urban planning. Moreover, 'planning challenges' such as political negotiation, community engagement, and other intricate planning endeavours that influence society greatly will be beyond the capabilities of AI due to its deterministic nature. This study demonstrates the significance and trajectory of artificial intelligence, or digitalisation, in the context of Victorian urban planning.
Barriers and facilitators to nature-based stormwater management in Melbourne’s private realm: the role of statutory planning frameworks and actors

Specht, Erin ( 2021)

Sustainability transitions in Australia’s Stormwater Management (SM) sector over the past two decades have led to the realisation that achieving a ‘Water Sensitive City’ is critical to ensure the health and wellbeing of urban residents and urban ecosystems, as climate change and urbanisation increase uncertainty around the quality and quantity of water in urban environments. ‘Nature-Based Stormwater Management’ (NBSM) is increasingly acknowledged as an important approach to accelerate transitions to a Water Sensitive City due to the multifunctional role of vegetation. In response to sustainability shifts in planning and urban water sectors, the Victorian state government and several municipalities across Melbourne introduced strategic plans and guidelines supporting Integrated Water Management (IWM), Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD). More recently, a series of local and state-wide planning scheme amendments in the statutory system have formalised IWM, WSUD, SM and Environmentally Sustainable Development (ESD) requirements for development on private land. However, current literature highlights that a wide variety of systemic and actor-based factors influence uptake of NBSM in Melbourne and ultimately restrict practical implementation of NBSM systems. This thesis employed qualitative semi-structured interviews with twelve public and private statutory actors to identify barriers and facilitators in Melbourne’s inner-city statutory framework that influence uptake of NBSM on private land. Findings suggest that while more prescriptive policy requirements are important to prioritise the use of vegetation, they are insufficient in isolation to produce effective NBSM outcomes. This is due to barriers presented by competing interests, inconsistencies between councils, poor technical knowledge, and siloed decision-making. Instead, targeted collaboration between actor groups at the early stages of project development, supported by state-led knowledge-sharing initiatives, will be necessary to successfully deliver NBSM and maximise co-benefits provided by vegetated systems. Recommendations from this study can be used to inform targeted strategies for Melbourne’s public and private practitioners to establish healthier relationships with urban water systems long into the future and simultaneously achieve a wide variety of planning objectives.
Spatial planning to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfires

Gonzalez Mathiesen, Maria Constanza ( 2020)

Bushfire hazards can pose significant risks at bushfire-prone urban-rural interfaces and peri-urban areas, highlighting the need to manage bushfire risk in relation to settlements’ planning and governance. Settlements’ resilience to bushfires can be purposively facilitated by the development and application of bushfire risk management knowledge. Spatial planning has the potential to support learning about and acting upon changing conditions and new bushfire information to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfires. However, the translation of new bushfire knowledge into meaningful spatial planning practices has been limited and spatial planning systems often struggle to integrate bushfire risk management. Thus, this research aims to contribute to understandings of spatial planning ability to improve its practices by identifying, reframing, and putting into action new considerations about bushfire risk management to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfires. This research used an inductive qualitative research approach employing two case studies: the spatial planning systems of Chile and Victoria (Australia). Qualitative data was collected from documentation, archival records, and semi-structured interviews. The data was analysed using time-series analysis, qualitative content analysis, and cross-case synthesis techniques. The research was divided into four stages, two stages correspond to the individual case study analysis and the remaining two to cross-case synthesis and discussion. The research concludes that the Chilean and Victorian spatial planning systems are still constrained in their promotion of settlements’ resilience to bushfires due to internal and external complexities that frame and limit their ability for bushfire risk management. In Chile, there have been several mostly unsuccessful attempts to integrate bushfire considerations into the spatial planning system, thus the current system only outlines spatial planning mechanisms for bushfire risk management generically and inapplicably. In Victoria, the spatial planning system has partially and progressively improved its ways for dealing with bushfires, however, the current system still considers bushfire risk management partially and sometimes ambiguously. In practice, this implies that both spatial planning systems are sometimes allowing and even promoting settlements patterns that perpetuate bushfire risks. Based on a cross-case synthesis, the research concludes that spatial planning instruments that comprehensively address bushfires are necessary, suggesting an integrated approach that undertakes bushfire risk management at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels of planning mechanisms and processes. This approach establishes the instruments’ role in bushfire risk management and other factors that provide directions for improving their ability to promote settlements’ resilience to bushfire. Furthermore, the research also concludes that reflexive processes are not always conducive to the development and improvement of spatial planning systems for bushfire risk management, due to the variance of willingness, understanding, and capacity issues within the system and in the wider context. Accordingly, thesis propositions about the barriers and facilitators that influence spatial planning progressing from the identification, to the reframing and implementation of change about bushfire risk management were suggested.
Planning for dogs in urban environments

Carter, Simon Bruce ( 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.
An investigation into planning for urban resilience through niche interventions

Doyon, Andreanne ( 2016)

This thesis investigated how planning for urban resilience is informed by niche interventions. This was done by tracking the trajectory of live/work as a niche intervention in San Francisco, Oakland, and Vancouver. The trajectories were used to contribute to understandings of urban resilience by providing insights into each city’s governance structures, approaches to planning, and key stakeholders, and identifying challenges and success factors. Resilience planning was more successful with collaborative and experimental planning, compared to rigid, top-down political approache
Improving the integration of urban planning with disaster risk reduction

Kornakova, Maria ( 2016)

Increasing numbers of natural disasters worldwide and their impacts on human settlements indicate an urgent need to address these events. Urban planning is acknowledged as one of several mechanisms with the potential to reduce losses and decrease the overall vulnerability of human settlements. This research thesis undertakes an analysis of the integration of urban planning and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). While the importance of this integration has been acknowledged in a number of official frameworks for action (e.g. the Sendai or Hyogo frameworks), there is still limited documented and detailed discussion of how the integration process of various practices should occur, who should be involved, to what degree different stakeholders should be included, and who are the decision-makers of shared decisions. This research project addresses the challenges of integration using a two-stage research method. The first stage employs a heuristic approach towards three practical examples of integrated DRR and urban planning at an international level. These cases cover all four stages of the disaster cycle: the Swiss avalanche prevention and preparedness program, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina case with a focus on the response stage in New Orleans, and the 2007 UK floods focussing on the recovery stage. The findings of this first research stage reveal some general patterns of integration and signify a need for better understanding of the roles of stakeholders and of governance of integration processes. The second stage of this research thesis introduces institutional analysis as a way to understand both the potential and the challenges of integration. It provides an analysis of wider societal arrangements of integration, discusses roles of stakeholders, and indicates a need to address differences of values, views, and goals. The collaborative planning approach focuses on finding consensus between varieties of stakeholders, and is based on the inclusion of all relevant agents in decision-making processes. This concept is proposed as a bridging principle between diverse varieties of stakeholders in the two practices of urban planning and DRR. The collaborative planning approach is analysed in an in-depth case study of changes to bushfire planning policies after the devastating 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia using a policy analysis approach. This case reveals that collaborative planning has the potential to be applied to integrated DRR. However, there are some key institutional challenges that must be addressed. These challenges are discussed in four empirically derived themes. The first challenge is the need to maintain the quality of evidence as a basis for DRR solutions. Further, there is an acknowledged need to include professionals with skillsets and knowledge in both fields. Thirdly, a discussion of providing alternative solutions is carried out, suggesting some key characteristics of this process. Finally, the roles of stakeholders, broadly divided into policy users and end-users, are discussed. These elements constitute the framework of governance of integration processes and conclude this research thesis.
Inheriting sustainability: World Heritage listing, the design of tourism development and the resilience of social-ecological complex adaptive systems in small oceanic islands: a comparative case study of Lord Howe Island (Australia) and Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)

NOGUEIRA DE MORAES, LEONARDO ( 2014)

Tourism development and sustainability are pressing issues to small oceanic islands featuring important and scarce natural heritage assets; these islands normally present small geographical areas with clearly defined boundaries, typically limited economic development alternatives combined with environmental systems and resources that are fragile and difficult to restore, once modified. Nevertheless, however paramount and highly interdependent the conservation of natural heritage and the obtaining of economic and social benefits through tourism might be, they do not seem to be subject of easy control; tourism development sustainability is dependent on the behaviour of many different agents, with not always complementary but rather, quite often, competing interests. From a Social-Ecological Complex Adaptive System – SECAS perspective, this research sought to understand how different forms of interpersonal and inter-organisational relationships of cooperation and competition influence the sustainability of Tourism Development - TD in small oceanic islands. Additionally, it sought to identify strategies that could influence these drivers and inhibitors within different social economic contexts, the influence of World Heritage Listing – WHL investigated as one possible global strategy for Localised Conservation – LC. Structured as a qualitative multiple case study, this research took place in two small oceanic island tourist destinations: Lord Howe Island – LHI in Australia and the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago – FDN in Brazil. With relatively similar geographical, tourist, regulatory and environmental characteristics, these sites presented the researcher with cases that have experienced the effects of WHL in different time spans and under different circumstances. They are also microcosms of the distinct social and economic contexts deriving from the different development models of the countries they are part. Aiming to contribute to the body of knowledge on the dynamics of sustainability transitions within tourism development in tourist destinations, this research: provided an overview on the evolution of the multiple concept of sustainability and proposed a working definition; carried a discussion on tourism development in the context of sustainability and developed an associated explanatory model and working definition; developed and applied a conceptual working model for researching the dynamics beneath the resilience of SECASs; bridged different areas of knowledge and applied Grounded Theory – GT methods to the research of SECASs; developed a transdisciplinary approach to research on Sustainability; concluded that Local Empowerment, Local Social Cohesion, Attachment to Place and Local Identity are fundamental to the resilience of Local SECASs and therefore to the sustainability of TD; and concluded that, when analysed from a SECAS approach, LC can both increase and decrease the resilience of global and local social-ecological systems.

Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

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