Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemThe impact of producer services on Ho Chi Minh City( 2008)Services industry has emerged as an important sector underpinning the economy, especially those in developed countries, and spanned to lower tier countries through inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and globalisation. Producer services, as a significant service component, experienced the growth in terms of activity and establishments in the metropolitan areas and then shaped (or reshaped) their most central district (area). Ho Chi Minh City, as the largest city of Vietnam, plays an important role as a gateway city in attracting FDI which is believed a hitch for the current fast economic growth after the country promulgated the open policy in 1986. Within this context, producer services have emerged in this city. It was found that their growth closely relates to the flows of FDI. That outcome suggests that there are important differences between Non- Vietnamese and Vietnamese firms in the development of this sector and in the spatial patterns. The aim of this research is to explore the role of producer services and identify how their growth, through the numbers and types, influences Ho Chi Minh City in the spatial aspects; particularly the research focuses on the location of producer service firms in the city's central area. The outcome of the research will provide insight on the link between the producer service and the development of a large city of an emerging economy. In a local planning perspective, the thesis, as one of the first specific studies on the producer services in Vietnam, has it own enthusiasm to contribute its understanding and findings to the current urban planning to cope with the rapidly changing economy in a global era. In search of the role of producer services in the national economy and their spatial influences, the research has used the Yellow Pages Data as the major approach for its analyses due to the current lack of data on service employment and limited sectoral information. Questionnaire and interviews survey have also been carried out to enrich and justify the information. Given an important factor that the emergence of producer services in Vietnam relied on FDI, the analyses of the research basically based on the nationality framework in order to uncover the significance of the two groups of firms: Non Vietnamese and Vietnamese. The research has also embedded the city planning policy as its implication in order to provide insightful information for the future location and growth of producer services.
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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'.
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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.