Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemAustralian flats : a comparison of Melbourne and Sydney flat developments in the interwar period( 1998)The differences between the architecture of flats in Melbourne with flats built in Sydney during the 1920s and 1930s, suggests that these differences were manifest by factors in addition to topography. This study compares the development of architectural forms and expression in the two cities, discussing them in relation to concepts of architectural regionalism and modernism. The planning and urban redevelopment contexts result in differences in number, location, building height, lot size, site coverage, flat size, image, lifestyle and modern technology.
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ItemParticipative techniques for urban environmental improvement( 1997)The aim of this research is to discover the characteristics for a successful participative bottom-up technique for urban environmental improvement. As we are nearing the end of the second millennium, the state of the environment is gradually being recognised as everyone's concern. Problems of air and water pollution, and rising population are even more acute in urban areas. Urban regions and urban people are facing environmental crises, some more severe than others. In some instances, urban people have responded to specific environmental problems at the local scale and have achieved some success. But often such responses tend to be ad hoc, and do not ensure continuity. Businesses and other structured organisations have used participative techniques to allow changes to take place at the lower levels of the organisational hierarchy. They have been used for several decades in the world of business, and have achieved some success. A review of different participative management techniques showed that some are structured, and some are not. Most of them rely on group interaction. It was found that two of the business techniques reviewed could be transferred to the community. They are the suggestion scheme and the quality circle techniques. The suggestion scheme is an unstructured technique and is based on individual initiative, whereas the quality circle is a structured technique and it is group-based. These techniques were adapted to the community, and were called the Community Suggestion Scheme and the Community Quality Circle. Since a trial would determine the effectiveness of the techniques in the community, a case study approach was used. The Community Suggestion Scheme and the Community Quality Circle were trialed in the community over a period of three years. The Habitat project in Western Melbourne was used as the umbrella organisation to carry out the trial. The Community Suggestion Scheme was trialed first, and was partly successful. It acted as a feeder for the Community Quality Circle. The Community Quality Circle was an unqualified success. The first Community Quality Circle formed - Habitat: Mount St. Josephs Community Quality Circle is still in operation showing that it is capable of being independent and self-managing. Certain characteristics for successful participative bottom-up environmental improvement processes emerged from the trials. Techniques need to be flexible and open to change and learning. They must take diverse approaches to problem-solving. Techniques that are group-based are more likely to succeed than individual-based techniques. Their structure should be flexible, not rigid, and techniques must be capable of self-perpetuation and self-management. The members should be given the opportunity to become familiar with each other. The support of an overarching umbrella organisation is essential for techniques to be successful in the community. Incorporating these characteristics allows the development of future participative methods for environmental improvement. The research shows that participative techniques can be used as a potent medium to instigate environmental improvement in urban areas.
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ItemAn investigation into an urban community value systems model( 1992)A standard practice of using factor scores to optimally classify communities into similar groups using one factor at a time would have been innefficient. A multivariate approach was then chosen to classify communities and iterative discriminant analysis followed to complete the classification. The algorithm used provided a measure of the probability of misclassifying initially grouped members into their most probable group. This statistical approach provided an efficient means for classifying members into their respective groups. The algorithm also yielded groups with interesting and stable supply or trade off surfaces. The qualities and characteristics of the supply surfaces were then able to be summarized using a two group discriminant analysis method. The actual nature of each one of their component slopes was analyzed by a dichotomous dummy dependent variable regression analysis. In the process of relating community values to attributes, the prices of land plus houses and the demand for them was found to indicate willingness to pay perceived net benefit or utility associated with each property. This provided a means of evaluating other related factors. Although the aggregated factor of accessibility was found to be conflicting and self compensatory it was found to be extremely important in their contribution to utility of a location, house or land. The other aggregated factors such as the environment, social and cost related factors however did contribute substantially to urban utility. The utility of a particular product needed for consumption by the community was then described in terms of the attributes or characteristics. A consumer demand approach was then used to relate communities trade-off surfaces to a single measure of residential land and property price. Multiple regression analysis confirmed that characteristics of land or building were separable and their individual contributions to demand can be evaluated at the transaction level of a particular property. The demand for each supply surface factor was also evaluated. The different levels of demand for characteristics reflected community values on substitution, trade off and indifference between characteristics. The supply and demand surfaces were seen to possess certain mathematical properties such as homogeniety and comparative statics. Such properties were therefore used to compare each of the different surfaces of communityvalue and to also provide insight into the behavioural mechanisms of each surface. The analysis of surfaces representing strategies for improving performance or the supply of desired characteristics in areas should carefully consider the nature of the areas's supply and demand surface structure. For example, the inner areas of Melbourne are relatively deprived in the supply of social characteristics but high in potential accessibility characteristics. This suggests that planning strategies should introduce or improve the social attributes of the area. Planners in inner areas should then integrate the positive element of accessibility into the overall community value structure. Other structures studied will also highlight and illustrate the usefulness of detailed analysis of community values. The studies attempt to relate the demand surface of a community to the supply surface of the area. The degree of fulfillment of demand is then a measure of the relative performance of a given area in relation to community needs and their values.
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ItemThe development of group self build housing in Victoria( 1992)This thesis involves the overall development and implementation of the Group Self Build Housing program for the Victorian State Government. It is an enabling strategy to help lower income people to achieve home-ownership by building their own homes. Public housing agencies everywhere, are now faced with the challenge of providing sufficient housing and other associated services to meet the needs of an ever increasing urban population. However, with limited resources, they are increasingly forced to act as "enablers" rather than direct providers. This is most prominent especially in the poorer developing countries where their housing problems are of a different magnitude. Housing agencies and governments have tried for many years to address their housing needs through various "more conventional" means. This was only capable of assisting a fraction of the people. Since then, a large proportion of them have turned to their own resources to house themselves. At times, they seemed capable of achieving this with the most minimal of governmental and social support. Such efforts by people to house themselves, have come to be known as "self help housing". Victoria's housing problems differ in scale from those of the poorer developing countries. Nevertheless, in a land where the national dream is that of "home-ownership", an increasing number of households are finding it more difficult to achieve this dream. Self help housing programs, through the generation of sweat equity can assist such households to acquire their home. The new program developed in this thesis, allows groups of families to work together on the construction of their homes. The effort that they contribute, will help lower the cost of their house and thus make home-ownership more affordable to them. Experience from existing self help housing schemes in Victoria and overseas provided the foundation for the development of this new program. A Victorian prototype program was then developed and tested over a two year period through a two staged pilot program where 52 households were assisted into home-ownership. Five pilot projects, each with between ten to twelve households were successfully completed and the lessons learnt from them were used to implement a mainstream Group Self Build housing program for the State Government. The success of this program was instrumental in increasing efficiencies to self help housing programs operating in Victoria and also offered another option for Victorians to achieve home-ownership..
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ItemChange assessment in the post-war Mount Macedon landscape( 1986)Areas of scenic amenity close to urban centres, such as the Macedon Ranges and surrounds north-west of Melbourne, are increasingly exposed to land use conflicts. Residential developments and corresponding infrastructures oppose outdoor leisure activities of non-residents as well as the conservation of natural resources including water supply. As the trend of the demographic turnaround in rural areas is likely to continue, multiple land-use concepts necessarily have to adopt a fine balance between development and conservation based upon accurate information of space-time relationships. However, the fundamental understanding of change processes remains elusive. Studies dealing with landscape are static by using fragmentary descriptions. Systematic land-use reports are often confined to the single issue of land cover rather than placing the results into perspective of related environmental parameters. The base material for systematic monitoring of objects of spatial and temporal dimensions must be unbiassed and provide the consistency necessary for the defined area and periods. This leaves one reliable data source in the form of aerial photographs, which have a proven history of providing accurate, fast and inexpensive interpretation results over large areas. An arbitrary 25 ha-grid, which provides a common, cell basis for different data sets, is superimposed on the 282 km2 of the study area. The manual interpretation applies an overlay technique for assessing the quantitative and temporal manifestations of selected individual landscape artifacts (buildings, roads, dams and timber) on sequential aerial photographs of 1946, 1969, 1979 and 1985. The artifact developments are later regrouped, indexed and cross-tabulated with natural, social, economic and planning characteristics by statistical computer programs in order to evaluate change within the environment. The applied procedures provide significant insights into landscape change and they are potentially a flexible instrument for monitoring the effectiveness of planning decisions.
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ItemEnvironmentalism and land-use planning( 1985)This dissertation considers the research question: Can land-use planning attain the goals of environmentalism? The research question instigates the development of models for environmentalism and land-use planning, test of their congruence, analysis of institutional means to join them, case study of the specific method of lifestyle zoning for Nature conservation, international comparisons, and suggestions for the implementation of the ideology of environmentalism by the techniques of land-use planning. An applied planning orientation guides methods from political science, sociology, anthropology and geography to structure the theoretical and empirical studies. Comparison among the industrially advanced anglophone countries of Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States of America enable cross-cultural insight into environmentalism, land-use planning, and measures for the protection of dedicated areas. The evaluation of the fit between the environmentalism and land-use planning, considers their origins, values, operating principals, programs and problems. This social-policy analysis reveals substantial concurrence, particularly regarding concern for the unintended consequences of technical and social policies, human interaction with the physical environment, care in resource use, urban and Nature conservation, the importance of open space, rational forethought, the long-term, regional view, environmental diversity, government intervention, need for co-ordination in government, use of experts, citizen participation, self-actualization, equity, and generic as well as substantive definition of the fields by their supporters. The ideological outline of contemporary environmental planning provides a framework for detailed analysis of the case study of an "Environmental Living Zone" on the fringe of urban Melbourne, Australia. Historical research, interpretation of planning schemes, maps and aerial photographs, interviews, and observation provided insight into the social and environmental factors in residential conservation. From the empirical and theoretical analyses, the work suggests implications for practitioners- and directions for further research.
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ItemPublic transport policy and land use in Melbourne and Toronto, 1950 to 1990( 1997-01)This study examines the reasons behind the decline in public transport patronage in Melbourne between 1950 and 1990, through a comparison with Toronto. The share of urban travel undertaken by public transport has declined since the Second World War in all developed countries, but public transport patronage in Melbourne appears to have declined more rapidly than in most other industrialised cities. Public transport has, however, gained or held ground in Toronto, where the form of development is similar in many ways to Melbourne. Most accounts of Toronto’s success (particularly in Australia) regard transport/land-use integration as the critical factor. The contrasting analysis maintains that Melbourne’s urban form has changed over this period to a dispersed, car-oriented pattern. This study evaluates a different interpretation of the ‘Toronto model’. This is that Toronto has undergone similar urban changes to Melbourne since the war, but has found a way of operating public transport successfully in a relatively dispersed environment. The contrast with Melbourne, then, is not primarily in land-use patterns, but in policies towards the operation of public transport.
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ItemTwo Scots in Victoria: the architecture of Davidson and Henderson( 1983)Research for this dissertation began in February 1970 with a part-time post graduate, study to identify and document the architectural heritage of the Western District of Victoria. The initial program of study, which was centred on my birthplace, Camperdown, and the surrounding municipality of the Shire of Hampden, concentrated on an investigation of the many pastoral homesteads located in this rich grazing region of Victoria. Although the task proved to be both expansive and expensive, it was quickly established that throughout the nineteenth century, Scottish immigrants to the Port Phillip Colony of New South Wales exerted a strong, distinctly Caledonian influence on the patterns of settlement and cultural development of the lands known as 'Australia Felix'. In many instances, it was apparent that Scottish architectural traditions had been directly transplanted into an Australian context with a landscape altogether reminiscent of the Lowlands and Border Country of Scotland. In mid 1972, my research program was reduced in extent and redirected towards an investigation into the nature of this Scottish presence, and the influence of Scottish architects in the development of identifiable architectural traditions in Western Victoria. An index of the building and architectural data contained in the files of the Geelong Advertiser from 1840-1888 was prepared and a chronological account of the development of homestead architecture in the Western District was subsequently framed. Although several architectural firms were associated, with varying degrees of success, with the pastoral industry of the region, one firm, that of the architects Alexander Davidson and George Henderson, dominated the building industry at the height of the wool boom in the 1870's. A chance follow up to a footnote in Margaret Loch Kiddle's authoratitive, social history of the Western District Men of Yesterday (1961), during a visit to Scotland in 1972 led to the discovery of George Henderson's papers in Edinburgh. This extensive collection of letters, drawings and photographs, which was kindly made available to me by Mrs. E.S. Phillipps, the daughter of George Henderson, relates to the careers of the architects Davidson and Henderson in Australia and also to the earlier practice of their mentor, the noted Edinburgh architect John Henderson. Included in the collection are 115 letters, written by George Henderson to his mother in the period 1867-1877, whilst working in Australia. These monthly epistles provide a unique and extremely frank, personal and detailed account of an architectural practice in Western Victoria in the nineteenth century and form the basis of this dissertation, which is essentially a study of the architecture of Davidson and Henderson.
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ItemGlass' Creek and Hay's Paddock: the background history of a park( 1984)This case study relates the history of a controversy in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, about the development of public open space. The space consisted of an existing park, through which a creek flowed and proposed parkland adjacent to it, which was private farmland when the history began. The controversy was activated by a group of residents who opposed the Municipal Council's plans to underground the Creek and to build three ovals. They wanted the Creek reconstructed and the site developed as a "natural" environment. The dispute focused on three issues: treatment of the degraded, urban creek; use of the land for active or for passive sport, and the values ascribed to the land. The case study is based on documentary material from the files of the main organisations involved, and on interviews with some participants. It covers the period 1971 to 1981, describing the area, the interests of the main organisations, the history of their attitudes, proposals and decisions. The problems of urban creeks are outlined. The report describes how Glass' Creek was reconstructed and some of the problems associated with that. It considers why the recreation conflict was protracted and concludes that this was due to differing belief systems about the value of the land itself, which could only be resolved by political means. Finally, the case study examines what "natural" meant and how participants expressed their values towards the land through physical and symbolic proposals for development of the site. The case study illustrates problems in the planning structure and raises questions for landscape architects about the relationship of people to their physical environment and the way in which they invest it with meaning.
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ItemAn investigation of salt marsh dynamics: a study of salt marsh at Jack's Beach, Westernport Bay, Victoria( 1982)Many studies of the environmental factors influencing the occurrence and zonation of salt marsh (and mangrove) communities may be found in the literature, however few of these studies consider all of the environmental and vegetation factors as integral components of a dynamic system. The present study gathers together quantified environmental and vegetational information, including the vertical zonation of vegetation, the relation of vegetation to tide levels, weather data, soil characteristics, and the relationships between these factors and soil salinity and soil water content, as an integrated investigation of salt marsh dynamics. Because of time and resource restraints, the collection of quantitative data was restricted to a relatively small area of salt marsh (including mangroves) at Jack's Beach in Westernport Bay, Victoria. However the wider implications for the salt marshes of Westernport Bay are discussed and some general inferences are drawn.