Jeff Kennett's Melbourne : postmodern city, planning and politics

The paper outlines the shift of planning policy in Victoria under Premier Jeff Kennett and canvasses some related theoretical issues.

Development of benchmarks for determining infrastructure needs for the aged

This project developed benchmarks and benchmarking procedures to indicate the current and future infrastructure requirements of the aged in regional centres. The benchmarks correlate the infrastructure requirements of the aged with demographic trends. The research also modelled aged infrastructure requirements within the broader context of the sustainability of cities.

Relative affordability

This research attempts to gauge the impact of "Melbourne 2030" policy on relative affordability within the Melbourne metropolitan area. Using price data over eight years, with reference to activity centre's and transport infrastructure. The results indicate this policy has, thus far, had little effect when measured at the suburb level.

Exploring the application of Health Impact Assessment in neighbourhood renewal

This thesis explores the role that Health Impact Assessment can play in social exclusion policy contexts focusing specifically on Victoria's Neighbourhood Renewal Scheme. The findings demonstrate that it can play an important role if due attention is given to contextual and procedural factors both within community settings and within government.

Event that never happened : the history and politics of decentralisation in Victoria and New South Wales 1885-1985

The thesis is an account of movements and policies for decentralisation of population and economic activity away from metropolitan to non-metropolitan areas in Victoria and N.S.W. in the period 1885-1985. It examines the pull from the country and the push from the capitals for decentralisation. Ballarat (Victoria) and Bathurst (N.S.W.) are used as case studies. Introductory chapters describe the historic pattern of population distribution in the two Colonies/States and discuss theories about the spatial distribution of population and industry. Chapters recounting and discussing the history and politics of decentralisation in Victoria and N.S.W. are organised in three periods: 1885-1940; 1940-1965; 1965-1985. A more decentralised distribution of population in Victoria and N.S.W. was almost always widely accepted as being in the public interest. Decentralisation rose and fell recurrently on the issue attention cycle. The pull from the country was fragmented and locally self-interested. The push from the capitals occurred only when life or its quality was perceived as threatened because of factors related to city size. Governments in both States introduced micro policies ostensibly to counter formidable centralising forces. In the 1970s there was an abortive attempt to implement a selective decentralisation policy in N.S.W. The thesis argues that decentralisation did not happen because: (1) there was not a consistent set of values and goals underlying the pull and push; (2) there was never a sustained, unified constituency for decentralisation, even in the country; (3) the power to influence, subvert or obstruct decentralisation policies was too widely diffused; (4) insufficient account was taken in decentralisation policymaking of the underlying economic, social and political dynamics.

Learning from rural planning development to encourage urban and regional planning ; indigenous villages versus city development in Bali province

The most important crises in the planning system is related to the significance of "capitalist state" influences [3]. In the global context, Bengs states that there is a matter partiality between "global capitalism" and "national democracy"[4]. Bengs stresses that planning is closely related to the economy of a country, which is in one side the government wants to reduce taxes, while on the other side there is a dilemma of the global and indefinite solicitation of assets. Hall (2002) discusses the problems of the city; those are city planning, history of planning, and geographical setting. City planning is not only planning in one region but also including the district around the city, such as river basin and a certain regional culture. The urban planner should involve all those aspects in the city planning. Friedmann (2003) distinguishes planning theory into three types. First, planning theory is related to planning in particular fields such as land utilization, transportation, urban design, regional development, environmental planning etc. Second, the type of theory related to planning tout court, and the third type is the theory about planning itself. Sanyal (2002) states that although planners have limited autonomy, their actions affect policy result [5]. Friedman (2003) supports Sanyal's argument stressing that planners learned from their actions not from theories.

The theory and practice of coastal area planning: linking strategic planning to local communities

Integrated coastal management (ICM) has been slowly accepted over the last decade as a unifying approach for coastal planning and management throughout the world. Coastal planning aimed at achieving the objectives of ICM can be implemented by varying processes and faces many challenges. One major challenge for coastal planning is to adapt the well-developed theoretical principles of ICM to practical and understandable outcomes in local areas. Associated with this challenge is the need to balance coastal planning objectives for conservation and economic development of a nation or state/province with the objectives of the local community. This article describes a three-tiered approach to coastal planning in Victoria, Australia, which will be of value to other countries, particularly those with subnational coastal planning jurisdictions. This approach not only has the aim of balancing subnational (e.g., state government) and local objectives, but also of applying the theoretical concept of ICM in practice on the ground. In addition, the approach sets out to achieve a sense of ownership of the planning process by local communities by maximizing their involvement at all levels of planning and also by making the state strategy as easy to understand and follow as possible.

History of the Geelong Regional Commission

This thesis is the first systematic history of the Geelong Regional Commission (GRC), and only the second history of a regional development organisation formed as a result of the growth centres policy of the Commonwealth Labor Government in the first half of the 1970s. In particular, the thesis examines the historical performance of the GRC from the time of its establishment in August 1977 to its abolition in May 1993. The GRC Commissioners were subject to ongoing criticism by some elements of the region's political, business, rural and local government sectors. This criticism focused on the Commissioners' policies on land-use planning, their interventionist stance on industrial land development, major projects and industry protection and their activities in revitalising the Geelong central business district. This thesis examines these criticisms in the light of the Commission's overall performance. This thesis found that, as a statutory authority of the Victorian Government, the GRC was successful over its lifetime, when measured against the requirements of the Geelong Regional Commission Act, the Commission's corporate planning objectives and performance indicators, the corporate performance standards of private enterprise in the late 1990s, and the performance indicator standards of today's regional economic development organisations in the United States of America, parts of the United Kingdom and Australia. With the change of Government in Victoria in October 1992 came a new approach to regional development. The new Government enacted legislation to amalgamate six of the nine local government councils of the Geelong region and returned regional planning responsibilities to the newly formed City of Greater Geelong Council. The new Government also made economic development a major objective of local government. As a result, the raison d'etre for the GRC came to an end and the organisation was abolished.

Changing ideological basis of planning practice in Hanoi, Vietnam

[No Abstract]

Andean pre-historical urban planning tradition

Urban design features that formed an Andean urban planning tradition through continual use across successive periods of time, civilizations and extensive, varied geography are identified. Some Andean urban features were also mirrored or pre-date similar ideas that occurred in other parts of the world, particularly ideas used by Spanish colonialism.