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.

Seeking mechanisms for improved integration of biodiversity issues in regional natural resource management planning

This article reviews the literature on natural resource management (NRM) planning in Australia, with particular consideration given to exploring how regions might better integrate biodiversity conservation into catchment or regional planning in ways that lead to improved biodiversity conservation practice in the field. Many of the findings of the review are generic, affecting a range of NRM issues (including biodiversity conservation) and the NRM planning process itself, whilst other findings are specific to conservation of biodiversity. Factors affecting the integration of biodiversity include the organizational characteristics of the regional NRM body, clarity in the region of the responsibilities across the three tiers of government, effective participation of stakeholders, existence of detailed NRM plans that include sound biodiversity data and management principles, access to interpreted information, use of a mix of policy instruments capable of delivering biodiversity goals, and effective monitoring frameworks and tools to track the return on investment. there is considerable variability in the ways that NRM planning is practiced across Australia, at the enterprise, regional or catchment levels. However, an overarching issue is how well the planning caters for differences across space, time and human values and this article attempts to identify the considerations that impact on that requirement.

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.

Climate change research & responses on the Eyre Peninsula : Weaving natural resources management with community resilience planning

In the last 10 years climate change risk assessment has come to a head as a matter of discussion at all levels of governance. In an attempt to gain a co-ordinated appreciation, measure of scope and impact likelihood, and to better guide a holistic natural resources management strategy, the Eyre Peninsula Natural Resources Management Board has taken a comprehensive exclusive and coordinated approach at a regional level to this issue.

Water, agricultural sustainability, biodiversity enrichment and stabilisation, and community resilience planning are all integral features in this 'program' of research and engagement. The clear intent is to creatively drive change and socio-economic growth without compromising the significant aesthetic and biodiversity attributes of the landscape and its primary role as a dryland wheat producer. The 'program' involves clear practice-based research as to fact, fiction and perception, and the provision of scenarios as to vulnerability and resilience building to cater for climate change over the next 30 years but also to sensitively respond to propective mining growth for the Peninsula.

This paper reviews this 'program', the research and findings undertaken, the co-ordinated actions being taken, the importance of community engagement and resilence building, and the orchestration and propective execution of this 'program' by the Board.

The 'program' represents important case model in successful regional planning.

Minahasan indigenous perspectives on place planning and management : tracing the indigenous culture through the lens of local wisdom

Indigenous cultures draw upon many thousands of years of residency and environmental adaptation offering unique knowledge resources to better understand our landscapes and environment. The Minahasan society, on the island of Sulawesi in the Indonesian archipelago, is one such Indigenous community. The Minahasan are the Indigenous community of northern Sulawesi, before the Portuguese and Dutch 1500-1900 colonization of this island, and the later nationalist cultural assimilation following post Indonesian independence. Thus, some 500 years of post-European contact and management can be contrasted against over I 00,000 years of Minahasan society. Further, the majority of this colonisation has been focused upon the coastal fringes resulting in a relatively intact Minahasan cultural landscape within the interior of northern Sulawesi focused upon the Tondano Lake catchment. This paper considers the importance of the Minahasan-formed cultural landscape, its importance to this culture, and the role and influence it continues to have in settlement formation and planning in northern Sulawesi despite conventional Indonesian and Western-informed sustainable urban and regional planning traditions and knowledge. It draws upon intensive qualitative research using 14 different villages, to analyse and compare local knowledge and land-relationships developed by the respective communities to manage and curate their unique characteristics as well as ensuring adaption without compromising their cultural, social and economic values. The research embodies this ethnoecological information in seeking to analyse historical and contemporary land use planning systems, and to offer a future planning perspective that will respect and endure this relationship and environmental management regime.

Mapping Co2 emission from commuting in regional Australia : greater Geelong case study

Commuting to work is one of the most important and regular routines of urban transportation. From a geographic perspective, the length of people's commute is influenced, to some degree, by the spatial separation of their home and workplace and the transport infrastructure. The rise of car ownership in Australia has been accompanied by a considerable decrease of public transport use. Increased personal mobility has fuelled the trend of decentralised housing development, mostly without a clear planning for local employment, or alternative means of transportation. As a result, the urban patterns of regional Australia is formed by a complex network of a multitude of small towns, scattered in relatively large areas, which are totally dependent and polarized by few medium and large cities. Such hierarchical and dispersed geographical structure implies significant carbon dioxide emissions from transportation. Transport sector accounts for 14% of Australia's net greenhouse gas emissions, and without further policy action, they are projected to continue to increase. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of incorporating urban climate understanding and knowledge into urban planning processes in order to develop cities that are more sustainable. A GIS-based gravity model is employed to examine the travel patterns related to hierarchical and geographical urban region networks, and the derived total carbon emissions, using the Greater Geelong region as a case study. The new challenges presented by climate change bring with them opportunities. In order to fully reach the very challenging targets of carbon reduction in Australia an integrated and strategic vision for urban and regional planning is necessary.

Incorporating indigenous Australian knowledge and perspectives into planning practice : past, present and future

The history and contemporary practice of land-use planning and place-making by Indigenous Australians is poorly understood by academics, students and practitioners in the field of urban and regional planning in Australia. This is despite recent high-profile events which have increased the profile of Indigenous peoples’ rights, such as the recognition of native title by the High Court in Mabo v the State of Queensland [No. 2] (1992) 175 CLR 1 and The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), and Commonwealth policy and reconciliation discourses. Further, little impact has been discernible arising from the adoption of reconciliation policies by government bodies, planning authorities and the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA). This paper reviews this lack of progress and discusses why this is a problem for Australian planners which needs to be addressed. The paper reviews the present Australian historical and socio-cultural context in terms of collaboration with traditional land owners as it relates to contemporary planning practice. It considers ontological, epistemological and axiological differences between the dominant western model of planning and Indigenous models, and the challenges this presents. A case-study documenting past, present and future planning practices at Lake Condah in South West Victoria which is the Country of the Gunditjmara and Budj Bim will bring to life these topics through the documentation of Indigenous planning practices prior to and post European arrival. It offers a vision for the future of planning with Indigenous communities. The paper envisages a future which values and incorporates Indigenous place-making and planning, which goes far beyond the tacit acknowledgement of traditional owners commonly observed around Australia today.

Agricultural intensification and loss of matrix habitat over 23 years in the West Wimmera, south-eastern Australia

The global trend toward more intensive forms of agriculture is changing the nature of matrix habitat in agricultural areas. Removal of components of matrix habitat can affect native biota at the paddock and the landscape scale, particularly where intensification occurs over large areas. We identify the loss of paddock trees due to the proliferation of centre pivot irrigation in dryland farming areas as a potentially serious threat to the remnant biota of these areas. We used a region of south-eastern Australia as a case study to quantify land use change from grazing and dryland cropping to centre pivot irrigation over a 23-year period. We also estimated rates of paddock tree loss in 5 representative landscapes within the region over the same period. The total area affected by centre pivots increased from 0 ha in 1980 to nearly 9000 ha by 2005. Pivots were more likely to be established in areas which had originally been plains savannah and woodlands containing buloke (Allocasuarina luehmannii), a food source for an endangered bird. On average, 42% of paddock buloke trees present in 1982 were lost by 2005. In the two landscapes containing several centre pivots, the loss was 54% and 70%. This accelerated loss of important components of matrix habitat is likely to result in species declines and local extinctions. We recommend that measures to alleviate the likely negative impacts of matrix habitat loss on native biota be considered as part of regional planning strategies.

G21 healthy region project part 1 : business plan

Executive Summary
Background
G21 Geelong Region Alliance (G21), through the partnership activities of the
G21 Health & Wellbeing Pillar, seeks to position health and wellbeing as a
central element to all regional planning processes and outcomes. As a result, G21 wanted to explore the potential application of the World Health
Organisation’s (WHO) ‘Healthy Cities’ approach across the region to provide a comprehensive framework and set of principles to inform future planning and decision-making.
With this aim, G21 commissioned Deakin University to undertake a 6-month
independent research project. The research project involved two stages:
Part 1: A Healthy Region Research Report involved scoping and determining:
- The suitability of the World Health Organisations (WHO) ‘Healthy Cities’
approach to the G21 region; and
- The capacity of G21 Geelong Region Alliance to be the organisation to
facilitate this approach across the region.

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.

Traditional environmental knowledge and community perceptions in sustaining the forest environment : case study of Minahasa ethnic community in the surrounding of Lake Tondano, North Sulawesi - Indonesia

The idea of sustainable development is distinct from the idea of restoring or conserving nature. This concept is embedded in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) which Indonesia and several countries around the world have signed. Sustainable development seeks to interlace humans and nature, while restoration (especially at the large scale) often allows nature to be addressed separately, sometimes out of remorse for the damage caused by humans. In terms of attaining sustainable natural resource development, the opportunities offered by traditional ecological knowledge documentation are considered essential in enabling the achievement of sustainability because most of these Indigenous and/or local communities are situated in areas where many species have been historically cultivated and used in a sustainable way for thousands of years. The skill and techniques of these local communities can provide valuable information for the global community to evaluate current environmental policies. Such research and evaluation is often robustly and best undertaken through ethnoecological methodological paradigms. This paper examines the traditional environment knowledge of the Minahasan ethnic community, who live in the surrounds of Lake Tondano in the North Sulawesi, together with the Minahasan conscious and unconscious actions in conserving their forest ecology in addition to their knowledge of culture about forest protection in the region. In particular, contemporary use of traditional environmental knowledge is examined in terms of its relevance to in traditional resource management and land use planning, as avenues to better curate and manage natural resources through informed regional planning strategies and mechanisms.