Melbourne 2030
Melbourne 2030

Author: Bob Birrell

Publisher: Monash University ePress

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 0975747509

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The 'Melbourne 2030' plan is the Victorian Government's blueprint for the accommodation of an additional one million people in Melbourne by the year 2030. The plan seeks to change the shape of Melbourne radically. The vision is of a compact city in which growth will be concentrated in existing commercial centres (activity centres). Notwithstanding this fundamental departure from the low density pattern of the past, it is claimed that Melbourne's famed 'liveability' will be preserved. This book explores: the intellectual origins of the plan; demographic assumptions behind the plan; the mode of implementation; the likely impact on the built environment; environmental and social consequences; heritage outcomes; and alternative planning options. It also critically examines assumptions about the projected demand for higher density housing, and argues that the plan's 'compact city' vision is unlikely to be achieved because it fails to come to grips with the economic and demographic realities facing Melbourne.

Planning Melbourne
Planning Melbourne

Author: Robin Goodman

Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING

Published: 2016-07

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0643104739

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For more than a decade, Melbourne has had the fastest-growing population of any Australian capital city. It is expanding outward while also growing upward through vast new high-rise developments in the inner suburbs. With an estimated 1.6 million additional homes needed by 2050, planners and policymakers need to address current and emerging issues of amenity, function, productive capacity and social cohesion today. Planning Melbourne reflects on planning since the post-war era, but focuses in particular on the past two decades and the ways that key government policies and influential individuals and groups have shaped the city during this time. The book examines past debates and policies, the choices planners have faced and the mistakes and sound decisions that have been made. Current issues are also addressed, including housing affordability, transport choices, protection of green areas and heritage and urban consolidation. If Melbourne’s identity is to be shaped as a prospering, socially integrated and environmentally sustainable city, a new approach to governance and spatial planning is needed and this book provides a call to action.

The Democratic Plan: Analysis and Diagnosis
The Democratic Plan: Analysis and Diagnosis

Author: Alan March

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-16

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1317036123

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Despite ongoing technical and professional advances, urban and regional planning is often far less effective than we might hope. Conflicting approaches and variable governmental settings have undermined planning’s legitimacy and allowed its goals to be eroded and co-opted in the face of mounting challenges. Deeper organising principles for self-understanding, action and productive critique are lacking. This book takes steps toward resolving these problems by providing a clear theoretical position to practically examine urban planning systems within democratic governance settings: the basis of planning’s legitimacy and action. Joining practical planning with political science perspectives and the work of critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, it directly examines urban planning as a process of governance. The dilemmas inherent to democracy are used as key organising principles and challenges for planning. Collective knowledge development and steering processes are examined as the core purposes of urban planning. Communicative planning’s grounding in the work of Habermas is revisited to develop practical ways of examining overall planning systems. This theoretical approach can be adapted to a range of planning systems and settings beyond those examined in the book, such as corporate or political realms. It is one of only a few analyses that bring together theoretical understandings and grounded and practical analyses of an Australian planning system. Conceptual and highly practical explanations of how and why the Victorian system does and doesn't ’work’ are revealed. The book demonstrates how specific placed-based understandings, and meaningful comparison between planning systems, can be made using critical theory to suggest positive change.

Green Urbanism Down Under
Green Urbanism Down Under

Author: Timothy Beatley

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2012-09-26

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1597268623

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In this immensely practical book, Timothy Beatley sets out to answer a simple question: what can Americans learn from Australians about “greening” city life? Green Urbanism Down Under reports on the current state of “sustainability practice” in Australia and the many lessons that U.S. residents can learn from the best Australian programs and initiatives. Australia is similar to the United States in many ways, especially in its “energy footprint.” For example, Australia’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are second only to those of the United States. A similar percentage of its residents live in cities (85 percent in Australia vs. 80 percent in the United States). And it suffers from parallel problems of air and water pollution, a national dependence on automobiles, and high fossil fuel consumption. Still, after traveling throughout Australia, Beatley finds that there are myriad creative responses to these problems—and that they offer instructive examples for the United States. Green Urbanism Down Under is a very readable collection of solutions. Although many of these innovative solutions are little-known outside Australia, they all present practical possibilities for U.S. cities. Beatley describes “green transport” projects, “city farms,” renewable energy plans, green living programs, and much more. He considers a host of public policy initiatives and scrutinizes regional and state planning efforts for answers. In closing, he shares his impressions about how Australian results might be applied to U.S. problems. This is a unique book: hopeful, constructive, and filled with ideas that have been proven to work. It is a “must read” for anyone who cares about the future of American cities.

Planning Metropolitan Australia
Planning Metropolitan Australia

Author: Stephen Hamnett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-24

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 131528135X

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Australia has long been a highly (sub)urbanized nation, but the major distinctive feature of its contemporary settlement pattern is that the great majority of Australians live in a small number of large metropolitan areas focused on the state capital cities. The development and application of effective urban policy at a regional scale is a significant global challenge given the complexities of urban space and governance. Building on the editors’ previous collection The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History (2000), this new book examines the recent history of metropolitan planning in Australia since the beginning of the twenty-first century. After a historical prelude, the book is structured around a series of six case studies of metropolitan Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, the fast-growing metropolitan region of South-East Queensland centred on Brisbane, and the national capital of Canberra. These essays are contributed by some of Australia’s leading urbanists. Set against a dynamic background of economic change, restructured land uses, a more diverse population, and growing spatial and social inequality, the book identifies a broad planning consensus around the notion of making Australian cities more contained, compact and resilient. But it also observes a continuing gulf between the simplified aims of metropolitan strategies and our growing understanding of the complex functioning of the varied communities in which most people live. This book reflects on the raft of planning challenges presented at the metropolitan scale, looks at what the future of Australian cities might be, and speculates about the prospects of more effective metropolitan planning arrangements.

Urban Infrastructure
Urban Infrastructure

Author: K. Wellman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-07-30

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 111840162X

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The magnitude of investment, the long time-frames involved and the influence of pre-existing infrastructure on urban infrastructure provision make a co-ordinated approach to forward-planning, policy development and implementation essential. There are major challenges in making decisions on urban infrastructure and getting management structures and processes in place. Getting it right generates long-term dividends; getting it wrong involves major costs, often borne by taxpayers. Urban Infrastructure: finance and management is posited on a strong belief that the physical structure of cities and the efficiency of infrastructure services delivered are driven by efficiencies within individual infrastructure sectors, lessons learnt across these sectors and the ability to co-ordinate and integrate sectors to generate economies of scale. This necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, integrating knowledge from finance, governance, planning and management as well as the characteristics of the individual urban infrastructure sectors involved. Here it is not only about getting the initial decisions and policy settings right, but also ensuring effective implementation. A major theme running through the book is the nature of institutions and the governance structures responsible for delivery and management of urban infrastructure and the decision making processes involved. The editors have taken a deliberately pragmatic approach to the finance and management of urban infrastructure; chapters are cross-sectorial and present both theory and practice. This book is for students and practitioners in policy, planning, urban management, infrastructure finance and management.

Asian and Pacific Cities
Asian and Pacific Cities

Author: Ian Shirley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1136217134

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The cities of Asia and the Pacific are at the epicentre of development in what is arguably, the most populous, culturally distinctive, and economically powerful region in the world. 16 major cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Singapore, Auckland, Kuala Lumpur and Santiago, located in countries as diverse as Mexico and Vietnam, Samoa and India, China and Australia, exemplify the changing patterns of development across this vast region of the world. By tracking economic and social trends the contributors to this collection reveal how a wide range of political and cultural factors have interacted over time to provide a powerful explanation for the shape and characteristics of ‘the city’ today. Based on a collaborative research programme and drawing on the work of local researchers, this book examines the realities of city development characterised by domestic migration, spatial and social fragmentation, squatter settlements and gated communities, economic experiments and the emergence of the ‘Asian Tigers’. The collection as a whole records the way in which countries in this region have moved from underdevelopment to become global economic and political powers. This book provides a fascinating journey through Asia and the Pacific by generating an insiders’ view of each city and an insight into national development. As such it will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in: the Asian and Pacific region; in disciplines such as economics, politics, geography and sociology; and in policy domains such as urban planning and economic development.

Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice
Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice

Author: Paul James

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-19

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1317658361

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Cities are home to the most consequential current attempts at human adaptation and they provide one possible focus for the flourishing of life on this planet. However, for this to be realized in more than an ad hoc way, a substantial rethinking of current approaches and practices needs to occur. Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice responds to the crises of sustainability in the world today by going back to basics. It makes four major contributions to thinking about and acting upon cities. It provides a means of reflexivity learning about urban sustainability in the process of working practically for positive social development and projected change. It challenges the usually taken-for-granted nature of sustainability practices while providing tools for modifying those practices. It emphasizes the necessity of a holistic and integrated understanding of urban life. Finally it rewrites existing dominant understandings of the social whole such as the triple-bottom line approach that reduce environmental questions to externalities and social questions to background issues. The book is a much-needed practical and conceptual guide for rethinking urban engagement. Covering the full range of sustainability domains and bridging discourses aimed at academics and practitioners, this is an essential read for all those studying, researching and working in urban geography, sustainability assessment, urban planning, urban sociology and politics, sustainable development and environmental studies.

Catch and Kill
Catch and Kill

Author: Joel Deane

Publisher: University of Queensland Press

Published: 2015-07-01

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0702251631

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Power is the only measure of a politician that matters: how they win power, how they use power, how they lose power. Catch and Kill is an inside account of the beguiling and nomadic nature of the unholy trinity of politics—the winning, the using, the losing. Joel Deane's gripping study of the politics of power takes us into the inner sanctum of state and national politics in Australia, investigating how four friends—Steve Bracks, John Brumby, John Thwaites, and Rob Hulls—beat the factions, won office in Victoria, then tried to hijack Canberra. It delivers a slice of political gothic, exploring the heart of the contemporary Labor Party in search of the nature of power.

Urban Sustainability Transitions
Urban Sustainability Transitions

Author: Trivess Moore

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-10-27

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 9811047928

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This book contributes to current debates regarding purposive transitions to sustainable cities, providing an accessible but critical exploration of sustainability transitions in urban settings. We have now entered the urban century, which is not without its own challenges, as discussed in the preceding book of this series. Urbanization is accompanied by a myriad of complex and overlapping environmental, social and governance challenges – which increasingly call into question conventional, market-based responses and simple top-down government interventions. Faced with these challenges, urban practitioners and scholars alike are interested in promoting purposive transitions to sustainable cities. The chapters in this volume contribute to the growing body of literature on city-scale transformative change, which seeks to address a lack of consideration for spatial and urban governance dimensions in sustainability transitions studies, and expand on the basis established in the preceding book. Drawing on a range of perspectives and written by leading Australian and international urban researchers, the chapters explore contemporary cases from Australia and locate them within the international context. Australia is on the one hand representative of many OECD countries, while on the other possessing a number of unique attributes that may serve to highlight issues and potentials internationally. Australia is a highly urbanized country and because of the federal political structure and the large distances, the five largest state-capital cities have a relatively high degree of autonomy in governance – even dominating the rest of their respective states and rural hinterlands to a certain extent. This context suggests that Australian cases can provide interesting “test-tube” perspectives on processes relevant to urban sustainability transitions worldwide. This volume presents an extensive overview of theories, concepts, approaches and practical examples informed by sustainability transitions thinking, offering a unique resource for all urban practitioners and scholars who want to understand and transition to sustainable urban futures.