Australian Planning and Globilisation

This weeks reading was called “The Americanisation of Australian Planning” written by Freestone in 2004 and was presented by our lecturer Richard Hu.

The reading concentrates on the development of planning in Australia and how it has changed from the early 1900's right up until the modern 21st century. Planning cities in Australia developed around 1900 as a reform movement concerned with the conditions in Australian cities and was heavily derived from British idealogy and values.

From the early 1900's through to the post war period planning in Australia has experienced many changes, these include areas such as physical form and public infrastructure, legislation, regulation and the development of new priorities.

The 1970's saw slow growth and rapid social change, bringing along several new forms of planning such as environmental, social and advocacy. These three planning disciplines are the cornerstones of modern urban and regional planning, with an in depth knowledge of these areas required for any modern day planner to be successful.

The 1980s and 90s brought along strategic planning through concentrating on economic, social and ecological concerns, this is highlighted through the Brundtland report of 87 on environmental sustainability.

Some of the most influential changes to planning in Australia has come in the 21st century through globilisation, sustainability, climate change and disaster mitigation and recovery.  The globilisation of the world has ment that cities such as Sydney and Melbourne are becoming increasingly  bigger hubs of Australias states, with exponential numbers of people moving into City areas. It is estimated by 2050 that 75 % of people will live in cities, so what does this mean for Australia ?

Does this mean the end of country areas in Australia such as Dubbo? Will large country urban areas slowly dissapear as people continue to seek the city lifestyle.  Globilisation and the growing needs of people through technology and access to services could ultimately see this scenario play out and create a new generation of challenges for planners to tackle.

Is it all about the middle class

This weeks seminar was by Adam and myself and was on a reading by Susan S. Fainstein called New Directions in Planning Theory.

Susan Fainstein is a world renowned planner and is currently a Professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University, her outlook mainly focuses on the political and economic side of planning.

The reading spoke about communicative planning and how it is designed to initiate planning at a local level. This makes the planner an essential element of discussion, meaning planners have to communicate with other actors in their daily practice, through face to face interactions or through planning documents.

New Urbanism is also a significant talking point and how it is the revival of the design focus of cities.  It attempts to reduce any inequalities through successful design which is similar to the Garden City ideals. This idea creates a strong city that interconnects, that is to say that everything is within a ten minute walk no matter what part of the city you live in.

Susan Fainsteins "Just City" puts planners in the role of advocates and allows them to accept the conflictual view of society. One of the main concepts of this is the need to embody the middle-class, not just the poor and disadvantaged.

This idea of supporting the middle class is seen in the Illawarra, which as experienced a shift from a predominately blue collar area to increased middle class working. The area is now moving away from the mining and steel industries towards increased middle class demographics. This can be seen in the area of Shellharbour which has seen an explosion of middle class development of housing and infrastructure.

This is seen in the continuing developments of areas such as Flinders and Shell Cove, both of which were subject to intense promotion and advertising through television, radio and social media. Five years ago these areas did not exist and were predominately farming land and had no housing developments.
The Shellharbour city centre has transformed into a hub of accounting firms, lawyer firms and several medical centres, a significant change from what it was five to ten years ago.

Art, Science, Modernis. Has planning experienced a Paradigm shift?

This weeks presentation was done by Laura and Jess, the reading was called The Anglo-American town planning theory since 1945: three signiŽcant developments but no paradigm shifts written by
Nigel Taylor.

The reading this week was a summary of what we have learned so far this semester through the first ten weeks of seminars. The topic of planning as an Art or Science was once again brought and the question was asked has planning had any paradigm shifts? That is to say has there been a radical change in the underlying beliefs or theory.

So has there been a shift ?

Im inclined to say both yes and no. Over the past few decades post WWII there have been many changes that have shaped planning to be what it is today. Certain aspects of science have made there way into the discipline, enabling them the luxury of being skilled in architecture and design as well as scientific analysis.
These changes over time were highlighted into a couple of key points :

1. From the planner as a creative designer to the planner as a scientific analyist and rational decision maker.

At one stage planning was primarily physical design and design based art. This was until systems and rational process theorists suggested it was a science. This did unsettle some plannners as they were required to learn aspects of scientific analysis.

2. From the planner as a technical expert to the planner as a manger and communicator

This was the definitive idea that both the art and science should be specialities that planners have to possess. They also propsed that planners have to be effective managers and communicators to ensure maximum efficiency.


Planning has experienced many changes and the battle continues to rage on about whether they are scientists, artists, mediators, facilitators or anything else you like to call it. The post modernism era has shaped many of these changes and it will continue to do so while there are so many differing opinions about the planning discipline. The bottom line is all planners wil have some knowledge of these areas, it is up to each individual which area they would like to pursue as there specialty.

Arguing, Community and Planning

This weeks reading was presented by Dan and Sarad and strongly focused on the role of arguing and community in the world of planning. The paper presents Professor Healeys take on the future of planning and the way in which she believes it would successfully create sustainable planning.

There were two waves of planning that swept across the world in the second half of this century. These included:

The comprehensive rational planning process of the 60s and 70s which was largely methodological and institutional and the political economy of urban regions in the 80s which was aggressively critical.

Through the reading she is proposing a communicative argumentative approach to planning which would be based  on a new wave of ideas sweeping over the field of planning and policy analysis. The system would be principle based and designed to build a consensus through economic and social relationships. She is more or less proposing to get as many people in community meetings as possible and talking till an agreement is made.

So are arguements beneficial to decision making ? Some would say that if you argue strongly for something and you are passionate about it then it displays that you are genuinely interested about the issue and you are going to contribute effectively to the decision making process. While on the other hand most would say that arguing just creates contradiction and heated exchanges that lead to no real avail.

Some of the benefits involved with the approach proposed by Prof Healey include reinventing stale ideas, recogonising diversity and is very inclusive as all attempts to keep people in the loop of what is happening are made. Despite this I believe the disadvantages out weigh the benefits.

Someone cannot vigorously argue about an issue if they know next to nothing about planning, how could they possibly influence a professional when they might not be a planning professional themselves. The process of arguing is never guaranteed to reach a compromise and finally while it would be nice to include everyone, the chances of this happening are very small, there will always be someone who misses out.

This approach was designed as a set of questions to challange and provoke our school of thought, it involves a cyclical strategy which is based around reviewing ideas, inventing or developing new ideas and monitoring these into the near future.

Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form

This weeks seminar was by Will and Tom  and was on the reading "Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form" by David Harvey in 1997.

Throughout the seminar there was a strong focus on what makes a community unique and the different aspects that shape different communities throughout the world. So what does make a community?

I believe a community is made up of people with a common sense of place or connection to a certain place. This can be seen through coastal and country communities, both of which live by different lifestyles, culture and values. People living on the coast are brought together through the beach whilst people living in country communities are banded together through agriculture and a completely different way of life.

 The people living within these communties gain a sense of togetherness and share common interests which allows them to interact successfully amongst one another. Quite often these communities have been created through generations of families who have chosen to live in the place that they grew up in, creating an even deeper sense of connection to certain places and how people can unify.


Communities also have certain meaning themselves, for example, in some cases they can serve to isolate rather then include, however it is this seperation from others that creates strong communties that share common attributes in some cases. An example of this is seen in gated communties, whilst the people living within these gated communities get along quite well and cooperate, as soon as they leave there is a mentality of us vs them.

Community Activistm is fundamental in creating commmunities, through militant particularism- which suggests that almost all radical movements have their origin in some place, with a particular set of issues which people are pursuing and following. Through this you can spread a persons passion amongst a greater number of people you will and hence create a better community.

Planning in the face of conflict

This weeks reading  was called“Planning in the face of conflict" by John Forester.

This weeks article presents local planners own accounts of the challenges they face as simultaneous negotiators and mediators in local land-use permitting processes.Planning Directors and staff in New England cities and towns, urban and suburban, shared their viewpoints on a series of extensive open ended interviews with John Forester.

The article next explores a range of mediated negotiation strategies that planners use as they deal with local land-use permitting conflicts.How local planning organisations encourage effective negotiation and how mediated negotiation strategies give power to the powerless.

The above picture highlights the role of a planner in the situation where a resident and developer are arguing over a planning decision affecting there neighborhood. It is the job of the planner to create meetings and mediate discussions between the two parties, to ensure all viewpoints are heard and that a middle ground or mutual decision can be found.

In the face of conflict, planners also give power to the powerless, most of the time this is referring to local citizens.For example a planner could mediate a discussion between residents and developers on an issue effecting there neighborhood. In this case, the planner is giving the residents more power as they have the opportunity to speak directly to the people who want implement the change .

In one of the many interviews that John Forester undertook, a planning director suggested that planners and developers often share a common language. They have the ability to pinpoint technichal and regulatory issues and understand what one another sare saying. He also pinpoints the need to teach special terms of local zoning code to affected neighbors before tackling the issues that are at hand.

If the planner, developer and resident are all able to speak in a professional language in which they can all understand one another, then the chance of reaching a mutual agreement is drastically increased and reduces the chance of conflict.



 Creating successful plans in the face of conflict is a challenged faced by thousands in the planning profession, dozens of different strategies are used by different individuals in order to mediate discussions between developers and residents. The planners role in these discussions is essential if residents and developers alike want to continue to work together to keep creating successful plans for the future.

A Ladder of Citizenship Participation

 The reading this week was called " A ladder of Citizenship Participation" from the Journal of The American Institute of Planners (1969) by Shelly Arnstein.

This weeks presentation by Pat and Jess was strongly centred on the role and involvement various communities have in planning decisions. A group activity was set up to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating people from the community into planning decision making.From this group discussion many interesting and some controversial opinions were raised, including references to hitler, irrational people and meritocracy just to name a few.

Some of the advantages to this that were discussed included: satisfying citizens and making them feel they are making a difference to there area, it attracts a number of different perspectives around the issues that are being discussed, allows for transparency and citizens are using there power to do what they desire, for the most part this is to further imrpove there local community.

As always there are disadvantages that come along with the above,  these include: the cost, it can be dangerous giving citizens access to resources as it could lead to a misuse and waste of money, unprofessionalism may play a part as not everyone is a planning professional and conflict could quite easily occur through disagreements amongst different citizens who have opposing opinions about community issues.

So are communties being involved enough in the decisions that are ultimately going to affect themselves the most ? In 1969 planning decisions involved the upper class and excluded the poor, especially certain minorities, where as now there is increased community involvement and consultation, although the community still does not have complete control. An example of this is seen through the canberra 2030 plan- time to talk.

Nowadays on the eight rungs of the ladder of citizen participation we find ourselves around number four, in the area of tokenism.  Through local councils, governments, community forums and community events local citizens are becoming increasingly involved in planning decisions. We are moving into an era where the opinion of the people is having a greater impact on the powers at be and it is this interaction amongst the smallest of citizens to the most powerful of planners that sustainable plans and communities will come to life.

Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning

This weeks reading was called Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning by Paul Davidoff and was written in 1965. It strongly concentrated on the interaction between planning professionals and people or local communities, highlighting the importance of putting plans into action that involve what the people actually want and need, as opposed to assuming everything the government says is the correct course of action.

Pluralism describes the process and advocacy describes the role performed by the professional in the process, in this case we are referring to planners.

In this weeks seminar Dan and Adam prepared two group activities for us to participate in, these involved taking on the role and point of views of Government, Corporations and the people. Through this we were able to look at certain situatuions from different perspectives and how planning decisions effect each individual group.

An important aspect I noticed during the first activity is that the government and corporations proposals were ultimately going to succeed over the needs of the local community, in this case Grassington (sorry if I got the name wrong). This then raised the issue amongst the group, how do we as planners give the community a better voice? How can we advocate and give a voice to the ideas that people believe will be most sustainable and economically viable for there town.

Similar to a legal advocate, a planning advocate pleads for his own and the peoples view of the good society. One of the many benefits that comes with advocate planning is the possibility it creates for a planner to find employment with agencies holding values similar to his or her own. If a planner can be surrounded by a working environment where everyone shares the same values, then the liklihood of gaining the best possible result for the client is increased.

Early Planning and Modernisation

The reading this week was: Modernism and Early Urban Planning by Richard LeGrates and Fredic Stout. It focused on the modernism of planning and how early urban planning has evolved over the past two centuries through works such as the Garden City Movement, City Beautiful and the Park's movement.

Many of these new planning movements were as a result of the worlds industrial revolution and the effects it had on cities and large urban areas. This was a period of time when people were moving from rural areas to city living in order to give themselves better life opportunities through working in factories which quickly became the scene of extremely horrific health standards.

Due to a massive increase in factory workers residential and urban areas soon became sites of disease and poverty stricken slums.  It was this that sparked early urban planners into action in attempts to drastically imrpove the image of cities and increase standards of living through the Garden and City Beautiful movements.

The key to the Garden City movement was to eliminate congestion and keep large areas of open country side accessible. In Ebenezer Howards original plan of the Garden City, it would consist of 6000 acres, with a township of 1000 acres surrounded by a greenbelt of 5000 acres, which would be able so support a total population of 32 000. Designing a city that would draw people away from the dirty slums seen in the early 1900's of London would also include several municipal services and infrastructure, this included amentities, parks, public gardens and asylums.  Although this seems like an exceptional idea to improve health and living standards in urban areas, the plan was never implemented to the scale that Howard would have hoped, but it was still an improvement nonetheless.

Theories and plans such as the Garden City movement have since been adopted into modernist planning, with Canberra being a good example of a Garden City. Although despite the evolution of cars I believe that Canberra still maintains its position as a Garden City. Through the suburbs of Belconnen, Bruce and Woden public parks, walkways and houses lined with trees still greet people as they go about there day to day life. Creating a peaceful atmosphere that allows people to enjoy the lifestyle of a largely populated urban area whilst still being placed in a rural setting.

So what will the next 100 years of planning bring to us? I hope it is something similar to what we experience in Canberra today with just minor ammendments because of the inevitable progression of technology.

Planning: Art, Science or a combination of the two?

"Imagination is more important then knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand" - Albert Einstein

I thought it would be interesting to begin with the above quote by arguably the worlds most renowned scienctist Albert Einstein as I believe it largely focuses on the reading we had this week " Practitioners and the Art of Planning by Eugenie Birch".

This past week in class we discussed and brainstormed on the arguement about planning as an Art or Science. So which is it? With these two areas covering such an extensive range of different values, opinions and even careers it is extremely difficult to highlight planning as one or the other.

In my opinion whenever I think of any aspect of life that involves Art or an Art, I immediately think of imagination. Imagination is the single aspect that drives any Art form, whether it be painting, sculpting or architecture, the list goes on. Whenever a planner is challenged to create something that has not been done before, they are called upon there own imagination do so, they cannot simply rely on past or current knowledge alone to create something that will be unique and well accepted by society. For example the Islands of the world in Dubai, it took imagination and creativity to inspire a man made island like this to become a reality.

However when dealing with planning issues in towns, cities and countries it is almost compulsory that a planner includes the scientific side of things in order for everything to function properly. Without areas like environmental science, which also include chemistry and physics, econonmics and geography being incorporated into a planners ideas societies would not be able to exist as they do today. Without the infrastructure that planners use through science to provide to communities such as communications, healthcare, transportation and renewable energy then these communities would simply be another nice artform to look at.

So in conclusion, I believe that planning is a complex relationship between Art and Science, with one needing the other in order to be successfull. Imagination through Art must be used in order for planners to keep there work interesting, while science must be incorporated to ensure these imaginitive ideas are able to be kept sustainable and liveable.

Light Rail

Canberra Greens Party has proposed a $200 million light rail project for the nations capital

The Great Debate: For and Against Planners

For or Against Planners? This is the great debate that has been argued for decades in Parliament Chambers, local councils, universities and most importantly among the everyday citizens that have the greatest influence in our world today.

 

Planning has been increasingly attacked in our everday lives through popular press, academic literature, social media and statements made to and from parliament. People are continuously asking the question, do we really need Urban Planners in our world? And are they really a valid career to pursue when there is such a diverse climate of options currently available to study.

 

I cannot see why the image of urban planners and planning in general has changed so much in recent history. The role played by the people in this profession is absolutely critical for sustainable development and ensuring that future generations can enjoy the same world that we experience today.

 

 Most of the problem does not exactly originate from planners themselves, but from the powers at be which provide the funding in order for urban planners projects and infrastructure to be implemented into society. An urban planner could have the most intuative and genius ideas that a country has ever seen, only to be silenced as the government could refuse to fund them.

 

It is the responsibility of the Government to recognise the critical role that planners need to play in order  there projects to be a success and there needs to be a co-operation between planners, government and people in order to achieve the greatest possible result for local communities.

 

Urban Planners are the people that are going to solve the current and future problems facing our world, this includes climate change. The increased risks associated with the effects of climate change which include sea level rise, erosion of beaches in coastal communities and natural disasters need to be addressed seriously and it is planners that need to do this, they are the people that will shape our world towards a sustainable environment.

 

Instead of finding ways to disprove urban planners and the role they play in our world we should be promoting there status, giving them access to increased funding and for Australia in particular, setting up a central planning body so that planners can work together towards a sustainable future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first planning blog post. Hey everyone !