Abstracts of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Planning Schools
Compiled by:
Hamish G. Rennie, Lincoln University
ANZAPS 2010 was held 17th -19th April 2010, at the YMCA Hereford St Christchurch and hosted by Lincoln University
Abstracts of Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers
- Bosman, Caryl - First Year Experience and Planning Studio Pedagogics.
- Dyer, P.K. and Rosier, D.J. – Visual Literacy: A necessary governance skill in
planning graduates?
- George, Jennifer; Nelson, Peter; Horsfield, Richard; Nichols, Sandra; Amati,
Marco and Goldstein, Wendy – Climate Change Adaptation Skills for
Professional Planners informating new Teaching and Learning Themes for
Planning Educators.
- Gurran, Nicole and Phibbs, Peter – Learning from the Australian Urban Land Use
Planning Monitor.
- Steve Harfield, University of Technology Sydney - Urban design as social benefit: Thinking beyond formality and physicality
- Minnery, John – Is collaboration adequate for implementation? Lesson for
metropolitan regional planning from South East Queensland, Australia.
- Piracha, Awais – Collaborative City Liveability Study using Gehl Methodology:
Pedestrian and Bike Counts and Stationary Activity Survey Penrith.
- Steinmetz, Christine – Ethics in PhD Planning Research.
- Whitzman, Carolyn – Stretching the limits of planning for kids: a healthier
approach to planning education and children’s ‘Right to the City’.
Abstract Only Papers
- Budge, Trevor and Butt, Andrew – Planning for the new millennium: students in
serendip.
- Choy, Darryl Low; Wadsworth, Jenny and Burns, Darren – Indigenous
engagement in planning processes: Lessons and challenges for planning
education.
- Dawkins, Jeremy – Evidence from past futures.
- Gunder, Michael – Making Planning Theory Matter: A Lacanian Encounter with
Phronesis.
- Kellett, John and Rofe, Matthew W. – Creating Active Communities: A Critical
Review of the Available Literature.
- Maginn, Paul J. – Using Peer Review in Group-based Assignments: Insights and
reflections from a recently established planning programme.
- Mayere, Severine – The integration of research into planning education.
- Middle, Garry; Perkins, Tim; George, Jennifer and Maginn, Paul – Determining
the relevance and effectiveness of University planning course to meet the needs
of a modern planning system and students.
- Montgomery, Roy – Planning education and the role of theory in the new
millennium: a new role for habitat theory?
- Prior, Jason – Planning’s relation to climate change: Moving beyond
separateness to the mutuality of being.
- Rofe, Matthew W. and Meng, Lee Lik – ‘Construction’ Future Professionals?
Constructivist Teaching and Field Based Planning Education.
- Sipe, Neil and Baker, Douglas – Planning Controls: An International
Comparison of Australia, England and America.
- Sloan, Mellini – Integration of cross-cultural elements into planning education
around negotiation and conflict resolution.
- Steele, Wendy and Gleeson. Brendon – After Copenhagen – Planning in climate
change revisited.
- Tomlinson, Richard – Planning With an Aging Degree or Current ‘Best Practice’.
- Vallance, Suzanne – Planning for sustainability or ‘taking the blue pill’.
- Wallace, Pippa and Rennie, Hamish – Teaching Planners Law or Lawyers
Teaching Planning? – Some reflections on reality.
First year experience and planning studio pedagogics
Caryl Bosman, Griffith University
Studio Pedagogy is usually the realm of Architecture and the Arts rather than Planning. As student numbers increase and academic institutions place pressure on staff to achieve more with less and to improve student retention and heighten the first year experience, appropriate and effective pedagogies become critical. Planning studios in most Australian Universities have been re thought and restructured in recent years and Griffith University is no exception. Our paper will draw upon some of the literature on first year experience and studio teaching and learning in general and look at what is happening in other first year planning programs in Australia. We will draw upon the changes made to the first year planning studio at Griffith’s Gold Coast campus and comment on possibilities for and relevance of planning studios; specifically in relation to the first year experience and as a means to address the institutional call for excellence in teaching and learning.
Visual Literacy: A necessary governance skill in planning graduates?
Dyer, P.K. and Rosier, D.J. University of the Sunshine Coast
Visions of the future inform planning decisions. Yet it is often unclear where our visions stem from, or whether we, as planners, have the visual literacy skills to effectively communicate multiple stakeholder visions. Our decisions could be based on past experience and exposure to past external and internal images (Neuman 1996). However, these previously seen images could influence us, as planners, in different ways depending on our visual literacy skills. Visual literacy, frequently perceived to be the domain of the Arts and Humanities, is concerned here with the “… kind of literacy that might serve for the entire university community, across all disciplines” (Elkins 2008, 3). The concept of visual literacy as used in the case study is explored through a survey of advanced planning students and interviews with planners working in the profession. This research is underpinned by theory from photojournalism, environmental health and planning disciplines.
Climate Change Adaptation Skills for Professional Planners informing new Teaching and Learning Themes for Planning Educators
Jennifer George, Peter Nelson, Richard Horsfield, Sandra Nichols, Marco Amati, and Wendy Goldstein Macquarie University
The Graduate School of the Environment (GSE) in the Faculty of Science (FoS) at Macquarie University has undertaken a project entitled “Climate Change Adaptation Skills for Professionals” in the Small Grants Program of the Australian Government Department of Climate Change. Its aim is to improve and increase learning about climate change adaptation in undergraduate and postgraduate environmental management and planning programs (among others) within the FoS. This involved the following activities: identification of professional capabilities needed for climate change adaptation from several sources; review of the planning programs and constituent units; consideration of course content for incorporation of recommended professional capabilities; and consideration of the implications for teaching and learning approaches. The results of this research will be presented highlighting new themes arising in teaching and learning in planning education for climate change adaptation.
Learning from the Australian Urban Land Use Planning Monitor
Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney
Peter Phibbs, University of Western Sydney
This paper reports on the implementation of the online Australian Land Use Planning Policy Monitor. The Planning Policy Monitor was established in 2007, to develop a database on local statutory plan provisions relating to housing and environmental sustainability. It has several teaching and learning applications, discussed in this paper with reference to a sample of 25 student evaluations.
Urban design as social benefit: Thinking beyond formality and physicality
Steve Harfield, University of Technology Sydney
While the term ‘urban design’ is ubiquitous within the realms of planning, architecture, government, and commercial development, it remains a term without a universally-agreed referent, and, perhaps more contentiously, an enterprise without an explicit commitment to societal betterment. In respect of end products, urban design may manifest itself via both concrete and strategic outcomes, may be directed at both public and semi-public spaces, and may operate over a range of scales. In respect of specific determinants, urban design responses may be motivated and driven by formal and/or aesthetic issues, by economics, by statutory or regulatory requirements, by political ideologies, by the dictates and incentives of speculative development, or by a range of specific community requirements. Yet notwithstanding the reasonableness and inevitability of such differences, this paper postulates that all of the above should be construed within a wider social frame, and suggests that the outcomes of the urban design process should confer significant social benefit. And while it is usually taken as read that urban design always has both the intention and the potential to make positive contributions, it is nevertheless the case that, from a social perspective, the determination and fulfilment of specific and contingent outcomes inescapably suggests the likelihood of discrimination against, and thus disbenefit for, some, and the possibility of under-valuing, selectively deforming, or simply ignoring ‘big picture’ considerations pertaining to infrastructure and transportation, land use, sustainability, social cohesion and inclusivism, place identity, and so forth. Moreover, from a design perspective, the seduction of an over-riding commitment to physicality, to the architectonics of form, and thus to aesthetic and methodological determinism, is an ever-present issue worthy of closer consideration. It is this last feature of contemporary urban design that is explored in this paper.
Continuing on past yes: Is collaboration adequate for implementation?
John Minnery, The University of Queensland
The changing approaches to the planning and management of the metropolitan region centred on the State capital of Brisbane since the 1990s reflect three different planning paradigms built around collaboration, the centralised exercise of power, and hierarchy. The changes have occurred as the needs of the plan production and implementation processes have altered over time (Minnery 2009). Understanding these changes is facilitated through the use of a collaborative governance framework (Ansell and Gash 2008).
Collaborative City Liveability Study using Gehl Methodology: Pedestrian and Bike Counts and Stationary Activity Survey Penrith
Awais Piracha, University of Western Sydney
Penrith Central Business District is one of the regional cities of New South Wales that have been selected for substantial growth in the near future. The use of public space by pedestrians and cyclists is examined to provide a technical tool for future decisions made by planners and urban designers. This paper discusses the data collected and the observations recorded during a study of public spaces in Penrith CBD by a group of UWS planning students. The method for collecting data was largely based on the techniques employed by Jan Gehl in his Public Spaces and Public Life studies. A survey documenting: 1) the number of pedestrian and cyclists and 2) observing the stationary activities was carried out over a period of two days to indicate the quality of urban space in Penrith CBD. The purpose of this study was to: identify the number of pedestrians at specific locations and times, examine the amount and type of cyclists, recognize the behaviour and decisions of pedestrians using the urban space and document the pedestrian life of the city. This paper presents the findings of the survey as well as analyses the suitability and adaptability of the Gehl methodology. The paper also sheds light on the aspects of mutual benefit of this study for the city and the university.
Ethics and the PhD Planning Student
Christine Steinmetz, University of New South Wales
The premise of the paper is that PhD planning students are future planning practitioners, academics and researchers, and as such, need to be fully versed in the complexities of ethical research while still at university. While many PhD students are competent in the language of procedural ethics, it is questionable whether or not they fully understand, appreciate or are even aware of the many intricacies of ethics in practice. By incorporating a group based discussion format ethics training throughout PhD student’s candidature, faculties and planning schools can encourage the development of ethical integrity in order to better deal with issues which may arise in their professional lives as planning practitioners and researchers. Interest in this topic was sparked by the work of Mello (2009) who explored the issue of ethics training for PhD planning students in Italy. This paper will contribute to an existing small, but growing body of literature on training PhD students in ethical planning research protocol.
Planning education to advance children’s ‘Right to the City’
Carolyn Whitzman, University of Melbourne
How can planners learn how to consider children as citizens with ‘rights to the city’? In Australia and New Zealand, a growing research and policy literature has begun to focus on the concept of Child‐ Friendly Cities, but there are still barriers to including children’s voices in planning effectively. There are also policy and educational opportunities that may allow a meaningful articulation of children’s needs and ideas into local planning. Two recent research projects are used as case studies: the impact of Child‐Friendly Cities in five local governments in Victoria (Whitzman et al, 2009) and children’s perspectives on high‐rise living in central Melbourne (Whitzman & Mizrachi, 2009). Enablers include: the growth of an international Child‐Friendly Cities movement that supports a children’s rights approach; a growing concern about the impacts of severely limited independent exploration of children; and a critical mass of researchers and practitioners in Australia and New Zealand who are working to advance children’s rights in planning. Barriers include: capacity gaps amongst planners in consulting with children and adults; inadequate tools to include health and social equity issues within current land use planning policies; and a general sense amongst spatial planners of ‘policy overload’ and uncertainty. Extending from this research, this paper advises how reviewing competencies, knowledge, and skills would evolve planning education and advance professional practice toward developing better cities that are also child‐friendly. We conclude that creating stand‐alone child‐friendly teaching subjects are inadequate. Instead a healthier outcome will result from integrating increasingly rich evidence and techniques within existing planning education and professional development programmes.
ABSTRACTS OF NON REFEREED PAPERS PRESENTED
Planning for the new millennium: students in serendip
Trevor Budge and Andrew Butt, La Trobe University
Students and educators in planning programs face new agendas this millennium; one of these is the prospect that by choice or necessity they will work in developing countries at some stage in their careers. Developing students and educating them for work and practice in new overseas environments, where the planning system and the priorities for society are considerably different to their Australian (or New Zealand) context presents opportunities and challenges. In early 2010 the La Trobe University Community Planning and Development Program took 13 undergraduate and postgraduate students to Sri Lanka or Serendip - its ancient name by which it is sometimes known as it is sometimes known. The students worked on a regional planning project with Sri Lankan planners, planning students at Moratuwa University and Australian planners who were working with the Planning institute of Australia post-tsunami project. This paper reports on what the students did, what they learnt, what was the impact on them and what the La Trobe program learnt about preparing students to work in new environments.
Indigenous engagement in planning processes: Lessons and challenges
for planning education
Darryl Low Choy, Jenny Wadsworth and Darren Burns, Griffith University
Many contemporary land use and natural resource management planning initiatives have embraced a values-led planning approach. At the same time, there have been increasing calls to recognise and respect culturally diverse values in public policy (European Landscape Convention and the United Nations Guidelines on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues (UNFPII 2008)). Although indigenous consultation in many land use planning and natural resource management initiatives has been undertaken throughout Australia, indigenous input (with a few exceptions) is seldom visible in the project outputs. In most planning studies at local and regional scales, there has been a significant hiatus in incorporating indigenous landscape values. This evidence strongly suggests that conventional approaches to indigenous community engagement in values-led planning processes needs to be revisited. At the same time however, a number of associated challenges will need to be addressed. For example, wide concerns have been expressed that indigenous knowledge and values are seemingly “incompatible” with contemporary European values, in terms of format and structure (Jones 2007; Lane 2006; Stephenson 2008). Recent research has demonstrated that it is possible to work with indigenous communities, comprised of both traditional and non-traditional owners, to identify indigenous landscape values of relevance in a rapidly urbanising planning region such as South East Queensland (Low Choy et al, 2009). This research is continuing into its second phase and whilst this paper represents the first evaluation and reflection of its research methodology, initial lessons learnt have highlighted some potential challenges for planning education. This paper will outline the methodology adopted for indigenous engagement thus far and proposed for the ongoing research. Specifically, it will seek to examine the question for planning education: how should planning education respond to the challenges of exposing students to opportunities for indigenous community engagement in a largely European based planning process?
References
Jones, E.R. 2007. "Three Management Challenges for Protection of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in a Tasmanian Multiple-use Conservation Area." Australian Geographer
38(1):93-112.
Lane, M.B. 2006. "The role of planning in achieving indigenous land justice and community goals." Land Use Policy 23(4):385-394.
Low Choy, D.C., J. Wadsworth, and D. Burns. 2009. "Identifying and Incorporating Indigenous
Landscape Values into Regional Planning Processes." Urban Research Program. Brisbane: Griffith University.
Stephenson, J. 2008. "The Cultural Values Model: An integrated approach to values in landscapes." Landscape and Urban Planning 84(2):127-139.
UNFPII. 2008. "Resource Kit on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues." United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Evidence from past futures
Jeremy Dawkins, University of Technology Sydney
There appears to be little current research aimed at comparing two conditions: the city as it is, and the city as it might have been if specific planning interventions had been, or had not been, carried out. No doubt, the absence of a discourse around these questions reflects the complexities of values, causation and measurement. No doubt, also, it tells us much about the nature of planning practice and theory. Nevertheless, gathering post-implementation empirical evidence on which to construct arguments about the effects, and effectiveness/ineffectiveness, of planning interventions should be a priority for planning institutions, planning agencies and planning schools. At its simplest, an assessment of past practice can suggest what works. It enables a planning agency to defend programs and mechanisms and to make a case for powers and resources. It provides researchers and students with cases, data and hypotheses. It offers answers to the question, What do planners do? Above all, evaluating past interventions – the challenge of distinguishing between what was and what might have been – can itself be a profound learning experience and contribution to planning theory. The paper expands on and defends these propositions, and offers examples and models for post-implementation reflection on and measurement of planning interventions in Australia.
Making Planning Theory Matter: A Lacanian Encounter with Phronesis
Michael Gunder, University of Auckland
Traditional social science often fails when deployed to explain complex human action. In each specific social field of human endeavour, including planning, experienced actors draw on a range of conscious and unconscious performative knowledges to act with effect: the experts simply ‘know’ what to do. Flyvbjerg suggests that to understand these complex human dispositions framing practice requires a detailed understanding of the particular, not the universal. Drawing on Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of phronesis, Flyvbjerg refers to this as a phronetic social science model. This paper suggests that Lacan’s theoretical insights and conceptualisations pertaining to the split human subject, divided between symbolic consciousness and unconscious affect, can help to empower this phronetic model. The paper argues that a Lacanian inspired phronetic model is particularly useful for understanding spatial planning and related urban policy discourses, for it provides insight as to how desire and resultant ideological fantasies shape our shared social reality and spaces of habitation in our globalised world.
Creating active communities: A critical review of the available literature
Jon Kellett, Matthew W. Rofe, The University of South Australia
Open space is an important component of urban areas and claimed to be a key factor in promoting active living. However, emerging policies and design trends addressing open space may well be premised upon assumptions about its centrality to the promotion of active living as opposed to reliable evidence. Responding to this concern, this paper engages with the evidence base with respect to evaluating the importance of open and public space in supporting active living through a review of the academic and policy evidence. Commissioned by the Heart Foundation (South Australia) in early 2009, this research presents an exhaustive review of the current literature addressing types of open space, uses of space, location of spaces and design of space. The evolution of open space policy is also charted and common aspects such as open space hierarchies and open space standards are identified. It is clear that there is a long legacy of standards and approaches to the provision and design of open space, which is increasingly open to question. The evidence suggests that a diverse range of spaces are significant in promoting physical activity, but the literature tends to focus more on active than passive pursuits. The conclusions emphasise the importance of well designed open space which is part of an interconnected network to promote pedestrian and bicycle trips between open space.
Using peer review in group-based assignments: Insights and reflections from a recently established planning programme
Paul J. Maginn, The University of Western Australia
This paper critically reflects on the use of peer review by students and professional planners in group based project assignments in two units, one a first year introductory planning unit; the other a fourth year/PG Diploma that form part of the recently established planning degrees at the University of Western Australia. Specifically, the paper examines two broad-ranging issues. First, it considers the nature, rationale and efficacy of using group-based assignment work in both units. In short, the overall pedagogical aim is to develop students’ appreciation of the need to and complexities of working in small group contexts. Next, it examines the two peer review processes used, one that is student-based and used in both units and the other conducted by a small panel of professional planners that is used within the fourth year/PG Diploma unit. The ultimate aim of the peer review processes are to identify individual student contributions so that a corresponding individual mark/grade can be awarded. Ultimately, students deemed by their peers to have contributed the ‘most’ are rewarded with a higher grade/mark whilst the opposite applies to those assessed to have contributed relatively less.
The integration of research into planning education
Severine Mayere, Queensland University of Technology
The need to integrating contemporary research into planning education has been widely acknowledged by various planning institutes and associations in Australia and across the world. Most of the discourse on planning education refers broadly to restructuring university courses to reflect a rapidly evolving social, economic, and environmental context. Specifically, there appears to be growing support for expanding the curriculum of traditional planning courses further to incorporate recent research findings that address the challenges to contemporary urban and regional planning. However, despite the seeming consensus on the issue, there is little in the way of concrete examples of how the integration of research and teaching is to operate in practice. This paper investigates the approach being adopted for the integration of results of recently completed research into comparative approaches to urban growth in Australia into a final year planning unit. An analysis will be made of the appropriateness of educational theory as a guide to the integration of research results into teaching in a planning context, along with reflections on the process of adapting and developing materials based on complex research findings.
Planning Education Effectiveness study: Determining the relevance and effectiveness of University planning course to meet the needs of a modern planning system and students.
Garry Middle, Curtin University of Technology.
Tim Perkins, Edith Cowan University
Jennifer George, Macquarie University
Paul Maginn, The University of Western Australia
At ANZAPS 2009, a paper was presented showing the results of an initial study into the effectiveness of the three planning courses, which involved a survey of current students. Students were asked to rate the importance of the various ‘streams’ of planning education, their passion for planning, and to identify what are the key attributes of an ‘excellent’ planner. this work has been followed up with additional surveys of, students in those same WA planning courses at the start of 2010, and a selection of practicing planners and non-planners working in or closely with the WA Planning system and also expands to begin to explore the views of planning students in Eastern Australia at Macquarie University. The results of these new surveys are presented and analysed, discussed against other recent result of various studies regarding preferred skills and capabilities of planners and the potential to expand this work throughout Australia is discussed.
Planning education and the role of theory in the new millennium: a new
role for habitat theory?
Roy Montgomery, Lincoln University
Education for the planning profession often tends to focus on instrumental knowledge e.g., how to write or interpret planning documents or how to carry out technical assessments. To some extent what is being done is simply meeting market demand. Where theories or models are discussed these often revolve around decision-making practices used by democratic institutions at national and local levels. Thus it is not unusual for educators to contrast, say, the rational-comprehensive planning model with the deliberative democracy model. In the broader political context there is at the current time a greater expectation that private concerns will be responsible for the master planning of communities while planners work more at the edges in the vetting of plans and the management of public spaces. This paper suggests that in the light of ideological shifts in the past few decades away from master planning by governments and recognition of a greater pluralism in society notwithstanding a new theoretical “currency” is required that can engage the relevant stakeholders and affected parties. To this end a theory first developed in the 1970s, loosely known as “habitat theory” or “prospect-refuge-hazard” theory, is introduced or, more aptly, reintroduced, as a new starting point for planners working in the new millennium.
Planning’s relation to climate change: Moving beyond separateness to the mutuality of being
Jason Prior, University of Technology Sydney
Among the most significant developments on the contemporary planning scene in recent years has been the emergence, investigation and expansion of the relation between planning and climate change. A broad range of prepositions have been used to indicate such relations, planning about climate change, planning for climate change, and planning in climate change being obvious examples. Simply put, these prepositions indicate a desire to locate planning in relation to climate change and vice versa. The use of such prepositions allows two things to be brought together while at the same time respecting their separateness. Given the above, the aim of this paper is to examine one form of relation that has been largely overlooked, namely that climate change is planning. This exploration moves beyond the attempt to locate two entities that can be understood as autonomous or separate, to an examination of the mutuality of the relationship between planning and climate change, mutuality here suggesting a sharing in common or a sharing between. The intention of this paper is thus to explore the many important mutualities between planning and climate change. In carrying out this exploration the paper has two purposes, one retrospective, one prospective. In respect of the former, it seems appropriate at this time to look back and reflect on the emergence of the mutualities between climate change and planning: What are their common roots? What are some of the key ideas, the influential papers, the seminal perspectives that have created a bridge between them? And what has opened them up to merger and fusion? In respect of the latter it is suggested that a clearer understanding of the emerging history of the mutuality between planning and climate change is helpful in shedding light on current controversies and in generating ideas about where the discipline of planning needs to go in terms of practice, of theory, and, not least, of education.
‘Constructing’ future professionals? Constructivist teaching and field based planning education.
Matthew W. Rofe, The University of South Australia
Lee Lik Meng, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Planning education serves two entwined agendas as it seeks to produce intellectually adept graduates who are also capable, emergent professionals. As planning is a ‘real-world’ endeavour it isdesirable that planning education is imbedded in practical experience. Consequently, fieldwork is a staple teaching strategy within many planning programs. However, the scope and duration of fieldwork varies considerably. While much field work is of short duration, positioned as an augmentation to more traditional lecture-based teaching and learning practices, this paper asserts that much benefit for students and staff are to be found in immersive field-based courses. Such an approach is often entrenched in a constructivist teaching approach in which the field itself is the lecture theatre, where students are immersed for prolonged periods of time in collaborative research groups and actively positioned as central actors in the own learning and teaching. To illustrate the challenges and rewards of a constructivist approach, this paper presents a case study of an annual international field school coordinated by the authors. This field school brings together some 40 senior undergraduate and postgraduate planning students from the University of South Australia (UniSA) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) to work in cross-cultural project groups in George Town, Malaysia. For staff and student alike, the challenges and opportunities afforded by this field school are intellectually stimulating, professionally demanding and personally enriching. This paper draws upon student journals and course feedback, as well as the reflections of course staff to assess the merits of immersive field schools generally and constructivist teaching approaches specifically.
Planning controls: An international comparison of Australia, England and America
Neil Sipe, Douglas Baker, Queensland University of Technology
The rationale for writing this paper is to gain a better understanding of Australia’s planning system. It is generally assumed that Australia’s system of planning controls is a blend of planning control philosophies from England and the United States. While there has been some comparative research on planning systems by Cullingworth (1993) who examined England, Canada and the United States and Booth (1996) who compared Europe, Hong Kong and the United States, there has not been any such research that compares Australia, England and the United States. Because there is no Australian or U.S. planning “system”, this paper will use Queensland as an Australian example and Florida as the American example. To understand planning controls across these three jurisdictions, seven themes will be used, some of which were based on Cullingworth (1993) and Booth (1996). The seven themes are: demography, governance, property rights, role of the legal system, scope of planning, discretionary vs. regulatory; and certainty vs. flexibility. After having established the basis for Queensland’s system of planning controls, we examine how these differences have shaped planning outcomes and in particular, the built form.
Integration of cross-cultural elements into planning education around negotiation and conflict resolution
Mellini Sloan, Queensland University of Technology
The Planning Institute of Australia, in its 2008 Planning Education Discussion Paper, proposes that further discussion is required around the question of whether we need to prepare our students for "international practice in the context of globalisation" (18). Arguably, even when our students, tomorrow's planning practitioners, work within Australia they will be interacting with more and more culturally diverse populations, particularly with increased population shifts in response to global climate change. Responsibility for preparing students for practice in such environments merits consideration of ways in which we can incorporate global perspectives on planning beyond adoption of international development units in our curricula. Given that understanding is central to agreement, it seems only rhetoric to question whether we need to incorporate cross-cultural perspectives on negotiation and conflict resolution into our existing curricula. This paper will argue further for the importance of crosscultural perspectives in planning education, particularly with regard to praxis and practice of negotiation and conflict resolution, explore how widely such internalization is undertaken in planning schools in Australia, New Zealand and beyond, and offer information on best practices from both home and abroad.
After Copenhagen - Planning in climate change revisited
Wendy Steele and Brendan Gleeson, Griffith University
In 2009 the potential for an emergent conceptual framework - Planning in Climate Change – to work as a platform for evaluating the role of planning in relation to climate change was offered at the ANZAPS conference in Brisbane. This relational framework for action was comprised of three quite different institutional agendas: 1) planning about climate change; 2) planning for climate change; and 3) planning in climate change. In this paper we critically revisit the salience of this framework in 2010 in light of the outcomes of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and the continued imperative of climate change. Ten key strategies that lie at the heart of the practical operationalisation of 'planning in climate change' are discussed with specific reference to planning education and training.
Planning with an aging degree or current ‘Best Practice’
Richard Tomlinson, University of Melbourne
My first thesis is that students educated into the profession of planning will, over time, come to rely lesson what they learned while studying planning and more on ‘best practice’; or ‘knowledge’ that is ‘generated’, ‘managed’, ‘shared’ and constitutes a ‘product’, all ‘based on policy that works’. My second thesis is that this outcome is inevitable because employers and clients routinely call for knowledge of best practice in their job descriptions and in their tender documents. My third thesis is that best practice is already, and will to an increasing extent, be defined by knowledge products found on the web. Further, that these products will often be found on the websites of institutions with a vested interested in the policy outcomes. The difficulty with best practice is that it is mobile. Planning policies, practices and processes change over time as a result of experience, new political agendas, changing governance contexts and economic trends. How else is a planner to remain current but to turn to the Web? What does this mean for the teaching of planning? Students should be educated in the use of the Web for planning purposes and should be encouraged to use and assess web-based searches and to formulate policies based on these searches. Two case studies will be provided.
Planning for sustainability or ‘taking the blue pill’.
Suzanne Vallance, Lincoln University
In the 1999 movie The Matrix Neo is offered a choice between a red pill (which will reveal to him the ugly truth of reality) or a blue pill (which will reconnect him to the illusory, and blissfully ignorant, world of the matrix). Here, I present something of a ‘red pill’ in the form of a summary of the growing critique of sustainability. Criticism ranges from long-standing debates over definitions, particularly with regards to the role of growth, to others that explore more fully the worldviews driving ‘unsustainability’ and how these might be changed. In so doing, sustainability is exposed as a highly political rather than an objective, scientific endeavour. The implications of a more sceptical evaluation of the concept are then explored.
Teaching planners law or lawyers teaching planning? – Some reflections on reality
Pippa Wallace, Waikato University
Hamish G. Rennie, Lincoln University
Planning law is a key content requirement of professional planning programmes. Delivery of the subject offers particular challenges in determining declarative and performative knowledge choices, and differs from teaching law to lawyers. Achieving appropriate breadth and depth of subject matter and level of delivery is critical. These choices are influenced by the diverse backgrounds of students and lecturers, the broad ambit of potential professional application by students and the requirements of professional bodies. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of case law and legislation presents its own difficulties, as do the demands of academic and professional credibility. In this paper we reflect on our experience in teaching planning law, in the context of the redevelopment of our planning programmes necessitated by significant changes in legislation and the requirements of the New Zealand Planning Institute.