Images of Redemption

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Images of Redemption

• Planning for Sustainability in Outer Suburban
  Melbourne

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(No Transcript)
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ARC Linkage Grant Governance and Sustainability
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Governance Sustainability Whittlesea Case Study

• Two development corridors
• Massive, rapid transformation of population and
  urban/rural form
• High-level strategic planning process
• Questions relating to governance and
  sustainability close to the surface

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Mernda/Doreen Corridor

• Epping North and South Morang corridors
  primarily greenfield (although abutting
  established areas)
• In Mernda/Doreen, existing rural and township
  communities, as well as an early new community,
  will be encompassed by new developments
• Mernda township - _at_300 households
• Rural households - _at_300 households
• Laurimar development - _at_300 households
• Planned new development, next 10-15 years
  45,000 people

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Mernda/Doreen Interviews

• Two kinds of activist groups engaged with the
  development process
• Environmental and heritage advocacy groups
  interested in preserving the rural feel of the
  area
• Township residents interested in upgrading local
  infrastructure to the level of the new
  developments
• New residents in Laurimar
• Early development, progressive developer
• Combination of New Urbanist design principles
  with deliberate rural features to design
• Abuts Nilimbik Urban Growth Boundary
• How do each of these groups perceive the local
  area, and the transformations about to occur
  there?

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Rough Organisational Concepts Theoretical Context

• Globalisation literature revisits a classic
  social theoretic question large-scale
  historical transformations tend to ramify through
  social, economic and cultural spheres how can
  we understand how a transformation spreads across
  and through these spheres?
• While agreeing on the broad brush description of
  the transformation, theorists struggle to propose
  an adequate framework for grasping causation and
  the proliferation of analogous qualitative
  changes across what are normally perceived as
  distinct spheres of social life.
• Common theoretical frameworks tend to fall along
  a structure/agency dichotomy
• Class or economy-based theories, which can
  account for the structured character of broad
  historical changes, but which tend to deny agency
  by reducing other dimensions of social life to
  the economic and/or relying on functionalist
  reasoning
• Culturalist theories, which preserve human
  agency at the cost of surrendering an
  understanding of why analogous patterns of change
  emerge historically in different regions at
  similar times

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Rough Organisational ConceptsTheoretical Context

• How can we best understand the relationship
  between analogous large-scale transformations in
  cultural, economic and social contexts?
• How can we best understand human agency, given
  the historical experience of large-scale,
  non-random historical transformations?

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Planning as a Touchstone Discipline in Recent
Transformations

• Ascendency of planning closely associated with
  the postwar emphasis on centralised,
  state-centred, expert-driven, technocratic
  processes
• Planning has therefore struggled to rearticulate
  its purpose and relevance in the current
  market-centred, decentralised decision-making
  environment
• Planning in Whittlesea has taken an unusual path
  retaining ideals of centralised planning, while
  interacting of necessity in a market-driven
  context making it a very useful case for
  testing concepts for how to understand the scope
  and limitations of agency

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Community Formation as a Touchstone Issue

• Classic sociological problem
• modern societies are characterised by a dynamic
  process of continuous transformation, which
  undermines uniform, stable, shared identities
• how can we achieve healthy, stable communities in
  this dynamic context?
• Anti-modern (nostalgic) and anti-industrial
  (pro-rural) responses are common
• Is it possible, however, to conceptualise a kind
  of healthy community that does not represent a
  reaction against urban or industrial form?
• In what ways does the dynamism of contemporary
  social life work, not only to undermine
  particular kinds of community, but also to
  promote alternative possibilities?
• Whittlesea developments provide an interesting
  case because several competing experiences and
  plans for community co-exist in a highly dynamic
  environment
• An existing small town and rural environments
  (which are effectively being subsumed in the
  development process)
• New Urbanist plans (with their amalgam of high
  density and small town ideals)
• Marketing visions and developer designs (which
  often appeal to and even try to build in rural
  and small town elements)

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Working chapterisation historical overview

• Enterprising bureaucracy
• local framework
• Whittlesea economically, socially, politically
  since the 1980s
• focus on local economic development
• Kennett-era reforms to local government and
  planning system
• 1990s bust time for systematic planning
• overarching framework crisis of planning
  identity
• discipline closely bound to centralised state
  action
• struggled to redefine itself when the legitimacy
  of centralised planning called into question
• Whittlesea unusual strategy
• heavy centralisation and regulation
• expert-centred, technocratic approach to planning
• minimal community consultation
• ideal of fully centralised planning and
  development process mediated through state or
  federal government
• at the same time, heavy commitment to local
  economic and jobs growth
• creative approach to planning system limitations
• entrepreneurial strategies active recruitment
  of private sector developers, as well as active
  lobbying of the state government to open multiple
  development corridors
• investigation archival exploration of Council
  archives and news sources, supplemented with
  interviews of current and former Council staff
  and Councillors

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Working chapterisation current Whittlesea
strategic planning

• If we build it, who will come?
• Whittlesea strategic planning process overview
• goals of the process
• Councillors primary focus on existing
  communities jobs, economic development, and
  rates
• strategic planning staff primary focus on
  building the new communities provisioning for
  stable, safe and healthy communities
• ideals guiding the process New Urbanism and
  Melbourne 2030
• investigation
• news and archival materials from Council
• interviews with Council staff

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Working chapterisation existing communities

• Collateral damage
• Multiple growth corridors
• Epping North and South Morang true greenfield
  development sites
• Mernda/Doreen two established populations
• Mernda township (_at_400 households)
• rural landholders (_at_300 households)
• Existing Mernda area to be completely transformed
  immense scale of transformation
• Local resident activism two types of
  mobilisation
• opposition to the development of the area per se
• equity politics older households to receive
  benefits from new developments
• investigation
• news, diaries and other archival material from
  residents action groups
• interviews and group discussions with residents

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Working chapterisation rural and small town
ideals

• Does it take a village to raise a community?
• Rural ideals in Council strategic planning and
  developer planning and marketing of the new
  communities
• Motives of settlers to the area (Laurimar
  residents, perhaps some early uptake from other
  developments, or perhaps some investigation of
  those who attend sales office events) suspect
  many will have been drawn to rural feel curious
  how aware these early residents are, of the scope
  of the coming development
• Reference back to classic sociological problem
  in a dynamic, urbanising society, when we can no
  longer insure that we are similar to our
  neighbours, what holds us together as a
  community?
• analysing the appeal of nostalgic ideals and
  imagined rural communities
• projection and the fantasised rural or
  small-town community what aspects of
  contemporary experience are we hypostatising into
  an imagined past?
• investigation
• archival marketing materials
• interview Laurimar residents, sales office
  visitors or early land purchasers
• interview developer marketing staff

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Working chapterisation toward a new theoretical
framework

• Attainable utopia? grounding ideals
  self-reflexively
• understanding how dynamic social pressures are
  not one-sided, but simultaneously promote and
  undermine determinate visions and practices of
  community
• examining what dimensions of the current context
  generate specific kinds of nostalgic longing for
  purportedly simpler communities that may, in
  fact, never have existed
• pose question of what would be required, to
  constitute a community in such a context
• ??refer back to some of the utopian community
  concepts compare and contrast
  self-understanding and reasons for failure??
• discuss how best to conceptualise freedom and
  constraint in forming but also in desiring to
  form a specific type of community
  (self-reflexivity)

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Special IssuesIndustry Partner Outputs

• Whittlesea CC
• Community Consultation
• Net Gain
• Relation of Social Outcome to Planning Practice
• Measurements of Social/ Community Outcomes
• Stockland
• Net Gain
• Facility Co-Location
• VicUrban
• Facility Co-Location
• Community Corporation
• Community Intranet

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The Silent PartnerWhittlesea Residents

• How current and future Whittlesea residents
  think about governance and sustainability is
  largely unknown.

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Article Concepts and Drafts Social Theory

• The Elephant in the Room On George Lakoffs
  Linguistic Analysis of Popular Political Ideals
• Draft concepts on http//www.roughtheory.org blog
• Outlines key concepts for overcoming
  structure/agency divide and grasping the
  relationship between social/economic and cultural
  transformation
• Through the Looking Glass the Concept of
  Self-Reflexivity in the Social Sciences
• Draft concepts on http//www.roughtheory.org blog
• Literature review on the concept of
  self-reflexivity in the social sciences
• Images of Redemption on Benjamins Philosophy of
  History
• Sociology and Psychology Adorno on the
  Psychological Impacts of Industrial Society

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Article Concepts and Drafts Empirical Work

• Does It Take a Village to Raise a Community?
  Rural Imagery in the Marketing of Greenfield
  Development
• Explores marketing (and community?) assumptions
  that rural character promotes community
  formation
• Revisits classic social theory questions of how
  communities form in a more dynamic and diverse
  social environment
• Is Regulation the Opposite of Capitalism? On
  Developer Preferences for the Right Regulation
• Follows up on developer and consultant comments
  approving the more highly-regulated development
  environment in Whittlesea
• Revisits standard understandings of capitalism as
  antithetical to regulation, and explores the ways
  in which capitalism and regulation are integrally
  related
• Casting a Wide Net Evaluating the Application of
  Victorias Net Gain Policy to Savannah Landscapes
• Explores unintended consequences and common
  problems experienced by local governments,
  developers and consultants responsible for
  implementing Net Gain policy