The Victorian Planning System: Practice, Problems and Prospects is a successor to Statutory Planning in Victoria (4th edition) and provides an accessible introduction to the Victorian planning system. Written with both urban planners and users of the system in mind, it seeks to demystify a complex system. The structure and design of planning schemes are explained in simple terms, along with a discussion of how planning decisions are made. Common planning processes - such as planning permit applications, appeals and planning scheme amendments - are covered in detail.The book is structured around exploration of a variety of urban policy challenges, including housing supply, activity centre planning, heritage and environmental issues. How does planning strategy in these areas translate into action? Too often, the way that the planning system achieves on-the-ground outcomes is glossed over. This book aims to remedy that oversight by exploring the realities of policy implementation through regulatory design. In doing so, it offers a critique of the Victorian system, and suggests ways in which it could more effectively achieve visionary policy goals."Dr Stephen Rowley's book demystifies the planning system in accessible language and with an engaging narrative. Students, practitioners and citizens consulting this volume will be duly empowered to make the most of a system, which, for all its foibles, remains a powerful force shaping our lives." From the Foreword by Dr Marcus Spiller The Victorian Planning System: Practice, Problems and Prospects was awarded a Commendation in the Cutting Edge Teaching and Research category at the 2017 Victorian Planning Institute Awards.

Updated and revised, the fourth edition of Statutory Planning in Victoria provides a comprehensive description and analysis of the planning regime in Victoria. It contains considerably more detail than earlier editions on: the processes of planning scheme amendment; the consideration and determination of planning permit applications; and review of decisions on those applications by VCAT (the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) It also includes up-to-date information about: amendments to the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and related legislation and regulations, including the Planning and Environment (Development Contributions) Act 2004 and the Planning and Environment (General Amendment) Act 2004; ResCode and its application to subdivision, the development of one dwelling on a lot, and development of medium density housing proposals; Melbourne 2030 - the Victorian Government's planning strategy for the metropolitan area, the metropolitan growth boundary and the green wedge zones; and key decisions of the Supreme Court and VCAT since 1999.

Media depictions of community are enormously influential on wider popular opinion about how people would like to live. In this study, Rowley examines depictions of ideal communities in Hollywood films and television and explores the implications of attempts to build real-world counterparts to such imagined places.

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.

Fifty years after its first publication, Robin Boyd's bestselling The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd rallied against Australia's promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American. 'The basis of the Australian ugliness,' he wrote, 'is an unwillingness to be committed on the level of ideas. In all the arts of living, in the shaping of all her artefacts, as in politics, Australia shuffles about vigorously in the middle - as she estimates the middle - of the road, picking up disconnected ideas wherever she finds them.' Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago. Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome anniversary edition is complemented by Robin Boyd's original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the major issues and activities that constitute urban and regional planning in Australia today.

Taylor describes the development of urban planning ideas since the end of the Second World War, outlining the main theories from the traditional view of planning as an exercise in physical design to recent views of planning as 'communicative action'.