Governance and Public Space in the Australian City is a rich and evocative examination of the production and use of public spaces in Australian cities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Using Brisbane as a case study, it demonstrates the way public spaces were constructed, contested, and controlled in attempts to create ‘ideal’ city spaces. This construction of space is considered not just in the literal and material sense but also as a product of aspirational and imaginative processes of city-building by municipal authorities and citizens. This book is as much about people as it is about cities – uncovering the manner in which perceived models of ideal urban citizenship were reflected in the production and ordering of city spaces. This book challenges common narratives that situate public spaces as universal or equalising aspects of the urban sphere. Exploring three distinct types of public space – the streets, slums, and parks – the book questions how urban spaces functioned, alongside how they were intended to function. In so doing, Governance and Public Space in the Australian City situates public spaces as products of manipulation and regulation at odds with broader concepts of individual liberty and the ‘rights’ of people to public space. It will be illuminating reading for scholars and students of urban history and Australian history.

Since the early 1990s there has been a global trend towards governmental devolution. However, in Australia, alongside deregulation, public–private partnerships and privatisation, there has been increasing centralisation rather than decentralisation of urban governance. Australian state governments are responsible for the planning, management and much of the funding of the cities, but the Commonwealth government has on occasion asserted much the same role. Disjointed policy and funding priorities between levels of government have compromised metropolitan economies, fairness and the environment. Australia’s Metropolitan Imperative: An Agenda for Governance Reform makes the case that metropolitan governments would promote the economic competitiveness of Australia’s cities and enable more effective and democratic planning and management. The contributors explore the global metropolitan ‘renaissance’, document the history of metropolitan debate in Australia and demonstrate metropolitan governance failures. They then discuss the merits of establishing metropolitan governments, including economic, fiscal, transport, land use, housing and environmental benefits. The book will be a useful resource for those engaged in strategic, transport and land use planning, and a core reference for students and academics of urban governance and government.

Understanding Urbanism presents built environment students with the latest approaches to studying urbanism. The book is written in an accessible and easy-to-understand format by leading urban academics and practitioners with decades of teaching and practical experience. As students move through the chapters, they will develop a critical understanding of the different ways architects, urban and social planners, urban designers, heritage professionals, engineers and other built environment professionals design our cities. Importantly, the book shows how and why the built environment professional of the future will need to work within the Indigenous context of cities in countries like Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.

An incisive 1995 exploration of urban planning and policy, and the problems facing urban Australia in the 1990s.

This book highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities. The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic and social impacts have been felt around the world. In large cities and other urban areas, the pandemic has highlighted a number of issues from pressures on urban labour and housing markets, shifts in demographic processes including migration and mobility, changes in urban travel patterns and pressures on contemporary planning and governance processes. Despite Australia’s relatively mild COVID exposure, Australian cities and large urban areas have not been immune to these issues. The economic shutdown of the country in the early stages of the pandemic, the sporadic border closures between states, the effective closure of international borders and the imposition of widespread public health orders that have required significant behavioural change across the population have all changed our cities in some and the way we live and work in them in some way. Some of the challenges have reflected long-standing problems including intrenched inequality in labour markets and housing markets, others such as the impact on commuting patterns and patterns of migration have emerged largely during the pandemic. ​ This book, co-authored by experts in their field, outlines some of the major issues facing Australian cities and urban areas as a result of the pandemic and sets a course for future of the cities we live in.

The Politics of Public Space: Volume Five is a publication which documents the conversations of 39 built environment practitioners. This publication collates all four sold-out volumes and includes nine new conversations.The Politics of Public Space began in 2018 as a public lecture series curated by OFFICE. These discussions took place outside the conventional spaces of the university, held on Melbourne's street corners, laneways, parks, shopping strips and plazas. Meeting in different locations around the city allowed these perspectives to be directed at the city's forms and the issues at stake in their development. These diverse opinions demonstrate the distinct and often contradictory views on what public space is, how we occupy it and how it should be designed and governed. The previous four volumes of The Politics of Public Space set out to reveal the growing inequality within cities, and we hope these additional nine texts identify ways forward to more equitable public spaces. These range from the inclusion of diverse and marginalised communities in planning and design, to the combination of bottom-up approaches and top-down policy to enact change. This new volume expands on these ideas and approaches, to advocate for better outcomes in the built environment that consider environmental, social, economic and culturally equitable experiences in public spaces. Across all the volumes of The Politics of Public Space, we have sought new ways to communicate the critical value of public spaces: both for shaping how we live now, and in informing just and equitable futures. We hope that this collection of texts adds to the growing discourse around public space and becomes an ongoing resource to those interested in the city and the forces that shape it.

This Handbook is the first to explore the emergent field of ‘placemaking’ in terms of the recent research, teaching and learning, and practice agenda for the next few years. Offering valuable theoretical and practical insights from the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, it provides cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on the placemaking sector. Placemaking has seen a paradigmatic shift in urban design, planning, and policy to engage the community voice. This Handbook examines the development of placemaking, its emerging theories, and its future directions. The book is structured in seven distinct sections curated by experts in the areas concerned. Section One provides a glimpse at the history and key theories of placemaking and its interpretations by different community sectors. Section Two studies the transformative potential of placemaking practice through case studies on different places, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks. It also reveals placemaking’s potential to nurture a holistic community engagement, social justice, and human-centric urban environments. Section Three looks at the politics of placemaking to consider who is included and who is excluded from its practice and if the concept of placemaking needs to be reconstructed. Section Four deals with the scales and scopes of art-based placemaking, moving from the city to the neighborhood and further to the individual practice. It juxtaposes the voice of the practitioner and professional alongside that of the researcher and academic. Section Five tackles the socio-economic and environmental placemaking issues deemed pertinent to emerge more sustainable placemaking practices. Section Six emphasizes placemaking’s intersection with urban design and planning sectors and incudes case studies of generative planning practice. The final seventh section draws on the expertise of placemakers, researchers, and evaluators to present the key questions today, new methods and approaches to evaluation of placemaking in related fields, and notions for the future of evaluation practices. Each section opens with an introduction to help the reader navigate the text. This organization of the book considers the sectors that operate alongside the core placemaking practice. This seminal Handbook offers a timely contribution and international perspectives for the growing field of placemaking. It will be of interest to academics and students of placemaking, urban design, urban planning and policy, architecture, geography, cultural studies, and the arts.