Contemporary Planning Practice (PG)

This subject is not offered in 2008.

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Student Support and Engagement Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes, Assessment and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this subject are encouraged to discuss this matter with a Faculty Student Adviser and Student Equity and Disability Support: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

Contemporary Planning Practice explores a current question in urban planning in depth. In 2006, our focus is on metropolitan strategic planning, in particular the Melbourne 2030 metropolitan strategy. The strategy will provide the context for our deliberations this semster, but as we have a class drawn from a range of cities, we should be in an excellent position to compare practice in Melbourne with that in other places. The course covers the practice of metropolitan planning and can thus be distinguished from many similar subjects offered at universities, which concentrate either on theoretical critiques of traditional approaches, or on surveying current issues in metropolitan planning. We will be dealing with questions of this kind, but will do so in a way that seeks to go beyond mere critique and survey, to possible reform of planning practice.

The type of metropolitan planning explored in this course is new. There are no textbooks or manuals that explain how it is carried out and relatively few practical examples of its successful implementation. Planning academics by and large have preferred to 'deconstruct' old approaches to metropolitan planning, rather than to 'construct' new ones. So all of us, including the staff, will be learning as we go.

The objective of this subject is to provide students with an analytical understanding of contemporary (and past) urban contexts, within which human intervention has occurred in the management of urban change.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.