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Page 1: Planning history in Australia: The state of the art

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Planning history in Australia: The state ofthe artRobert Freestone a & Alan Hutchings ba School of Town Planning , University of New South Wales , POB1,Kensington, NSW, 2033, Australiab Commissioner, Planning Appeal Tribunal , Adelaide, South Australia,AustraliaPublished online: 08 May 2007.

To cite this article: Robert Freestone & Alan Hutchings (1993) Planning history in Australia: The stateof the art, Planning Perspectives, 8:1, 72-91, DOI: 10.1080/02665439308725764

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Page 2: Planning history in Australia: The state of the art

Planning Perspectives, 8 (1993) 72-91

Planning history in Australia: the state of the art

ROBERT FREESTONE* and ALAN HUTCHINGS‡

*School of Town Planning, University of New South Wales, POB1, Kensington, NSW 2033,Australia‡Commissioner, Planning Appeal Tribunal, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Over the last two decades, planning history in Australia has firmed as both a specific research fieldand pragmatic endeavour geared to planning practice. The emergence of an identifiable planninghistory strand across the borders of such disciplines as planning, political science, human geography,and history in the mid-1970s gained much of its rationale from other developments at this time,including the academic legitimation of urban studies and urban history, an unprecedented level ofgovernmental interest in urban and regional development, reassessment and reaction to traditionalland use planning, and the benevolent imprimatur of the British Planning History Group. From thevantage point of the early 1990s, a substantive literature can now be critically surveyed. Diverse if notfragmented, parochial and sometimes quirky, the general nature of this body of work partly reflectsthe spatial isolationism and parochialism that have been hallmarks of Australian cultural and politicaldevelopment. Beyond the straitlaced general surveys of state, city and metropolitan planning, severalestablished lines of inquiry are evident, notably colonial town layout, civic design, the impact ofplanning movements, evaluations of metropolitan planning, political conflict, and federal urban policy.The links with cognate fields such as housing, landscape architecture and, increasingly, environmentalstudies, are close. Alongside these general themes have come more distinctively Antipodean preoccupa-tions like the planning of Adelaide and Canberra as well as the work of Walter Burley Griffin. Futurechallenges lie in more original research, integration, theory development, and policy relevance.

Planning history emerged in Australia as a recognizable and distinctive field of intellectualinquiry in the mid-1970s. The timing can be linked to the ascendancy of social science-flavoured urban studies teaching and research, the reassessment of traditional physical landuse planning practice after a generation of post-war planning, a strengthening mandate forurban history, and increased urban consciousness accompanying the rise and fall of federalurban policy initiatives during the decade.

From the present vantage point, we can now look back to work which pre-dated this risingtide of interest and enshrine pioneers. They would include Gavin Walkley [1], and the teamof Alfred Brown and H.M. Sherrard [2], who assumed the task of systematizing historicalknowledge for the benefit of the first graduate students in town and country planning afterthe war. There was Denis Winston, whose 1957 book Sydney's Great Experiment [3] used

* Robert Freestone is Senior Lecturer in Town Planning at the University of New South Wales. He worked previouslyas a planning consultant and with the state government. He is Associate Editor (Pacific) for Planning History.‡ Alan Hutchings holds the judicial post of Commissioner, Planning Appeal Tribunal in South Australia. Aprofessionally trained planner, he formerly held senior state government positions and has written extensively onthe history of planning and urban design in South Australia.

© 1993 E. & F. N. Spon 0266-5433

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applied history to win over hearts and minds for Australia's first statutory metropolitanplanning scheme. And there were the amateur historians like Collinridge Rivett, whosequirky 1955 history of the original town plan of Parramatta, the second settlement incolonial New South Wales, extended the popular historical imagination in this direction [4],and Tasmanian Clifford Craig [5], whose interest was also colonial town design.

The pointer to a new era was undoubtedly Hugh Stretton's Ideas for Australian Cities(1970). Written as the by-product of a Canberra sabbatical, and published privately afterbeing rejected as uncommercial, it is widely acknowledged as the seminal text on Australianurban issues and a third edition has recently appeared [6]. A readable mix of commonsense,humanitarianism, pragmatism, and fabianism, Stretton's perceptive exploration of themanner in which state planning and development agencies have gone about their tasksinfluenced and challenged many policy makers and analysts over the intervening years.

Imbued with similar concern for social democratic reform and justice, his former studentLeonie Sandercock went on to examine the politics and failures of planning in threeAustralian cities since 1900 in her Cities for Sale (1975) [7]. In a similar but less politicallyimpassioned mould came Sydney since the Twenties (1978) [8] by Peter Spearritt whosemajor contribution was to link interests in physical planning, the evolving urban landscape,political and class power, and the artifacts of popular culture into a palatable pot-pourri forwider consumption. All of these seminal works were nurtured in the Urban Research Unit,a liberal thinktank within the Australian National University in Canberra. The influence ofthe Unit, and its leading lights Max Neutze, Patrick Troy, and the late Peter Harrison, inlegitimizing modern planning history, if only indirectly through their commitment to urbanresearch, might be easily underestimated.

Though apparent to many only some years after it happened in 1974, the formation ofthe British Planning History Group provided a further fillip from abroad in this same period.The individual example and encouragement of Gordon Cherry and Anthony Sutcliffe fromafar was not unimportant. Cherry's keynote address to the World Housing and PlanningCongress in Adelaide in 1986 helps reveal why. Characteristically broad in its scope,philosophical in its basis, and historical in substance, it helped bring home the relevance ofthe historic dimension in understanding and planning cities and regions to even the mostblase practitioner [9].

Interest in planning history has grown steadily since, enthusing non-academic planners asmuch as their university colleagues. A special planning history issue of the Royal AustralianPlanning Institute's journal Australian Planner to mark the bicentenary of European settle-ment in Australia in 1988 was perhaps a symbolic watershed [10]. No formally structuredsociety or interest group on the British or American model has emerged, rather, there is aninformal national network of kindred minds corresponding and meeting in the various Statecapitals from time to time as circumstances permit.

Planning history has thus firmed as a field of both specific research and general application.There have been previous stocktakes [11] and research bibliographies [12]. This paperattempts at once a more expansive and selective state-of-the-art review from the perspectiveof the early 1990s. On the one hand, while it seeks to reflect broadly and critically on whathas been happening and where we seem to be heading, it deals only with major publishedcontributions. But with relatively few books published, in stark contrast to the Anglo-

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American scene, our coverage is perforce somewhat inflated by substantive articles injournals and essays. As far as possible, the focus is restricted to writing in an explicit ifnarrow historical paradigm, thereby eschewing the wider urban studies and planningliterature [13] in which many of the same themes and preoccupations resonate.

The Antipodean context

For all the interest in planning history documented in this paper, it is not possible to proclaimtruly national achievements; our endeavours remain largely those of interested part-timersensconced within their own milieux across a large continent. As we have noted, only veryloose arrangements bind or bring us together. The fundamental reason lies in the peculiarcircumstances of Australia's national urban development and the emergence of independentand concomitant planning systems.

With modern Australia having its initial roots in British and Irish society, the motivationsfor, and the spatial arrangements of, the earliest settlements can be related to the mores ofthe British Isles in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But in a vast land colonised fromthe ocean, parallels with the North American frontier soon developed as indigenousconstraints and opportunities began their interplay with Anglo-Celtic traditions.

There were distinctively Australian ingredients in this process. For there was not onefrontier moving ever westwards, but rather several, moving to all points of the compass froma number of coastal encampments (namely Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide,Perth and Darwin). These frontiers did not meet for decades, a century even, so far apartwere the principal urban centres of each colony. Inevitably, variations in the ways, meansand results of physical settlement and urban society crystallized early. The crucial explana-tory role of distance here harks back to the classic thesis of Blainey [14] rather than therecent reinterpretation of Frost [15].

The so-called colonies were, in effect, separate nations each evolving separate administra-tive and developmental characteristics which have endured even after the umbrella ofFederation in 1901. Eight decades later, the state governments are strong sovereign states,no less so in terms of planning administration, as highlighted by Fogg [16], Bowman [17],and Ryan [18]. The contrasts between the various state planning systems, and the laws andprofessional cultures which support them, are often quite marked.

Successive waves of technological innovation have had their impact on the form andnature of Australian cities, but the splintered isolationism remains. Just as it has determinedthe independent evolution of planning systems, it continues to indirectly flavour and directlyshape the diverse if not parochial concerns of contemporary planning historians.

We are left to survey not so much a nascent national tradition of historiography as muchas a body of literature which remains largely the sum of its parts. It is the quest forintegration - through comprehensive accounts building upon fragmented studies, analysesof the impact of planning ideas across state boundaries, the search for policy relevancethrough applied history, and, though less typically, through theoretical explorations of therole and limitations of modern urban planning — that has produced some of the more lastingand important contributions over the past 20 years. We will start with the synoptic works.

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General surveys

In the absence of starting points akin to the kind of national histories produced for Britainby Cherry [19] and the United States by Scott [20], the more generalized works have tendedto focus on either one state or a single city. The range is wide in terms of subject matter,time span and issues explored. Many are putative factual accounts, organised chronologi-cally. Some have concentrated more selectively on administrative systems and concomitantlegislative instruments. Others have explored more specific interests.

The most substantive work so far is With Conscious Purpose: A History of Town Planningin South Australia (1986) [21] edited by Alan Hutchings, who has elsewhere elaborated theuniqueness of this state in the Australian scene [22], and Raymond Bunker, whose earlierreflections on the same theme lend the book its name [23]. With Conscious Purpose,published in association with the South Australian Division of the Royal Australian PlanningInstitute, is perhaps the first attempt to survey fully all issues of planning and developmentin one State over a comprehensive time span, in this instance the 150 years since whitesettlement. Colonial expansion, the early planning movement, suburbia, new towns, andpost World War II metropolitan planning are all reviewed. In a final chapter, a formerMinister for Planning, Don Hopgood, uses the historical platform as a springboard forcontemplating the desired form and growth of metropolitan Adelaide toward the end of the20th century.

J.M. Powell has written a condensed history of planning in Victoria over the same periodas this book, but with a particular emphasis on conservation [24]. Brief chronologicalsurveys have also been assembled on the Queensland [25] and Victorian [26] experiences.Both reveal how capital cities have dominated the rise of statutory planning over thetwentieth century.

Studies of these individual capital cities constitute a relatively satisfactory if ultimatelyuneven survey of problems and progress. Bunker's account of post-war planning in Adelaideuncovers distinctive South Australian themes of 'conscious purpose, proper conduct, andregard for property' [27]. John Laverty's history of town planning in Brisbane from itscolonial origins through to the inter-war period, and essentially the offspring of his largerresearch on urban government and metropolitan administration, remains the staple reference[28].

Building on the general descriptive overview of the Melbourne experience by Bowman[29] have been case studies of the evolution of strategic metropolitan planning [30] anddecision-making in the central city [31]. Similarly, complementing Melotte's summarychronology of planning for Perth [32], come more detailed analyses of the character andpreoccupations of the pre-World War I planning movement [33], planning administrationfrom the era of the Metropolitan Town Planning Commission in 1930 [34], and theevolution of urban form concepts in metropolitan strategic planning [35]. Tom Stannage'shistory of Perth was the first to introduce town planners into the general picture [36], a trendfollowed by George Seddon and David Devine in their brilliantly original exposition of theurban landscape, A City and its Setting (1986) [37],

The fortunes of statutory local planning in Sydney to the late 1960s have been documentedin considerable detail by James Colman [38]. Peter Harrison's survey of progress at themetropolitan level, originally presented as the 1970 Sidney Luker Memorial Lecture, remains

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the definitive account to the early 1970s [39]. Belying its title, Spearritt and DeMarco'sPlanning Sydney's Future (1988) is a kaleidoscopic survey which begins in the 18th century[40]. This book was jointly sponsored by the New South Wales Department of Planning;others associated with this organization have written historical overviews of the Sydneyexperience which more obviously join the category of official rather than independentlycritical accounts [41].

Case studies of the role, results, and values of metropolitan planning in Australia haveadopted some innovative historical methodologies. Noteworthy are a bureaucratic-theoreticevaluation of evolving metropolitan planning organizations [42], a qualitative comparisonof official versus popular perceptions of the city in the early post-war period [43], aquantitative evaluation of the achievement of spatial equity planning goals [44], and a neo-Marxian historical interpretation of the system-supportive reality of metropolitan planning[45].

Colonial beginnings

To begin our survey of narrower themes, we return to the colonial- era, an established focusin wider Australian historiography where town siting, design and development have longbeen respectable topics. There have been several major research strands: the ideas andphilosophies which underpinned early settlement, town formation in the context of crownland policies, the nature and impact of urbanization, and the morphological analysis of bothplans and places.

Some of the more scholarly studies have been undertaken by three British-trained histori-cal geographers. Dennis Jeans' work in the 1960s and 1970s focussed on the process andphysical outcomes of town planning and land subdivision in colonial New South Wales [46].Williams was concurrently exploring the impress of the parkland town on the SouthAustralian landscape [47]. Powell's Mirrors of the New World (1978) [48] places his ownresearch, which has concentrated on Victoria, into a broader conceptualisation of landsettlement which acknowledges the role of Utopian thought, a topic which planners havealso begun to explore [49].

Physical planning is a theme of a recent collection of essays looking at the early originsand development of the main capital cities in the context of imperialism, economic growth,and social life [50]. More innovative work has targeted specific cities. In particular, Paul-Alan Johnson's careful evaluation of the very first plan for Sydney, drawn up for GovernorArthur Phillip by surveyor Augustus Alt, not only links its aspirations to the grand avenuesof European cities but also extrapolates the plan into what might have been [51]. Alas, 'thegrid as a symbol of order and the vista as a sign of culture in the new world' did not cometo pass, although a certain kind of physical order did emerge [52]. Johnson has attempteda similar numerological-geometrical analysis of the first plan for Parramatta [53].

Adelaide and beyond

Most of Australia's first white settlements were anything but idealistically driven, being moretypically the products of imperial, commercial and bureaucratic expediency. Adelaide was

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different. The South Australian capital was an integral component of a society planned onWakefieldian lines. Just as the social and philosophical reasons underpinning the broaderexperiment have been analysed at length by general historians (with Douglas Pike's Paradiseof Dissent (1957) [54] the seminal inquiry), so have the origins of the distinctive town-and-parkland template chosen for the main settlement in 1836.

Indeed, the plan, traditionally ascribed to the Colonization Commissioners' Surveyor-General Colonel William Light, has been analysed, almost to the point of obsession, byAustralian and international commentators from all angles. Over the years Light's inspira-tion has been variously tracked to sources such as the layout of Roman camps [55], thewritings of the amateur savant T. J. Maslen [56], Granville Sharp's 1794 'General Plan forlaying out towns and townships' [57], the Laws of the Indies [58], J. A. Roebuck'senlightened proposals for provision of public parkland [59], and the more unconscious,ongoing quest for reconciling social and spatial order [60].

The most contentious theories are contained in Donald Johnson and Donald Langmead'smonograph The Adelaide City Plan: Fiction and Fact (1986) [61] which argues that it wasnot Light but his associate George Strickland Kingston who, partly inspired by a disarminglyfresh memory of the plan for Cataneo (1567), actually deserves the kudos. The controversyin South Australian planning and history circles which ensued might be likened to, say, astunned Washington having to cope with the bombshell that in 1791 L'Enfant had unfairlystolen the show from his survey draftsman Andrew Ellicot. Outraged rebuttals havehighlighted the lack of any really hard evidence favouring Kingston [62]. But the melee didsucceed in helping stimulate interest in Adelaide's planning heritage and the ramificationsand lessons of the original plan for contemporary urban design [63].

Extending the Adelaide and South Australian experience for the first time in a consideredplanning history sense, Bunker has developed a framework for comprehending both patternand process in the planned colonial town within which initiatives elsewhere in Australia andNew Zealand find their place [64]. The same quest for integration at a broader scaledistinguishes Auster's relating of social ideas, public policy and land settlement in NSW fromthe colonial era to the present-day [65].

Planning movements

The great theme in studies looking at the impact of progressive planning ideas on theoryand practice has been the importation and adaptation of overseas precedents, particularlyfrom Britain and the United States. The dependence of indigenous responses to foreigninspiration, as with contemporary histories to those of the past, is crystallized in thehistorical essays by Winston [66] and Ledgar [67] contributed to a 1974 UNESCO forum.Revealingly, both authors — foundation professors of planning at Sydney and MelbourneUniversities respectively in the early post-war years — were themselves trained in Britain inthe 1930s.

While an over-simplification of the ideas and forces shaping the formative years of thetown planning movement during the first three decades of the 20th century, the independentimpacts of the city beautiful, city functional and garden city philosophies can be readily

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discerned. The neo-classical dreams envisioned in Perth [68] and by the Royal Commissionfor the Improvement of Sydney and the Suburbs in 1909 [69] are but exemplars of an earlycity beautiful ethos which informed many civic improvement schemes and calls for city plans.The enduring influence of similarly American-inspired city functional planning in the 1920sis evident in the short-lived citizens' Sydney Regional Plan Convention [70] and moresubstantially in the work of the advisory town planning commissions established by stategovernments in Melbourne and Perth.

Of all the classic early planning paradigms, the garden city has been subject to the mostdetailed historical scrutiny. Its impact was felt at both the micro-scale, on residentialplanning standards [71], and at the macro-scale, as a broader normative theory of town andregional growth [72], although the influence of the latter on mainstream planning thoughtonly became evident in the 1940s via the work of Patrick Abercrombie. Before then, thelegacy of the garden city is found primarily in planned 'garden' developments of remarkablyvaried persuasions.

Surveys of garden suburbs in Perth [73], Melbourne [74] and Sydney [75] reveal the manyguises in which the phenomenon surfaced: adding prestige to private land speculation,ensuring space and sunlight in low density public housing, as the touchstone for municipalestate development, and for communicating the ideology of the national homes for heroeshousing program.

More detailed case studies have explored these and other meanings. Colonel LightGardens in Adelaide was Charles Reade's antipodean Hampstead. Launched as the middleclass dream at the end of the Great War, it later successfully absorbed a considerable stockof state-built housing. Hutchings documents the prescience and user-friendliness of theoriginal planning principles [76], while in a recent vignette Harper considers influences onthe design of the suburb, its townscape character, and social composition [77]. Maintainingthe right of private practice as Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction, WalterBurley Griffin before 1920 designed a number of garden suburbs in Melbourne and thetowns of Letton and Griffith in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area in New South Wales [78].After leaving Canberra, Griffin retreated to Sydney to create Castlecrag, an intellectually richexperiment in social engineering, ecologically sensitive site planning, and highly originalvernacular architecture [79]. Radically different was Claremont on the Derwent River nearHobart where the Cadbury Fry Pascall consortium began, but never finished, an 'AustralianBourneville' for their chocolate factory employees [80]. A more democratic venture was thebirth and building after the Second World War of the Peter Lalor Garden Suburb north ofMelbourne through a local cooperative housing association [81].

These and many other planned developments are brought together with legislativeinnovations, theoretical treatises and metropolitan planning schemes all bearing the imprintof the garden city tradition in Robert Freestone's Model Communities (1989) [82]. Thisoffers a comprehensive sweep of the planning landscape from the late 19th century to the1980s, highlighting both the indebtedness of Australian achievements to foreign innovationand the variation in responses across state lines.

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Canberra

The landscape of the national capital of Canberra, with its low density dwellings studdinga forever spreading park-like setting interspersed with large and occasionally grand pavilionsof commerce, pleasure, and, of course, government, is often seen as quintessentially Austra-lian house-and-garden suburbia. In a more rigorous historical sense, Canberra is arguablythe epitome of the garden city tradition in Australia, both in terms of the planned gardensuburb character of its residential neighbourhoods and its metropolitan 'new town' struc-ture. The emergence of these two themes, together with the ways in which the planning andadministration of the city has veered away from Howard's ideals, has been discussed byFreestone [83], while Proudfoot's diagnosis of Canberra as a garden city concentrates oncivic design and landscape issues [84].

But there are other philosophies which have left their mark on Canberra, some lessobvious than others [85]. The city, now with a population of over a quarter of a million,far greater than its founders ever foresaw, is one of the world's most massive urban designinitiatives and an open air museum of 20th-century planning ideas, always carefullyscrutinized from afar [86]. The National Capital Development Commission whose charterwas to design, develop and construct the city from 1957 to 1988 has left behind a profusionof official and popular documentation to tell the history of the place. A planning timelinecannot help but infiltrate two companion government-sponsored urban histories [87] butthe most comprehensive independent account is by Karl Fischer [88]. His Canberra: Mythsand Models (1984) takes us from the 'battle of the sites' through the confirmation of Griffin'sconception with its city beautiful and beaux art influences as the official city plan, itsentrapment by more prosaic garden suburb thinking, and the creation and functioning ofthe city's awesome and, in the Australian context, atypically powerful postwar planningmachine.

The proto-planning of the city is a fascinating story in itself [89], with political currentsextending into the international design competition of 1911 [90] where even the losersproduced interesting designs [91]. The history of the Australian Capital Territory's uniqueleasehold land tenure system, which continues to facilitate unparalleled public control ofurban development despite modifications in recent years, has been told by Brennan [92].Neutze has supplied an instructive addendum for planners [93].

Personalities and the profession

Canberra and Walter Burley Griffin have attracted a considerable literature, though muchof it is more descriptive and documental than critical [94]. In historiographical terms, Griffin,the Prairie School architect, has stimulated most interest, with the work by James Birrell[95] being the most decisive catalyst to a minor interpretative industry. Griffin as TownPlanner (he was a foundation councillor of Australia's first town planning association in1913) has been the focus of few formal studies like that of Johnson [96], though he loomslarge of course in any account of the early saga of Canberra. Griffin's pioneering role aslandscape architect or 'land planner' is another strand, with James Weirick's polished studiesreminding us not only of Griffin's partnership with his wife Marion Mahony but of the fact

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that narrow categorisations of Griffin's work perhaps fragment our understanding of theman, his work and his influences [97].

The controversy, originality and significance of Griffin's work in national and interna-tional terms has tended to overshadow the contributions of his lower-flying contemporaries.But a slim portfolio of biographical studies does reveal something of both the broad currentsof, and eccentricity within the ranks of, the early town planning movement. Commitment,opportunism, complexity and tragedy all figure in the life of Charles Reade, the townplanning missionary who engineered his appointment as South Australia's first GovernmentTown Planner in 1918 [98]. Labour and Nationalist parliamentarian J.D. Fitzgerald hadthe most impressive political connections of any of the early leading figures, channellingmost of his energies into the reform of local government in Sydney [99]. His agenda wasinfused with the classic progressive ideals of efficiency, technocracy and environmentalism.Unlike his politics, such values were shared by such unlikely soulmates as rampaging GeorgeTaylor [100] and conservative Melbourne opthamologist James Barrett [101]. Sir JohnSulman (1849-1934), clearly the outstanding figure of his day, still awaits more detailedscrutiny [102].

Time moves on, and Denis Winston [103], Peter Harrison [104], and R.D.L. Fraser [105],all associates from the ranks of the generation of the pioneer professionals after the SecondWorld War, have attracted attention. Autobiographical accounts are often less revealing orreflecting than they could be, but there are notable contributions from those active in theplanning field including Melbourne's John Gawler [106], Perth's Harold Boas [107], andSydney's Jack Mundey in his Green Bans and Beyond [108]. Forthcoming at the time ofwriting are the keenly awaited memoirs of British expatriate Gordon Stephenson [109].

The history of the wider profession has been dutifully chronicled in official gazeteers,factually dense studies of professional development [110], and other minor articles [111],but only recently has come under more critical scrutiny. A provocative 1988 assessment byBrian McLoughlin that appeared originally in the British Planner concluded that theplanning profession had been 'remarkably ineffective' and predictably drew spirited ripostes[112]. We have seen glimpses of a larger study in progress that may better judge theachievements and limits to professionalism in the post-war years [113].

The federal scheme

The idealism of the post-war reconstruction fervour of the 1940s saw the CommonwealthGovernment for the first time actively canvassing broad interventionist policies in regionaland town planning, housing, and provision of community facilities [114]. Apart fromcommitting federal income tax revenues to a national program of state-administered publichousing, the actual impacts on the ground were disappointing. Michael Howard hasexplored the agenda of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction and its offshoots [115],seeking the reasons for failure in changing political priorities, apathy, administrativeimmaturity, and hostility from established bureaucracies, notably the Treasury. The samethemes re-emerge in interpretations of the rise and fall of federal urban policy in the earlyto mid-1970s.

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The main target of criticism in these years was the Labour Government's commitment tonew towns. Until recently, this ill-fated national program appears to have helped scare offgovernments of all persuasions from seriously considering the environmental, economic andspatial implications of continued metropolitan population growth. One of the best appliedhistorical interpretations, sparked partly by the commonwealth's current involvement in the'multi-function polis' project in Adelaide, focuses on the sobering experience with theBathurst-Orange growth centre project in New South Wales [116]. More detailed assess-ments of other programs concerned with regional planning [117] and the price and supplyof urban land [118] have appeared, although neither cover the 1980s which were charac-terized by further dismantling of strong central involvement and the increasing marketorientation of the vestiges of the original programs.

There are frequent references, usually critical, to the urban aspirations of Federal Labourin the 1970s in the Australian urban policy and planning literature, but more detailedanalyses are rarer. Clem Lloyd and Patrick Troy's Innovation and Reaction (1981) [119]remains the most thorough account of the rise and fall of the federal Department of Urbanand Regional Development between 1972 and 1975, adopting a rather stolid administrativehistory approach. The explanatory model used by Orchard [120] is set against a larger andmore complex canvas of ideological imperative, public finance and political economy. Thistakes a more independently critical line, informed in part by Painter's seminal essay on theimpossibility of a federal urban policy [121]. An index, and pointer to the flavour of,renewed federal interest in the cities of the early 1990s is the historical outline of officialurban and regional policy written by a government economist [122].

Housing, land and road development

Housing policy, public housing and home ownership in Australia have attracted a sizeableresearch literature, one strand of which addresses the nexus with the theory and practice ofphysical planning. This is rarer at the macro level where tenure, need, and affordability arethe major preoccupations, although there are exceptions such as Troy's examination of theevolution of New South Wales housing policy from the late eighteenth century [123].

More typical are case studies of individual planned communities or area developmentpolicies. The Garden City and related estates at Fishermen's Bend in Melbourne haveattracted considerable attention, partly because of their role as social and physical laborator-ies at certain critical moments in the evolution of state housing policy in Victoria, and partlybecause of their importance, 60 to 70 years on, in heritage conservation terms [124]. InSydney, Allport has explored the history and social implications of the state government'sdual low density suburban estate [125] and inner city slum clearance [126] policies, withparticular reference to impacts on women.

The controversial role played by state housing authorities in persisting with high-risehousing strategies into the early 1970s in the face of rising community opposition informsmany accounts of urban policy making in this era, including Roddewig's yet-to-be-eclipsedhistory of the trade union-led green ban movement in Melbourne and Sydney [127]. Recenthistories of the Victorian Housing Commission [128] and the South Australian Housing

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Trust [129] also address misguided housing and related planning policies of the past, andwith greater alacrity and honesty than is often the case with commissioned books. MarkPeel's research on the history of the Trust's 1950s satellite town of Elizabeth north ofAdelaide extends beyond the veneer of the physical planning into the problems confrontedby a new working class and migrant community on the periphery [130].

In contrast to the dynamic political, environmental and human context of housing studies,the history of urban land design and subdivision seems almost mundane. This may accountfor little sustained interest to date, yet there are some wonderful characters inhabiting thepast, such as the extraordinary east coast town planner-cwra-speculator Henry Halloran[131]. Jones has attempted a global view of subdivisional design [132] and Ray Brindle inMelbourne has done valuable but virtually solo work on the history of local road planning[133]. The contribution of the developer A. V. Jennings to the introduction of the modernidea of the cul-de-sac and the comprehensive planning and development of small suburbanestates from the 1930s has not gone unnoticed [134].

Design history

In much of the planning history literature, inasmuch as they are addressed at all, specificcontrols over the development of sites and precincts are dealt with primarily in legalisticterms. This reflects the situation in practice where frequently the emphasis on interpretationof regulations and statutory instruments causes sight to be lost of the end-product: thequality of the build environment [135]. There are welcome signs that the growing interestin urban design in Australia generally will both stimulate and benefit from historicalperspectives. Several threads are already evident.

Current design initiatives and debates are increasingly being set in an historical context,as evident in Sposito's account of Melbourne's South Bank redevelopment [136] andLondon's analysis of the planning of Forest Place in Perth, originally a public artifact of thecity beautiful movement, now increasingly an extension of private space [137].

The examination of how early plan forms have evolved to become the basis for structuredurban development and, eventually, planning policy has emerged as a strong research focus.Cheesman's comprehensive survey links the recurring components of postwar master plansto a history of town design back to Plato, mainly to document an inhibited convergence ofthinking rather than the nobility and innovativeness of planning traditions [138]. Hutchings[139] more optimistically traces the way in which the official South Australian approach tonew towns based on the Adelaide model encouraged systematic two dimensional designsolutions which in turn set the groundwork for a truly three dimensional urban designmethodology in the 20th century. Many recent official plans, notably for the central urbancore of Adelaide, tend to be planning history documents in their own right inasmuch as theytake a strong stance on how the relevant urban design concepts have evolved and how theyshould not only be expressed but idealized in terms of public space and landscape. Still inAdelaide, Shelton [140] has recently analysed the historicism of the city plan in the form ofa case study illustrating the general urban design debate of recent years between thecontextualist and iconographic views of building design.

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The politics of urban design history is the subject of The Design of Sydney (1988) [141],a volume edited by Peter Webber and documenting the making of various civic, commercialand residential spaces in the central city against the backdrop of an ever-evolving political,economic, and physical climate for planning since the late eighteenth century. The sameterritory is currently being explored by public historian Paul Ashton for a book commis-sioned by the Sydney City Council for its sesquicentenary history project.

Trends and challenges

The achievement of planning history in Australia has been to establish since the 1970s,through dint of individual effort rather than formal organization, a respectable and growingbody of work which directly and indirectly enriches our understanding of the origins,concerns, and constraints on modern urban planning at a variety of scales and in a diversityof settings. This review essay has demarcated an eclectic literature. The extent of what wecan comfortably embrace as a kind of planning history pushes still further into cognate areasof environmental history [142], environmental heritage [143], conservation bodies [144],and provision of urban open space [145].

Notwithstanding the sins of omission in our imperfect overview, there are readilyidentifiable lacunae revealed by our coverage. Rural planning, methodology, education andprofessional development, genuinely critical comparisons between cities and states, let alonetruly national assessments are noticeably underdone. And there are still the connectionsacross themes yet to be pursued, growing opportunities for detailed archival research, andthe intellectual obligation to theorize from the particular to the general, and vice-versa.Elements of an emerging framework for future research have already been etched byexcursions into the realms of proto-planning during the neglected late Victorian 'age ofimprovement' [146], urban reform [147], evaluation of planning practice [148], landscapedesign [149], the role of gender [150], the evolution of environmental policy [151], andpublic history [152].

So this may be where planning history is headed; the tendency, like that of the Australiancity generally, being toward growing at the edges rather than consolidating at the core. Thelatter may come in time but it may well be that mainstream historians need to discoverplanning for a truly substantial breakthrough to be made. Bolton's Spoils and Spoilers (1981)[153] and Powell's An Historical Geography of Modern Australia (1988) [154] lead the wayin, for the first time, stitching chronologies of town planning action and inaction intobroader surveys of national development.

Yet it is not that we see progress and legitimacy in narrowly academic terms. Hutchingshas argued for a closer relationship with public policy and plan-making. His view is that forinterest in planning history to even be maintained 'a conscious effort to involve the widerprofessional and administrative community' must be made [155]. Its real social relevancewill, at the end of the day, stand or fall accordingly. Among other things, an understandingof planning history can help define precedents, expand humility, and lead to more consideredenvironmental assessments. It can even add a healthy scepticism to the tool kits of planningprofessionals and urban administrators so that, for example, nostalgia is not confused with

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heritage, post-modernism with mere eclectically decorated building facades, nor neo-traditional site planning with the real thing.

There is undoubtedly room for optimism here, even given the current climate for planningwhich is being driven perhaps more urgently than at any time in Australia's history by thespectre of emergent environmental problems. There is the danger that past planning practicesand theories are discredited in this thinking; being there for condemnation rather thaninstruction. We can only echo the sentiments of Abbott and Adler in highlighting theshortsightedness of the 'action-driven and future oriented' syndrome [156].

But one picks the time and place. For example, we have made reference to the developmentof urban design history as a productive research focus. Through teaching, professionalpublications and newspaper articles in his adopted Hobart, Barrie Shelton has shown howmodern planning initiatives can variously destroy, injure, respect and even enhance plannedhistoric fabric. In 1990 Shelton even took the trouble to reassess the lessons of Camillo Sittefor his Australian audience [157], effectively illustrating the applied role of planning historyin contributing to current professional practice and debates. James Colman is similarlystraddling markets with his historically-informed pieces on planning in Sydney [158].

And so we virtually return to endorse the territory so brilliantly delineated by Stretton inIdeas for Australian Cities more than two decades ago: informed, intelligent commentarieson the options and outcomes of urban public policy, the kind of analysis rooted as much incontemporary and future history as the distant past.

There thus appear to be several main challenges for Australian planning history: moreoriginal research; more integrated effort; a touch more national cooperation; more theory;more applied analysis; more contribution to current and emergent issues. This is an agendanot necessarily restricted to planning historians.

References

1. G. Walkley, Town and country planning in South Australia, Proceedings of the Royal Geog-raphical Society of Australia (S.A. Branch) 53 (1952) 79-92: ibid. Pioneer planning of BritishColonies in Malaya and Australia, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia(S.A. Branch) 55 (1955) 13-29.

2. A.J. Brown and H. M. Sherrard, Town and Country Planning, Melbourne: Melbourne UniversityPress, 1951.

3. D. Winston, Sydney's Great Experiment: The Progress of the Cumberland County Plan, Sydney:Angus and Robertson, 1957.

4. C. Rivett, Parramatta's Town-Plan 1788 and 1955, Parramatta: New City Press, 1955.5. C., Craig, Early town planning in Hobart, Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of

Tasmania, December (1944) 89-106.6. H. Stretton, Ideas for Australian Cities, 3rd edn, Sydney: Transit, 1989.7. L. Sandercock, Cities for Sale: Property Politics and Urban Planning in Australia, Melbourne:

Melbourne University Press, 1975.8. P. Spearritt, Sydney since the Twenties, Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1978.9. G.E. Cherry, A changing profession in a changing world, Australian Planner, 24(4) (1986)

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10. R. Freestone and A. Hutchings (eds), Australian Planning History, Australian Planner, 26(3)(1988) 4-40.

11. R. Freestone, The development of urban planning in Australia: a supplement to Sutcliffe,Planning History Bulletin, 4(2) (1982) 30-39; Some recent references on Australian planninghistory, Planning History Bulletin, 8(3) (1986) 15-17. Bibliography of Australian PlanningHistory, Australian Planner, 26(3), September (1988) 37-40.

12. R. Freestone, The development of urban planning in Australia 1888-1948: A bibliographyand review, in P. Williams (ed), Social Process and the City, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin,1983, pp. 175-204.

13. M. Huxley and J. B. McLoughlin, The new urban studies literature: A review with specialreference to Australia, Progress in Planning, 24(3) (1985) 162-245.

14. G. Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, Melbourne:Sun Books, 1966.

15. L. Frost, The New Urban Frontier: Urbanisation and city building in Australasia and theAmerican West, Kensington: NSW University Press, 1991.

16. A. Fogg, Australian Town Planning Law: Uniformity and Change, St Lucia: University ofQueensland Press, 1974.

17. M. Bowman, Australian Approaches to Environmental Management: The Response of StatePlanning, Hobart: Environmental Law Reform Group, 1979.

18. P. Ryan, Urban Development Law and Policy, Sydney: Law Book Company, 1987.19. G. Cherry, The Evolution of British Town Planning, Leighton Buzzard: Leonard Hill, 1974.20. M. Scott, American City Planning since 1890, Berkeley: University of California Press,

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26. W.M. Grubb, Planning in Victoria 1910-1043, Polis, 3(2) (1976) 5-9.27. R. Bunker, Property, propriety and purpose: planning in Adelaide since the Second World War,

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metropolitan Perth, in J. Gentilli (ed), Western Landscapes, Nedlands: University of WesternAustralia Press, 1979, pp. 359-382.

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34. P.B. McLeod and J.R. Ellis, Planning for Perth: a brief history and commentary, EconomicActivity, 22(3) (1976) 12-18.

35. O. Yiftachel and D. Hedgecock, The planning of Perth's changing form: invention or conven-tion?, Australian Planner, 27(1) (1988) 6-11.

36. C.T. Stannage, The People of Perth: A Social History of Western Australia's Capital City, Perth:Carroll's for Perth City Council, 1979.

37. G. Seddon and D. Devine, A City and its Setting: Images of Perth, Western Australia, Fremantle:Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1986.

38. J. Colman, Post-war Planning for the County of Cumberland, New South Wales, PlanningResearch Centre, University of Sydney, 1968.

39. P. Harrison, Planning Sydney: twenty-five years on, Royal Australian Planning Institute Journal,9(4) (1971) 122-129: ibid., Planning the metropolis.: a case study, in R.S. Parker and P.N. Troy,(eds), The Politics of Urban Growth, Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972,pp. 61-99.

40. P. Spearritt and C. DeMarco, Planning Sydney's Future, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988.41. N.A.W. Ashton, Sydney: Village to Metropolis. A Brief Review of Planning in the Sydney Region,

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42. J. Paterson, Sydney's Great Experiment Goes Into Mass Production, Monograph No. 6,Australian Institute of Public Administration, 1981.

43. E.K. Teather, Planning documents as value-laden and selective as fiction? The Cumberlandcounty planning scheme, Sydney, 1948, Planning History, 13(2) (1991) 23-28.

44. I. Alexander, Post-war metropolitan planning: goals and realities, in P.N. Troy (ed), Equity inthe City, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1981, pp. 145-171.

45. O. Yiftachel, The role of the state in metropolitan planning: the case of Perth, Western Australia,1930-1970, Urban Policy and Research, 6(1) (1988) 6-18. See also R. Freestone, Planning forprofit in urban Australia 1900-1930: a descriptive prolegomenon, Antipode, 13(1) (1986)15-26.

46. D. N. Jeans, Town planning in New South Wales 1829-1842, Australian Planning InstituteJournal, 3(6), (1963) 191-196; ibid. The impact of central authority upon the landscape:Southeastern Australia 1788-1850, in J.M. Powell and M. Williams (eds), Australian SpaceAustralian Time, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 1-17.

47. M. Williams, Early town plans in South Australia, Australian Planning Institute Journal, 4(2)(1966) 45-51; The parkland towns of Australia and New Zealand, Geographical Review, 56(1)(1966) 67-89; The Making of the South Australian Landscape: A Study in the HistoricalGeography of Australia, New York: Academic Press, 1974.

48. J.M. Powell, Mirrors of the New World: Images and Image-Makers in the Settlement Process,Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1978.

49. M. Auster, Co-operating in the Country, Australian Planner, 23(4) (1985) 3-7.50. P. Statham (ed), The Origins of Australian Capital Cities, Melbourne: Cambridge University

Press, 1989.51. P.-A. Johnson, The Original Sydney: A Geometrical and Numerical Analysis of Phillip's

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53. P.-A. Johnson, The Original Parramatta: A Geometrical and Numerical Analysis of the EarliestPlan, Graduate School of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales, 1982.

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54. D. Pike, Paradise of Dissent, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1957.55. Walkley, op. cit. [1].56. R. Bunker, The early years, in Hutchings and Bunker, op. cit. [21], pp. 7-20.57. Williams, op. cit. [47].58. A. Hutchings, Light's Adelaide plan: a South American Connection?' South Australian Geo-

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68. R.K. Clark, The city beautiful: promise and reality, Architect (Perth), 10(2) (1969) 40-44.69. R. Gibbons, Improving Sydney 1908-1909, in J. Roe (ed.), Twentieth Century Sydney: Studies

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82. R. Freestone, Model Communities: The Garden City Movement in Australia, Melbourne:Thomas Nelson, 1989.

83. R. Freestone, Canberra as a garden city 1901-1930, Journal of Australian Studies, (19) (1986)3-20.

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85. P. Proudfoot, Symbolism and axiality in Canberra, Architecture Australia, 60(7) (1991) 45-49.86. D. Massey, A watching brief: Canberra in the Town Planning Review 1911-1989, Town

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89. R. Pegrum, The Bush Capital: How Australia Chose Canberra as its Capital City, Sydney: Haleand Iremonger, 1983.

90. G. Murphy, Prelude to the planning of Canberra, Canberra Historical Journal, (21) (1988)11-20.

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117. C.P. Harris and K.E. Dixon, Regional Planning in New South Wales Since 1944 with SpecialReference to the Albury-Wodonga Growth Centre. Canberra's Centre for Research on FederalFinancial Relations, Australian National University, 1978.

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124. D. Harris, Housing Reform and Fishermens Bend 1900-1913. Urban Policy and Research, 6(3)(1988) 119-123. See also M. Nankervis, A Museum of State Housing: Port and SouthMelbourne. Heritage Australia, Autumn (1991) 16-19, and D. Routt, Classic Homes for thePeople: The State Savings Bank Housing Scheme of the 1920s. Transition, Nos. 22/23, Summer(1987), 45-51.

125. C. Allport, Women and Suburban Housing: Post-War Planning in Sydney 1943-61, in Williams,op. cit., (ref[12], pp. 64-87).

126. C. Allport, The Human Face of Remodelling: Postwar 'Slum' Clearance in Sydney. Urban Policyand Research, 6(3) (1988) 106-118.

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127. R. Roddewig, Green Bans: The birth of Australian environment politics. Sydney: Hale andIremonger, 1978.

128. R. Howe, (ed.), New Houses for Old: Fifty years of public housing in Victoria 1936-1988.Melbourne: Ministry of Housing and Construction, 1988.

129. S. Marsden, Business, Charity and Sentiment: The South Australian Housing Trust 1936-1986.Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1986.

130. M. Peel, Planning the Good City in Australia: Elizabeth as a New Town. Working Paper No. 30,Canberra's Urban Research Program, Australian National University, 1992.

131. G. Murphy, H.F. Halloran: Dealer in land and dreams, Canberra Historical Journal, No. 17(1986) 1-8.

132. R.S. Jones, Evolution of the Land Subdivision/Development Process in Australia, in What Aboutthe People?, Technical papers, 26th Australian Survey Congress, Institution of Surveyors, 1984,pp. 73-77.

133. R.E. Brindle, Two Steps Forward and One Back: The hesitant progress of Australian subdivisionroad planning. Proceedings, Australian Road Research Board Conference, 14(1) (1988), pp. 193-209.

134. G. Butler, A.V. Jennings: The early estates. Historic Environment, 3(1) (1983) 32-46. See alsoR. Smith, Culs-de-sac: A.V. Jennings' Contribution. Australian Planner, 27(3) (1989) 12-16.

135. J. Dawkins, The Role of Discretion in the History of Development Control. University of WesternAustralia Law Review, 16(3) (1985) 295-301.

136. V.J. Sposito, Central Melbourne: Planning and design initiatives in the past five years — a quietrevolution. Australian Planner, 25(1) (1987), 12-20.

137. G. London, Forrest Place, Perth: A case study for an urban architecture. Transition, No. 30,Spring (1989) 19-31.

138. R. Cheesman, Patterns in Perpetuity: New Towns Adelaide South Australia: A study of adaptiveplanning processes. Adelaide: Thornton House, 1986.

139. A. Hutchings, The Evolution of Urban Design as Planning Policy: The South Australianexperience. Planning Perspectives, 4 (1989) 167-186. See also R. Bunker, Urban design ina metropolitan setting: a case study of Adelaide. Town Planning Review, 61(1) (1990)21-40.

140. B. Shelton, City of Adelaide Plan 1986-1991: Built (and Spatial) Form. Australian Planner, 24(4)(1986) 23-26.

141. P. Webber (ed.), The Design of Sydney: Three decades of change in the city centre. Sydney: LawBook Company, 1988.

142. S. Dovers and J. Dargavel, Environmental History: A confluence of disciplines.; AustralianHistorical Association Bulletin, Nos. 66-67, March-June (1991) 25-30.

143. G. Davison, A Brief history of the Australian heritage movement, in G. Davison and C.McConville (eds), A Heritage Handbook. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991, pp. 14-27.

144. I.F. Wyatt, Ours in Trust: A personal history of the National Trust of Australia (NSW). Sydney:Willow Bend Press, 1987.

145. C. Cunneen, 'Hands off the Parks!' The provision of parks and playgrounds, in Roe, op. cit.,(ref[69], pp. 104-119).

146. A. Roberts, Planning Sydney's Transport 1875-1900, in Max Kelly (ed.), Nineteenth CenturySydney: Essays in urban history. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1978, pp. 24-36.

147. G. Davison, The city-bred child and urban reform in Melbourne 1900-1940, in Williams, op.cit., (ref [12], pp. 143-174).

148. J.B. McLoughlin, Studying Planning in Practice: An expedition to an academic outback. Austra-lian Planner, 24(4) (1987) 9-13.

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149. H. Proudfoot, Gardens in Bloom: Jocelyn Brown and her Sydney gardens of the '30s and '40s.Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1990.

150. L. Sandercock, Property, Politics and Urban Planning: A History of Australian City Planning1890-1990. 2nd edition, New Brunswick: Transaction, 1990.

151. N.G. Butlin, Sydney's Environmental Amenity 1970-1975: A study of the system of wastemanagement and pollution control. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976.

152. J. Rickard and P. Spearrit (eds), Packaging the Past? Public Histories. Melbourne: MelbourneUniversity Press, 1991.

153. G. Bolton, Spoils and Spoilders: Australians make their environment 1788-1980. Sydney:George Allen and Unwin, 1981.

154. J.M. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia: The restive fringe. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1988;.

155. A. Hutchings, Planning History: How Relevant is it to planning policy and practice. PlanningHistory, 11(2) (1989) 28.

156. C. Abbott and S. Adler, Historical Analysis as a Planning Tool. Journal of the AmericanAssociation of Planners, 55(4) (1989) 467-473.

157. B. Shelton, A Centennium of Sitte. Australian Planner, 27(4) (1989) 29-32.158. J. Colman, Fouling the Nest. Urban Futures, 1(2) (1991), 30-32.

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