Foley, Andrew Scott

Argent, Neil

Wood, Stephen

2025-02-10

Please contact rune@une.edu.au if you require access to this thesis for the purpose of research or study

<p>This dissertation examined whether outer-Melbourne’s progress associations and newspapers were an instrumental factor in planning’s evolution between 1945-75. This has academic and historical significance because, unlike inner-suburban dissent from the late-1960s/1970s, communities on the city’s outskirts have commonly been depicted as passive in relation to the era’s numerous development excesses. </p><p>Instead, I have found that the activism of galvanised neighborhoods and mainstream media, reacting to socio-economic changes and physical hardships, played a pivotal reform role by exposing shortcomings in city-fringe subdivisions established after World War Two (WW2). This ultimately resulted in learnings, improved statutory instruments and better infrastructure. These conclusions disrupt numerous inferences in urban histories regarding benign, outer-suburban culture, and illustrate that contributions emanating from these amenity-deprived areas should not be disregarded. </p><p>However, while acknowledging the efforts of civil society to improve Melbourne’s peripheral environments, this research is also critical of planning’s performance during the post-war period. Because even though planning was popular and had much to offer a growing metropolis, the community were often frustrated by its reactive approach and convoluted structure, while being subjugated by the enduring influence of developers and the dubious motivations of Victoria’s political establishment.</p>

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/64732

en

University of New England

Healing the heartbreak streets: An empirical investigation into civil society activism and planning systems in post-war, outer-suburban Melbourne

Thesis Doctoral

Publication