Publications

‘AFFORDABILITY THROUGH MODESTY'

The Australian Institute of Urban Studies warns that our continual desire to build
suburbs of super-size houses will lead to Perth becoming an unliveable city in just a
few generations.

'Viva la Revolution'

When Charles Darwin visited Sydney in 1836 aboard the Beagle he wrote in his diary:

"...the whole population, poor and rich, are bent on acquiring wealth ... the number
of large houses and other buildings just finished is truly surprising; nevertheless
everyone complains of the high rent and the difficulty of acquiring a home."
From "Sydney/Purgatorio," by Craig San Roque in Psyche and the City, Edited by Thomas Singer

And so it began from the earliest days that Australia's middle-classes grew into a nation of
conspicuous consumers. Perth was however a little slow in this regard and census data
shows that for many decades the average working-class home in Perth was small and
comprised only four rooms.

‘THE HUMAN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE'

We are living in changing times and, as far as Perth is concerned, things are
far from ‘business as usual' in terms of our ecological sustainability. The time
has come for us all to learn to regard our city as a human ecological system
whose health is measured in terms of behaviour and social health.

'Could Entropy Provide a New Paradigm for Creating more Liveable, Less Ordered Cities?'

Contemporary city design is concerned mainly with producing an orderly built environment, motivated almost entirely by transport planning and ease of land subdivision. Defining logical land-use patterns, establishing an effective road network and delivering necessary services are seen as the major objectives for achieving a high standard of contemporary city planning. Paradoxically however, a purely utilitarian city can result in lower standards of liveability where people have to "fit in‟ to an ordered environment offering so little in terms of community building and self-fulfilment. Entropic or "disordered‟ urbanism is emerging as an interesting discourse among urban planners who posit that less order could be the future for developing successful urban communities, particularly considering that most future urban planning will probably involve the development of irregular land areas within existing cities. This paper explores this theme of disordered planning by examining medieval cities, which at first appear to be highly random and disordered, but are in fact well-planned and foster community growth.