From a modest beginning as practical steps for fire prevention in the 1890s, urban planning in Malaysia has matured into a profession concerned with all aspects of development. As in many other developing countries, there are many problems and issues that need almost immediate and simultaneous attention. With limited resources, emphasis has tended to be on socio-economic goals. In the process environmental aspects such as landscape resources have not been given due consideration. The loss of much of these resources as the result of a rapid urban development highlights the need for a new approach to be adopted. The thesis discusses the need for a model to ensure that the concerns of these resources are fully integrated into the urban planning process, and for an approach that must allow for the development of a systematic landscape resources inventory, its presentation and analysis. The dynamic nature of urban development means that the system must also be able to incorporate almost daily updating and analysis. The versatility of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is well placed to serve this purpose. The study starts with an understanding of the importance of the various landscape resources within the historic Kuala Lumpur Old Town, proceeding to sketch a model that would help to integrate these resources into the existing urban planning system. Using ARC/INFO software, the model demonstrates in sketch outline and by example typical variables of an urban landscape database for Kuala Lumpur Old Town. Using the available planning data applied to 3 case studies. The first of these looks at the Bukit Nenas Forest Reserve, the second at the Kelang-Gombak Rivers Corridor, and the third at the so-called colonial shophouses.

Public places, viewed as a core component of cities for centuries, have become a field of research subject to broad concern for more than two decades. Typically under the influence of globalisation and privatisation, attractive and alluring public places have been placed at the centre of both major world and old-industrial cities, competing in search of new niches in competitive urban markets The research undertaken in this thesis represents an inquiry into the nature of public places in Northern Ireland. Its scope is threefold. First, it proposes a means of conceptualising the publicness of public place as a social, historical and cultural product, with publicness defined as the sum of characteristics that make a public place perceived as being public. Second, to create a methodology that acknowledges that there is no homogenous public with a singular standardised experience of public place, and conduct an empirical study that understands the individuality and temporal dynamics that are at work within public places. Third, it tests this methodology on several public place case studies across Northern Ireland to better understand the unique myriad of issues which influence the perceived publicness of public places in Northern Ireland, such as the social turbulent period colloquially referred to as the Troubles. The thesis, informed by the research methodology of new institutionalism, is founded on the understanding that publicness is more complex than perhaps initially understood. Publicness may be understood as a cultural reality and a historical artefact. All public places have been created at a certain time within a specific sociocultural setting, with Madanipour (2003) asserting that public places reflect the society in which they are located. In addition to the cultural reality, public places are shaped by the incidents and events that occur within them with peoples' perceptions of the place being influenced by their own personal experiences or insights of the place. Subsequently, the public place is a historical artefact in a constant state of 'becoming'. This understanding of public places was adopted to study the socially turbulent context of Northern Ireland. The socially embedded sectarianism and segregation that inhibits social interaction between communities, manifested most profoundly within the residential segregation that is prevalent in many urban areas, has had a severe impact upon perceived publicness of public places. The delicately balanced post-conflict society provides an interesting juxtaposition of simmering conflict and waking peace with public places seemingly taking the stage as the fulcrum of the delicate balance that exists within perceived publicness. The social contestation over land and space has had a profound impact on perceptions of ownership but also control and identity of public places to create urban areas in which people 'know one's place'.

The future of the architectural profession faces continued uncertainty in the twenty-first century. Changes in the next 20 years are likely to leave the profession with a smaller and less defined centre, finely balanced between competing art and commercial roles, and those architects who are able to maintain a generalist building design/management approach. Based on existing trends, and personal experience in the profession, this thesis finds the influence of traditional practices will become limited to small scale and niche projects - should the title of architect survive continued government scrutiny. With or without title protection, the findings here suggest that the architectural field will continue to be characterised by more rather than less rapidly changing satellite functions, and roles in all areas competing for economic, Cultural, and - increasingly important in creative sectors and urban growth - knowledge capital. Relative to the increasingly contested, compromised, and privatised nature of architecture practice, this thesis focuses on debates and practice frameworks outside the mainstream of building -centred architecture. It investigates selected accounts by architects, of their practice trajectory since the late twentieth century, to reveal and analyse different approaches to architectural agency, focusing on influencing better quality shared environments. The thesis aim is to reveal a better understanding of architects' evolving professional identities and practice roles. It sets out a unique framework by which architecture and urban space can be conjointly characterised and evaluated as reciprocal outcomes of more critical and transformative practice. It contributes new knowledge about architects' personal strategies and practice frameworks that advocate greater open-ness and use-value for shared civic space, in contrast to more objectified and controlled exchange-value outcomes. The methodology combines sociological and architectural theories. It adapts concepts from key treatise including Bourdieu's agent-field analysis and Unger's philosophy of transformative vocation, interpreted with Till's proposals for critical spatial practice in architecture, and Perez-Gomez's concepts of architectural praxis as conscious applications of architects' knowledge and ethics to practice. The thesis analyses and locates architects career accounts as new practice frameworks within the background of shifting traditional architectural norms and the broad field of contemporary architecture practice. In-depth interviews with selected architects collect narratives about architects' knowledge and skill, examining them for lessons about better shared civic activity and how creative knowledge can include critical and transformative motives while satisfying more instrumental issues of survival, and also gaining esteem and influence. The analysis focuses on professional-identity claims and diverse practice approaches rather than individual projects in isolation, to examine thresholds of architectural knowledge, key moments of action, personal values, and identity. The broader context of how the professional field of architecture and its governing bodies, including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), debate practice futures is also set out and discussed. The thesis argues that different critical practice trajectories share a combination of personal intention and motivations that are conceptualised as a form of professional habitus and compared with established professional norms. It questions existing understandings of participation and place, and argues for architects to (re)balance their instrumental and transformative design knowledge in response to changing professional and social contexts. Conclusions support (re)framing architects creative knowledge toward a more socially-driven critical design praxis, to effectively engage in an increasingly globalised and interconnected urban society.

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In Malta, the introduction of the Structure Plan followed a period of haphazard development which was perceived as ruining the characteristics of the island; the aim of the thesis is to determine whether the Structure Plan policies, in effect since 1992, have protected the natural environment in Malta. In 1988, the island was divided into two zones, one in which development was permissible under Temporary Provision Schemes and the remaining much larger area, commonly known as “Outside Development Zone”. The study focused mostly on the latter area, and analysed through the use of development control data, the pressures which were exerted on the natural environment. This it did through the use of different methodologies, adapted from the work of several authors, who worked on the British planning system. Application, decision and enforcement data together with cartographic analyses and direct observations of decision boards were used in the study. The study demonstrated that Outside Development Zone was subjected to significant development pressure. The major cause of the development was policy breaches at decision level, which were not found to be restricted to any particular decision board. Most policy breaches occurred when granting permission to develop; refusals mainly being in line with policy. The agricultural and the dwellings group of developments were those which benefited most from such policy breaches. The results showed that Structure Plan policies had a positive effect on the decision-making process Outside Development Zone, only when the decision boards applied these policies correctly. However, over time, the performance of decision boards has improved. It is recommended that changes in the legislation occur to introduce a requirement whereby a decision (grant / refusal) should be accompanied by detailed reasons based on policy, thus limiting abuses. In addition, there is scope for additional studies focusing on the application of the only Local Plan in effect in Malta and on the effects on the environment of the less common development types.

As built reality, architecture constitutes presence: a place created to have a present use and meaning. Absence, in contrast, reflects the condition of no longer used leftover spaces and structures that escape the definition of architecture and the city as designed and planned environments. I investigate absence as it appears in the experience of urban leftovers, drawing its qualities into processes of design and representation. Using a cross-disciplinary approach centred in architecture, I ground my research on a series of distinctive sites, which feature different forms of absence. The layering of photographs, videos, drawings and writings is the method through which I explore absence, responding to its capacity of evoking distant, uncertain and multiple presences. By studying an unrealised project by Peter Eisenman for the Cannaregio Ovest district in Venice and George Descombes’ Parc de Lancy near Geneva I focus on absence in the relation between site and design. In two further case studies, located in South London, I analyse and interpret absence in the context of broader processes of urban transformation: Burgess Park, intermittently built over the last 60 years on a partially effaced industrial setting that still bears traces of its former configuration; and the Heygate, a modernist council estate that remained almost empty for a decade, and was recently demolished to give way to a contentious regeneration project. I reveal absence as key for a nuanced architectural understanding and representation of the experience of the city – not opposed to presence but in balance and complementarity to it. Through layering I show how the awareness of and engagement with absence enables a richer, denser and more inclusive dialogue between site and design, rendering absence as such: something that remains away from our grasp so it has to be recreated through memory and imagination.

The current population of Bangkok, Thailand, of over 6.5 million places this city among the largest in the Developing World. Recent economic expansion has been rapid, bringing with it pressures on urban land use and a concurrent rapid rise in market land prices which outstrip income and productivity growth. Urban land readjustment has been considered to provide a potentially significant solution to the availability of urban land in Bangkok and the provincial cities of Thailand. A land information system (LIS) has been employed in the context of land readjustment in the urban and suburban environments of Bangkok. The LIS has involved field surveying , photogrammetry and geographical information system packages (ARC/INFO/TIN/AML), the output being a spatial and aspatial database and maps in a variety of forms. Previously an information system has not been used for urban land readjustment. Also cadastral maps, which are regarded as a rudimentary requirement for city planners, are currently produced by slow and labour intensive field survey methods. Consequently an alternative scheme involving up-to-date large scale aerial photographs has been developed, with the help of ground control by a global positioning system (Trimble 4000ST GPS), an analytical stereoplotter (AP190), and an independent model block adjustment program (BLOKK). It is evident that this photogrammetric approach requires less effort than conventional field survey methods. An additional result is a model for urban land readjustment (MULAR) which has been developed for editing and analysing data.