My research is an examination of the scope of contemporary urban design and planning tools and processes which can act as alternative qualitative methodologies for the renewal of urban conditions at multiple scales through adaptive methods embracing change, stresses and shocks affecting societies and the city as a growing epicentre of human inhabitation and complex systems. With growing urbanisation, the question of what constitutes liveable urbanism across urban territories is a critical one. Addressing the lack of unified and culturally aware analysis of the evolution in urban design and planning practice being applied in various contexts across the developed and developing world, I have, through my own international research programme over more than 15 years, traced their potentials for incubating renewal through a collection of published outputs, each with their own approach: a book, essays for the media and for exhibition catalogues and a webzine. Through examination I have learned about the capacities of tools and processes to break with silo thinking and damaging legacies of the past, and to adapt, or to forge new instrumentalities in ways that are context-responsive and situational. My focus has been on studying largely ongoing, phased projects, so this is a work in progress. This self-appointed intellectual mandate for comparative urbanism has required a form of evaluation that includes consideration of the use and mis-use of history and old rules, operational narratives and contestory factors, enquiry into assumptions made, responsibilities claimed, and objectives combining issues of determination (of plans, by their clients) and self-determination (of communities). I have striven to show how the recognition of planning baggage and the emptying out of its tactics, is, in diverse ways, creating space for alternative behaviors in the form of new, potentially more socially equitable and responsive patterns of operation, engaging and reusing resources. I have learned that new hybrid processes of top down and bottom up planning, and interest in engaging with multi-modal approaches with their relative novelty and unprecedented forms of complexity, represent major challenges to long-held beliefs about planning’s role in society and the typical relationships between planner and those planned for. They foster a sense of the symbiotic relationships, interdependencies, alliances and self-determination cities need to generate their futures in socially equitable and resilient ways. My body of research will help inform and contribute methodologies and concepts to future outputs on related themes concerning urban design and planning’s role and identity, including issues of Urbanista.org, my webzine. The wider implications of my research are also that institutions involved in land use of all kinds accordingly need to carry a responsibility to adopt a higher commitment to the value of and need for adaptive instruments of civic urban order.

This study is an experiment in landscape art where artists put large pieces of fabric in personally significant places to be marked by the land. Landscape art is a site of power that can challenge embedded assumptions regarding national identity within tensions among local, national, and global scales. This research ruptures the Canadian myth of wilderness nation through the creation of an alternative landscape art that is informed by a theoretical discourse on the threshold as a site of difference and of learning. Inspired by the creative processes of the participating artists, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Pat Beaton, and Robert Dmytruk, I consider pedagogical implications for art education when pedagogy is structured on the powerful premise that learning is an uncertain, relational, and continual process. Using my understanding of the methodology of a/r/tography, I create and poetically analyze art that offers opportunities for personal reflection into the nature of transformative educational practices. This form of arts-based research is influenced by the notion of assemblage, as presented by Deleuze and Guattari (1984), as well as practices of narrative, action research, and autoethnography, all of which echo the research method of currere (Pinar & Grumet, 1976). Within a/r/tography, image and text are creatively juxtaposed to inspire new understandings about the pedagogical thresholds among my roles of artist, researcher, and teacher. Arguing that social change must begin from a personal awareness of one's tacit values, I posit that a/r/tography can be an educational opening into reflection of such values due to the embodied, personal nature of art-making. Through a philosophical discussion of subjectivity and community following the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacque Derrida, I take the participants' and my local, significant places as sites from which to reverse the binary of landscape and artist, following an artistic version of deconstruction. From this a/r/tographical inquiry into elements of the land that serve as structural and heuristic supports, I critique the neoliberal subject position within nationalism, education, and landscape art. I draw on understandings of identity as theorized and performed from the premise that it, like learning, is an unpredictable, relational activity of emergence that is alway slocated on the threshold of difference between one person and another. Thus, I examine the educational, ontological, and social importance of what it means to exist within community in the land. In doing so, I raise questions regarding the normative structures of our educational institutions and suggest that social transformation could begin through art practices as a creative form of pedagogy. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This is a creative/critical project, a collection of narratives inspired by critical discourse that map a local landscape and chart a personal topography. As a result of interdisciplinary study, particularly in the area of cultural geography and map making, I found new ways to explore ideas about Cornwall’s heritage, her undermined landscape and expand upon issues raised in my MA dissertation. Recognising the instability and partiality of maps provided insight and mapping became method as newly revealed pathways and subtly shifting perspectives inspired fresh narratives which challenge stereotypical images of Cornwall and reveal the sometimes dark realities of rurality. The more personal narratives in this collection reveal a different undermined landscape: ideas about romantic constructions and inheritance led to explorations of nostalgia, memory and identity. Life events became life writing and many of these narratives reflect a search for direction and for a missing person: the artist I once was. But there are other disappearances in these narratives and the final chapter gives an account of family events that had to be recorded but which raise ethical questions that life writers cannot ignore. We must take responsibility for the way we write about vulnerable subjects and recognise what this writing tells us about ourselves: that, as Nancy K. Miller has suggested, by exposing our lives to others through life writing, we too become vulnerable subjects. The essay accompanying these narratives reflects upon process and finds ways of giving an account of the writer writing. It uncovers contemporary theories that are embedded in the narratives and I describe it as an orouboros, a creature that continuously eats its own tail. Like the text it subjects to scrutiny, the essay is a life narrative, an autobiographical act that merges creative and critical thinking and this amalgamation has been my aim since my studies began.

The aim of this project was to build and render digital landscape models that reflect natural element characteristics and use the resulting data sets as source material for fine art investigation and production. The project utilized 3D computer modeling techniques, selected output technology and studio facilities. Computer-generated virtual landscapes material was incorporated into studio practice by providing observed environmental content for the development of works for exhibition. An accompanying exegesis explored the relationship and tensions between digital landscape data sets and the broader use of landscape as a motif within an Australian context.

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This thesis examines and contextualises historically significant aspects of the ways in which David Roberts’ lucrative lithographic publication Egypt and Nubia (1846-49) represented the “Orient”. The analysis demonstrates that Roberts used tropes, particularly ruins and dispossessed figures, largely derived from a revised version of British picturesque landscape art, in order to depict Egypt as a developmentally poor state. By establishing how this imagery was interpreted in the context of the early Victorian British Empire, the thesis offers an elucidation of the connection between British imperial attitudes and the picturesque in Roberts’ work. The contemporary perception of Egypt and Nubia as a definitive representation of the state is argued to relate, not only to the utility of the picturesque as an “accurate” descriptive mode, despite its highly mediated nature, but also to the ways in which Britain responded to shifting political relationships with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1869. This political element of the research also suggests a more problematised reading of Robert’s work in relation to constructs of British imperialism and Edward Said’s theory of ‘Orientalism’, than has been provided by previous art historical accounts. A significant and innovative feature of the research is its focus on extensive analysis of textual descriptions of Egypt in early Victorian Britain and contemporary imperial historiography in relation to characteristics displayed in Roberts’ art. This offers a basis for a more specific, contextual understanding of Roberts’ work, as well as historically repositioning nineteenth-century British picturesque art practice and the visual culture of the early Victorian British Empire.

At the heart of this thesis is an investigation of the reciprocal relationship between the city of Luanda and one of its central informal neighbourhoods, Chicala. The study situates Chicala among conflicts that have arisen in the urban densification process and their socio-political management, and in the context of a long history of natural formation. The particular geographical location of Chicala, along with its integrity and specific development, made the neighbourhood vulnerable to colonial invasions, and more recently to aggressive urbanism and large-scale masterplans. In the context of Luanda’s current neoliberal trajectory of urban regeneration following a protracted civil war (1975-2002), Chicala is undergoing a process of demolition and replacement by high-standard real estate developments. The research began shortly before plans for the complete erasure of the neighbourhood were implemented and local authorities and private investors forcefully displaced its inhabitants to remote settlements with unsuitable living conditions. The thesis aims to write Luanda’s urban history afresh by forging a place for the neighbourhood of Chicala and its wider context in the city’s urban order. Documentation of the characteristics of a neighbourhood on the brink of disappearing required a collaborative methodological approach, and a reflection of how architects can operate in such complex urban settings. The thesis aims to go beyond a mere exploration of informal architectural order; rather, it is a contribution to understanding Luanda, and to understanding postcolonial cities in general in their depth. Analysis of a set of relationships between the neighbourhood and the city is presented in a chronology of six chapters. Each chapter emphasises the ‘hybrid’ nature of Chicala as part of a larger context, both in urban terms (autoconstruction, monuments and neoliberal form-fantasies are addressed as part of an urban continuum) and historically (precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods are presented as part of an interconnected process). The thesis concludes with remarks on the collaborative dimension of the research and the practices of ‘blurring’ it enabled. It is complemented by four Appendices, presenting a portfolio which complements the methodological approach: fieldwork reports, institutional documents based on the collaboration with Agostinho Neto University, and an extensive visual archive produced over the course of the research.

This dissertation’s essential aim is to understand the collective nature of a rapidly evolving twenty-first-century city. Looking closely at Doha, Qatar - a city that can choose to be anything it desires - reveals a tension between the regime’s aspirations and the expectations of its (mostly foreign) constituents. Doha’s fundamental transformation from village to metropolis provides an interpretation of ‘city’ that discloses the possibilities and limitations of civic culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. This thesis’ contribution to knowledge is four-fold: (1) to add generally to architectural and urban theory, and particularly to Arabian Gulf studies; (2) to develop an analytical framework based upon hermeneutic phenomenology that incorporates architecture into its structure of understanding; (3) to use this framework to illuminate the structure of Doha’s urban culture during its most transformative period; (4) to publish previously unseen documents and gather original personal narratives related to the period of study. This thesis takes as its central concern how the institutional order within Doha, Qatar, provides the ground for ethical and ontological orientation; how one specific urban society, Doha, Qatar, uses architecture and its representation in its search for an authentic orientation in history when caught between the pull of tradition and the push of modernity. This tension is expressed in the city’s architecture and urban order as a mechanism to enable a shifting institutional order: new institutions arise within new forms, which in turn yield new architectural embodiments and new cultural articulations. This is Doha’s search for city: the constant attempt to reconcile what the world seems to be with what it might be.

This thesis is a study of Tottenham High Road, and how the urban blocks which comprise its depth are composed. Depth has a number of components: architecture, space and time; depth is the armature in which people live their social lives, and the place where local cultures emerge. The conception of depth offers a way of capturing urban life in its richness and its reciprocities. The literature about high streets offers few detailed analyses of their spatial and psycho-social ordering and this thesis seeks to fill that gap. The approach is a hermeneutics of praxis, using ethnographic methods, in-depth interviews, and situating the information spatially using architectural drawing techniques. It offers a novel method of investigating and understanding the structures and processes which make up the high streets and which, in aggregate, make the whole city. Tottenham High Road is used here as a case study, a vehicle through which to interpret evidence about the existence and nature of depth, with its manifold structures. Understanding depth is vital to understanding high streets, so this thesis allows a deeper and richer interpretation of high streets than has previously been possible. There is a problem in planning orthodoxy around high streets, typified in Tottenham: the richness of depth is flattened and codified, in order to frame swathes of city as sites from which to reap economic reward. In fact, depth contains all of human life, and understanding it, therefore, is an ethical responsibility for planning. Depth has a number of characteristics, ordered by different processes and forces. Firstly, physical order, shaped by both economic and social forces. For example, the most public uses are found in the ‘shallowest’ parts of depth, and these are the most valuable sites because they command the greatest passing trade. Secondly, depth has a social order, through playing out of place ballet by people as they live their lives. The social order operates interdependently and reciprocally with the physical order of depth. Commitment between people and places (citizenship) results in special place cultures, which are hosted in depth. Depth has variation in the scope of decorum from the outer edge of the block to the centre: more things are possible inside the block than at its edge. The insights about depth in this thesis are relevant to many areas of life: to planning, to politics and to existing theory, because depth provides an account for the ethical order in which other areas of human life take place. With an understanding of depth it is possible to evaluate planning proposals, efforts at ensuring political participation, to shed light on existing theories such as Cosmopolitanism, and to add a valuable layer of information about the real structures of London to the existing literature.

This dissertation examines the interaction between leisured movement and space in Rome from 100 BC – AD 150, primarily drawing upon archaeological evidence from Rome, central Italy and the Bay of Naples. This thesis argues that leisured movement was significant and that an examination of the relationship between leisured movement and space provides new insights into Roman architecture, gardens, attitudes to design and space. Chapter one reviews the theoretical models associated with the study of movement and space in various disciplines and utilitizes these approaches to formulate the theoretical basis for this thesis. Previous scholarship on movement and space in the Roman world is also reviewed to demonstrate the need for further study. Chapter two focuses on ancient literature and epigraphy to examine leisured movement in ancient Rome and the spaces identified as locations for leisured movement. In chapter three the Severan marble plan and the archaeological evidence for the monumental porticos and temple-porticos in Rome, the public and urban context for leisured walking, are analyzed. An examination of the relationship between leisured movement and space in high-status Roman villas and residences is undertaken in chapter four. Walking, driving, riding and boating and their spatial context played an important role in these high-status residences. Finally, chapter five examines the relationship between leisured movement and space in Pompeian houses, in order to understand how leisured movement functioned in such houses and to demonstrate that leisured movement also had a role in the lives of those below the top of Roman society. This thesis demonstrates that movement was a prominent leisure activity and that it was a complex way through which the Romans negotiated Greek culture. It also establishes that Rome’s public porticos and portico-temples, which housed leisured movement, were original contributions to the architectural canon. Movement and space were interconnected phenomena that interacted upon each other; the design of private and public gardens and porticos often created an ordered approach to movement and space. In sum, leisured movement is a productive lens through which we can study Rome, her cultural and leisure activities, approach to design and conception of space.