published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

This thesis argues that the significance of apartments in Sydney's urban history has not been recognised due to a cultural resistance to apartment living. This lack of acknowledgement has masked the urban, social and architectural impact of the apartment building type in Sydney's history. As an interdisciplinary reading of the development of the purpose-built apartment building in Sydney since its inception in 1900, the thesis is premised on a desire to use the apartment building as a vehicle to tell an alternative housing history to the more commonly told one of house and garden. In the process, it provides a different story of the city's development through the lens of the apartment building and challenges cultural prejudices against apartment living. The research documents the growth and changes of apartments, tracking their location, diversity of type and scale across the Sydney metropolitan region. The research analyses prototypical and generic apartment buildings in the context of the city's history. Drawing on the intersection of eras and themes as a method of critical inquiry, the thesis covers aspects of domestic debates, market, regulation, scale, demography, geography distribution, design and typology, traversing a time period of 1900 to 2008. The thesis explores the debates for and against apartment living in Sydney, emphasising the roles played by apartments in the broader discourses of Australian cultural and design history. The thesis concludes that after more than a century, the debates between apartment and cottage living continue to rage. In systematically providing a trajectory for the history of apartments from ideology to typology, this thesis establishes a place for apartments in Sydney's urban and cultural history; and simultaneously provides a deeper historical context to assist the process of better understanding and responding to the contemporary debate about high-density living and its consequences for the life of the city. Despite the size of its largely undocumented subject, this thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of its rationale: to use analysis of a specific, controversial building type to provide new insights into Sydney's urban history, ideologies and built forms.

This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between the provision of spatial order and perceived sense of community in high-rise housing developments in Korea from a socio-spatial and architectural perspective. It also considers relationships between the perception of neighbourhood, provision of facilities, design aspects, and socio-economic characteristics and sense of community. The study uses a questionnaire survey as the main research instrument conducted across four case studies in Bundang new town, in metropolitan Seoul, Korea. Two of the cases were selected as having a high provision of spatial order and the other two low provision according to the concepts of Altman (1975) and Newman (1972, 1975). Quantitative analysis is carried out using the Kruskal-Wallis/Mann-Whitney test and Spearman???s rank correlation to identify differences and correlations between cases. The results indicate that there is no clear evidence that a sense of community has a direct relationship with the provision of spatial order in the selected cases. However, in the high provision cases outdoor common spaces appear to have a role in contributing to social interaction. Among Buckner???s (1988) three sub-variables of his concept of neighbourhood cohesion, ???neighbouring??? appears to be more associated with the provision of spatial order rather than ???attraction-to-neighbourhood??? or ???psychological sense of community.??? A greater number of opportunities for social interactions occur in an intermediate space located between private dwelling units and public open space in cases with a high provision of spatial order. However, this is likely to be due to the location of shared facilities and their frequency of use. In terms of the relationship between design and a sense of community, ???landscaping??? was found to be the most important variable, followed by the ???design of streets/footpath??? and ???facilities for children???, ???parking???, and ???recreational activities???. Despite the lack of a clear relationship between design and a sense of community, a strong demand was found for improved outdoor amenity and greater provision of facilities. Socio-economic status appears not to be a significant factor directly influencing the sense of community however, age and the existence of children are associated with the perception of neighbourhood.

This thesis argues that the significance of apartments in Sydney's urban history has not been recognised due to a cultural resistance to apartment living. This lack of acknowledgement has masked the urban, social and architectural impact of the apartment building type in Sydney's history. As an interdisciplinary reading of the development of the purpose-built apartment building in Sydney since its inception in 1900, the thesis is premised on a desire to use the apartment building as a vehicle to tell an alternative housing history to the more commonly told one of house and garden. In the process, it provides a different story of the city's development through the lens of the apartment building and challenges cultural prejudices against apartment living. The research documents the growth and changes of apartments, tracking their location, diversity of type and scale across the Sydney metropolitan region. The research analyses prototypical and generic apartment buildings in the context of the city's history. Drawing on the intersection of eras and themes as a method of critical inquiry, the thesis covers aspects of domestic debates, market, regulation, scale, demography, geography distribution, design and typology, traversing a time period of 1900 to 2008. The thesis explores the debates for and against apartment living in Sydney, emphasising the roles played by apartments in the broader discourses of Australian cultural and design history. The thesis concludes that after more than a century, the debates between apartment and cottage living continue to rage. In systematically providing a trajectory for the history of apartments from ideology to typology, this thesis establishes a place for apartments in Sydney's urban and cultural history; and simultaneously provides a deeper historical context to assist the process of better understanding and responding to the contemporary debate about high-density living and its consequences for the life of the city. Despite the size of its largely undocumented subject, this thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of its rationale: to use analysis of a specific, controversial building type to provide new insights into Sydney's urban history, ideologies and built forms.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Hous.M.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-96). Also available in print.