There is an increasing pressure on planners to address rapid urbanisation and its impacts on the aesthetic qualities of urban landscape. This is mainly due to the increased sensitivity of the public towards the environment and its greater role, legislatively mandated, in the decision making process. One of the major challenges in land use planning is balancing spatial equity with economic efficiency, where the aspirations and expectations of stakeholders and those of the broader community, in terms of use of the land and its potential, are evaluated and met in a fair manner. The Hills Face Zone (HFZ) of the Adelaide Metropolis in South Australia, currently extending across nine Local Government jurisdictions, is one such example. The HFZ, which provides an important landscape backdrop to the Adelaide Metropolis, has been identified as critically important in the South Australian Planning Strategy and various Development Plans. It is recognised as providing a distinctive visual character to the city and other significant benefits including biodiversity, tourism and recreation. / The HFZ, first introduced in the Adelaide Metropolitan Development Plan in 1962 was endorsed by the South Australian Parliament in 1967 and codified through legislative changes to the Planning Act in 1971 to accommodate the importance of this landscape feature of Adelaide illustrating the strategic intentions of the government. However, despite the best intentions of all the governments since then, the HFZ stil seems to be clouded by confusion and uncertainty four decades on. There are two types of confusion and uncertainty associated with the HFZ landscape. The first, being the clarity of the statutory policy for the HFZ itself, which is the cause of different interpretations of the regulation by the planners, often, leading to lengthy and costly court cases. The second largely ignored so far, is the boundary (spatial) extent of the zone. Within Geographical Information Science these could be termed as the thematic uncertainty and the spatial uncertainty. / Assessment and quantification of the landscape???s thematic and spatial attributes underpinned by a scientific methodology is essential to provide a clear, accountable and sustainable strategic land use plan. This is more important in an urban planning context where planning zone boundaries can have substantial economic impacts, especially if most of the land parcels happen to be under private ownership. / This thesis examined an alternative approach to address the strategic land use planning issues pertaining to delineation of landscape boundaries within the framework of GIS by interpreting the planning policy in a Fuzzy Logic domain. A model for addressing the spatial uncertainty in Landscape Extent Estimation and Mapping (LEEM) using GIS and Fuzzy Logic is discussed and a methodology to establish categorical zone boundaries using fuzzy terms like good view, moderate slope, elevated areas etc. is demonstrated. Boundaries of the HFZ with Adelaide???s Mitcham Local Government Area (LGA) as a case study have been redrawn using various interpretations of visibility, land cover, greenness, slope and elevation of the landscape as a natural backdrop of Adelaide. / Three empirical models, adopting the Modelling View of knowledge engineering to represent a pro-conservation perspective, a pro-development perspective and a planner???s perspective were developed to illustrate the future of the HFZ as aspired to by each group. It was observed that a small difference in linguistic approximation values for the process variables, which translates to slightly differing perceptions in planning terminology, could lead to substantial difference in the outcomes. Thus, in planning terms, this would mean that although both the pro development and the pro conservation lobby are united in their aspirations for a sustainable HFZ, small difference in opinions for the process variables could lead to a substantial difference in the extent of the HFZ zone. / A successful marriage between computer modelling using Fuzzy Logic within Geographic Information Systems and expert opinion is demonstrated and, as such, suggests the suitability of these tools in planning decision making in the future. / Thesis ([PhDPlanning])--University of South Australia, 2005.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/282026 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Kishore, Hari Thotapalli. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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