Heritage designation and scale: a World Heritage case study of the Ningaloo Coast

© 2015 Tod Jones, Roy Jones and Michael Hughes As heritage research has engaged with a greater plurality of heritage practices, scale has emerged as an important concept in Heritage Studies, albeit relatively narrowly defined as hierarchical levels (household, local, national, etcetera). This paper argues for a definition of scale in heritage research that incorporates size (geographical scale), level (vertical scale) and relation (an understanding that scale is constituted through dynamic relationships in specific contexts). The paper utilises this definition of scale to analyse heritage designation first through consideration of changing World Heritage processes, and then through a case study of the world heritage designation of the Ningaloo Coast region in Western Australia. Three key findings are: both scale and heritage gain appeal because they are abstractions, and gain definition through the spatial politics of interrelationships within specific situations; the spatial politics of heritage designation comes into focus through attention to those configurations of size, level and relation that are invoked and enabled in heritage processes; and researchers choice to analyse or ignore particular scales and scalar politics are political decisions. Utilising scale as size, level and relation enables analyses that move beyond heritage to the spatial politics through which all heritage is constituted

The moderating influence of property legislation on planning policy and urban form

This paper investigates the role that property titling legislation has had on the form of high-density residential development. A conceptual framework is developed for theorising the role of property legislation in moderating the impact of urban land use policy. It is argued that the impact of legislation on urban form is much more significant and direct than is often implied or suggested in reviews of planning policy. It is argued that property legislation has a greater role than simply supporting the implementation of urban planning policy. Property legislation has a moderating influence on policy and provides a barrier to the implementation of urban policy. To support this argument, the paper considers the development and implications of Western Australia’s strata titling legislation for the form of high-density development in that state’s capital city

Metropolitan strategic planning: An Australian paradigm?

This article describes the characteristics of a distinctively Australian paradigm of metropolitan planning which reflect circumstances of governance, infrastructure provision and concentration on suburban expansion into surrounding countryside. The resultant plans are detailed in their arrangement of land use and communications, comprehensive and long term. There are indications this paradigm may be changing as these dominating influences alter in character. Contemporary metropolitan strategic planning in Europe and America is overviewed to establish the distinctiveness of the Australian paradigm. Changes in plan-shaping forces are leading the emergence of a new European strategic spatial planning paradigm very different to Australia's. Strategic spatial planning in the United States, while heterogeneous, has examples that reinforce the idea of an Australian paradigm in terms of the influence of governance structure and infrastructure agency on the level of spatial plan detail