The roles of planning and planners were remade in Australia in the 1930s. In Sydney, frustration at governmental inaction on practical progress and recognition that the longstanding Town Planning Association had fallen out of touch with best practice led to moves to establish a technical body. There were comparable stories in other states. In NSW...

When Melbourne’s two ‘dry zones’ had compulsory ballots for restaurant and café liquor licences removed in 2015, news accounts surmised that “a hangover from the anti-alcohol movement of the 1920s had finally been relegated to the history books”. Yet the dry zones are chapters in a longer, ongoing story. The 1920 poll that created these...

The urban design theorist and historian Alexander D’Hooghe has argued that Josep Luis Sert’s idea of the core is a key to understanding the “abandoned foundations of the late modern project” in architecture and urbanism. “The Core”, D’Hooghe argues, “is a series of precisely circumscribed figures of publicness in the background of a (dis)urbanizing, privatized...

This paper explores Ruth and Maurie Crow’s contribution to Melbourne’s strategic planning history. It focuses on the 1960s and 70s, when deliberation over future growth patterns for Melbourne dominated urban planning discussion. During this period, multiple models of urban expansion were considered by the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, the Town and Country Planning Board...

In 1899, 72 women enrolled at the Burnley School of Horticulture, Melbourne to study part-time a ‘Certificate of Competency in Horticulture’. This was a ground-breaking moment for women wishing to work in horticulture, as Burnley was the only educational institution in Australia at the time providing horticultural instruction. Australia looked to Great Britain for direction...