The Surfers Paradise Meter Maid wears a gold bikini to promote the region of Surfer’s Paradise on the east coast of Australia. The “celebrity” Meter Maid first appeared in 1964 and can be mapped to coincide with a range of conflations during that time where women were groomed to perceive beauty and women’s power and...

In 1991 Davison and McConville described the 'heritage business' as being "subject to constant tension between the demands for bureaucratic consistency and impersonal expertise on one hand and for popular participation and local autonomy on the other" (p. 11). The decisions and debate over the fate of Australian political icon Gough Whitlam's birthplace 'Ngara' more...

From the late 1920s to at least the mid-1940s, David Lomas Davidson (1893-1952) was the most powerful and influential administrator in town planning in Australia. As Town Planning Commissioner for Western Australia from 1929 until his death, his job was to implement the spirit and letter of the Town Planning and Development Act 1928. Davidson’s...

By way of definition, dictionaries such as the Oxford Dictionary note that the word ‘icon’ is a noun meaning ‘a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration’ (p. 654). More recently, the phrase ‘iconic development’ has crept into the town planning vernacular making reference to built or planned works...

Chinatowns as iconic enclaves exist in several Australian cities. Among them, Melbourne Chinatown is the oldest, which dates back to the gold rush in the 1850s. Early Chinese migrants settled along the Little Bourke Street on the outskirts of the city, which served as a staging post on their journey to goldfields. Lodging houses were...