The social and spatial construction of student housing: the University of Melbourne in an age of expansion
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis examines the history of student housing at the University of Melbourne in the decades from World War II until the mid-1970s.This period in the history of the institution was one of monumental growth, underscored by a remarkable rise in the number of students attending the University and a corresponding shift in the size and complexity of the institution itself.More broadly, the post-war decades witnessed a redefinition of the position of university education within Australian society.The crucial features of this social revolution were the assumption of federal government control over the national tertiary education sector and with this, an increased emphasis in public discourse on the value of higher education, both as a foundation for national economic growth and as a method of social empowerment for citizens.Improving the provision of housing for university students came to be one of the focal aims of government investment, and was a central concern for all individual universities presiding over institutional growth.iv Kuhlmann and Jane Beattie were a tremendous help to me: I thank them, as well as all the other staff in the Cultural Collections Reading Room of the Baillieu Library and at the mysterious Archives storage depot somewhere in West Brunswick, for their gracious and diligent support and direction.It goes without saying that any flaws in this thesis are mine alone. Prologue: a shout in the streetIn the first decade of the twenty first century, the northern edge of Melbourne's Central Business District has been substantially modified.Throughout this decade, anyone taking the tram along Swanston Street, the principal axis connecting the central city to the University of Melbourne, could not have failed to notice an almost constant stream of high rise apartment buildings under construction.These mushrooming structures have not only heightened the scale of the prominent Swanston spine, they have also significantly altered the face of the larger locality.Behind the elevated skyline of these buildings, the scale of the built form drops dramatically, to the one-to-two storey structures characteristic of Carlton's tightly-clustered Victorian housing stock. 1 This process of intensification in scale and conversion from formerly commercial and light industrial uses to predominantly residential ones has been the creative product of a nexus of development interests.Strategic land-use planning by local government has encouraged high density housing in close proximity to public transport, under a general policy of 'urban consolidation'.2 This policy framework has guided private sector investment into locations serviced by public transport and on sites deemed suitable for major streetscape alteration.Private developers engaged in speculative residential construction have relished the opportunity to build more units per site in prime inner locations, which permissive planning policies provide.Recent increases in numbers of international students enrolled at Australian universitiesthe product of structural reform to the sector at the federal level which makes universities dependent on non-government funding to cover financial shortfallsguarantees a strong demand for accommodation for the foreseeable future.University authorities, especially at inner-city institutions like RMIT and the University of Melbourne, have welcomed the new role of private capital in delivering student housing, as it relieves much of the burden of responsibility from the institutions themselves.From the ground, the abrupt change in scale between the high-rise of Swanston Street and the low-rise terraces and cottages of the interior blocks is seen most dramatically at the corner of Swanston and Faraday Streets, opposite the main pedestrian entrance to the University of Melbourne.Here, two distinct eras of urban development sit uncomfortably beside one another.The College Square development, a complex of rental apartments marketed primarily at university students hailing from overseas, rises to fourteen storeys on the façade it presents to Swanston Street.At the rear, the height of the building cascades via a haphazard arrangement of cubic elements towards the shells of remaining terraces that line Faraday Street and Cardigan Street at the side and rear of the block.This clumsy design solution to the sharp drop in scale leaves the impression of the new buildings eating the old.Seen in 1 This section draws upon material presented in a conference paper in 2009.See Stephen Pascoe, 'The historian and the activists: how to tell the story of SHAC?',The Talk about Town: Urban Lives and Oral Sources in Twentieth Century Australia, conference held at the State Library of Victoria, 26-28 August, 2009. 2 The general policy of urban consolidation was embraced by the Victorian State government in its metropolitan plan Melbourne 2030, released in 2002.At the municipal level, the key planning document which outlines a vision of higher-density development along the Swanston Street corridor is the City of Melbourne's Local Planning Policy Framework, especially clause 21.08-07.
Author: Stephen Joseph Pascoe
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2289692581