Browsing the DPCD consultation page for the Metro strategy the other day, I noticed that they have set up a page on Melbourne’s strategic planning history. It provides valuable access to a range of strategic documents for download, right back to the 1929 plan for general development (although, frustratingly, technical limitations of DPCD’s website have apparently forced them to be broken up into multiple PDFs). It allowed me to fill some gaps in my own library, but also got me thinking about the possibility of sharing a much wider collection of Victorian planning documents.
I’ve been using Zotero for my PhD research for a few years now: it’s a free citation manager and research database that, if you’re doing any sort of research work, you really should check out. I’ve been collecting Victorian planning documents in it for several years, a habit I got into when I was working on Planning News, and the collection is now quite large. And the other thing Zotero lets me do is share that collection relatively easily.
It seemed like this might be a resource that academics and students, at least, might find useful; hopefully some planning professionals might find value in it too. It gathers a lot of material that might otherwise be forgotten – or hidden – in various corners of government websites into one place, and allows searching within most of the documents from within one search bar. Those with iPads can also access to the library using Zotpad.
Looking through the documents – and I’ve only sampled many of them – it’s striking the way the same concerns and issues recur over time. I think there’s a lot to be gained by making these historical documents as readily assessable as possible so we can learn from work done in the past, rather than each generation of planners recycling the same revelations.
The full details of the collection, and how to get it, are at their new permanent page at www.sterow.com/vicplanninghistory.