(B) (J) (R) DOVEY - A Test of Character Regulating Place-Identity in Inner-City Melbourne

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A Test of Character: Regulating Place-identity in Inner-city Melbourne

Kim Dovey, Ian Woodcock and Stephen Wood
Urban Stud 2009 46: 2595
DOI: 10.1177/0042098009344229
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46(12) 25952615, November 2009
A Test of Character: Regulating

Place-identity in Inner-city Melbourne
Kim Dovey, Ian Woodcock and Stephen Wood
[Paper first received, August 2008; in final form, May 2009]
Abstract
During the 1990s, urban planning in Melbourne changed from prescriptive regulation
to a place-based performance framework with a focus on existing or desired urban
character. This paper is a case study of a contentious urban project in the innerMelbourne suburb of Fitzroy: a highly valued place characterised as an irregular and
transgressive mix of differences: between building types, functions, forms, heights
and people. Contrasting conceptions, experiences and constructions of character are
explored from the viewpoints of residents, architect/developer and the state. To what
degree does the regulation of character open or close the city to creative innovation?
Can it become camouflage for creative destruction? How to regulate for irregularity?
The paper concludes with a discussion of theories of place (Massey vs Heidegger) and
the prospects of concepts such as habitus (Bourdieu) and assemblage (Deleuze) for
the interpretation of a progressive sense of place.
Introduction
Over recent decades, metropolitan planning
in Australian cities has been dominated by a
major conundrum. On the one hand, legislators argue that there are economic, social
and environmental imperatives for higher
density development, urban consolidation
and compact city policies. On the other hand,
implementation of these policies invariably
meets powerful resident resistance to change,

often in the name of neighbourhood character. This conundrum is nowhere more
apparent than in Melbourne where the state
governments planning system seeks both to
densify urban development and to protect
existing character. The metropolitan strategy
aims to contain the citys outward expansion
by identifying a growth boundary and by concentrating development in transit-oriented
Kim Dovey and Ian Woodcock are in the Department of Architecture, Building and Planning,
University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, 3010, Australia. E-mails: k.dovey@unimelb.edu.au and
iswo@unimelb.edu.au.
Stephen Wood is in the School of Behavioural and Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New
England, Armidale, New South Wales, 2351, Australia. E-mail: stephen.wood@une.edu.au.
0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online
2009 Urban Studies Journal Limited
DOI: 10.1177/0042098009344229
2596
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
activity centres. Meanwhile, Melbournes

residential design code, ResCode, demands
that neighbourhood character be the primary criterion for assessing residential development applications in established urban
areas. On the one hand, there is a densification strategy destined to alter the character of
numerous areas; on the other, is a design code
to respect and protect existing character.
Tensions between these policies are compounded by the notorious difficulties in providing clear definitions of character. When
residents seek to protect neighbourhood
character, urban character or just character,
what is it they are working to defend?
In 2002, the inner-city council of Yarra
received plans for a proposal which would
become a test case for the use of character as
a planning tool, teasing out some of the complex meanings of the term and the ways
it can be mobilised in urban politics. This
innovative housing project, known as NKYA,
was proposed for a former industrial site in
Fitzroya gentrifying district with a mix
of functions, building types and heights
(Figure 1). The architect/developer, Ivan
Rijavec, argued that the project was consistent with Fitzroys prevailing character
which he labelled urban jazzinventive,
transgressive, multicultural and free-form;
unconstrained by neo-colonial ideology or
blanket height limits. Residents were not
entertained and organised a resistance campaign with a website called urban joke where
the project was proclaimed as the death of
the character of Fitzroy!. They dubbed the
Figure 1. The Cheesegrater: advertising image

Source : Rijavec Architects.
PLACE-IDENTITY IN MELBOURNE
project the Cheesegraterit cheesed them

off; it grated on their nerves. This proposal
became the subject of a major dispute in the
planning tribunal VCAT (Victorian Civil and
Administrative Tribunal) where it was eventually approved with glowing testimonials
on its architectural and urban quality from
expert witnesses.1 From this view, urban
jazz was a marketing slogan and a cover for
market-led development. This case study
was chosen as a high-profile and critical test
case (Flyvbjerg 2004); there is no suggestion
that this is the only conception of urban
character.2
In what follows, we first provide an outline
history of character-based planning, before
sketching the urban morphology and context for the case study. We then consider how
Fitzroy was characterised in interviews with
those who were active in resistance to this
project. The concept of urban jazz is then discussed, along with the important role played
by boundaries and heights in this story. After
considering parallels and differences between interviewee understandings of Fitzroys
character and the urban jazz idea, the paper
concludes by linking this discussion to some
pertinent theoretical frameworks including
those of Harvey, Massey, Heidegger, Bourdieu
and Deleuze.
Legislating Character
The discourse of character first came to prominence in Australia during the debates on
streetscape conservation in the 1980s, a period
marked by a proliferation of academic literature about place.3 However, the regulation
of character emerged in the planning literature in the 1990s without theoretical justification. In its earliest incarnations, character
was mixed with heritage. At a federal level, the
1992 Australian Model Code for Residential
Development included a section entitled
Urban Character and Heritage which argued
that character
2597
is defined by a host of factors: landform,

landscape, streetscape, site layout, built form
and heritage are some of the most important.
Together these factors affect our perception
and understanding of a place (Commonwealth
of Australia, 1992, p. 2.1).
Note how heritage is separate in the title

and becomes a subset in the text. In 1992, a
radically market-led political regime (Liberal
Party) took control at state level. Urban regulation was seen by the state as a brake on
market-led development; the discourse of
planning and regulation was replaced with
that of facilitation, flexibility and performance wherein all planning controls
became guidelines (Dovey 2005, p. 38). A deregulation of local government planning
resulted in vehement residential opposition
to inappropriate development (Lewis, 1999).
New developments were described by residents as out of character or in violation of
the urban or neighbourhood character. The
definition of character was never clarified
but was, at least in part, circularthis place
has character because residents say it has and
the character is defined by what they refer to.
At this time, character was defined by the state
government as a composite of the form and
the feel of a place
On the one hand character is the interrelationship of various aspects of built form,
topography, vegetation, density, sub-division
pattern and activity On the other hand, character is also used to refer to the feel of an area
(Victorian Government, 1994, p. 27).
During the 1990s, requirements to respect

the existing local character were raised to the
highest priority in assessing new residential
development proposals in Melbourne. However, the task of characterising specific places
was left to local government authorities.
Character studies were commissioned and, by
the turn of the century, most of the metropolitan area had had its character assessed. Such
studies fulfil bureaucratic requirements to
2598
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
label and classify neighbourhoods according to character type; and they fulfil resident
demands officially to valorise and protect the
character of their neighbourhood. However,
they do not engage with the experiences of
residents and the ways these relate to the
physical characteristics of the urban fabric.
If the LGA decided that a proposal was out
of character, the matter could be appealed to
the states legal tribunal known as VCAT; the
lawyers were to become the final arbiters of
character.4 In 1999, a middle-class backlash to
unregulated suburban development played
a key role in forcing a change to a centrist
(Labor Party) government; the flexibility of
site-by-site planning, however, remained in
place.
The methodology deployed for this paper
was to approach the concept of character from
three directions with the aim of understanding it as experience, as discourse and as spatial
form. Interviews with residents were directed
at understanding character as an experiential
phenomenon within a framework of the phenomenology of place (Relph, 1976; Casey,
1997). A second approach was to study the
urban fabric, interviews and planning codes
as forms of socially constructed discourses
and subjectivities to be analysed (Fairclough,
1995; Rose, 2001). A third approach involved
a study of formal spatial structure and urban
morphology wherein the urban fabric is seen
as a network or assemblage of spatially
structured and ordered forms which in turn
structure spatial experience and social encounter. Such an approach incorporates the
study of urban typology, density and streetlife (Bentley et al., 1985; Hillier, 1996;
Habraken, 1998). The study draws in a philosophical sense from a broader range of
social theory (Lefebvre, 1991; Giddens, 1991;
Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Bourdieu, 1977,
2000) and is premised on the view that place
research requires a multiplicitous methodology (Dovey, 2008).
Fitzroy
Fitzroy is an inner-city suburb housing a mix
of residential, retail, light industrial and
cultural uses within walking distance of the
central city. It is Melbournes oldest suburb
and was initially sub-divided in 1839 when
demand for labour without public transport
produced a cheek-by-jowl mix of factories
with row-housing and a reputation for poverty and crime. The 1950s saw an influx of
post-war migrants from southern Europe. In
the 1960s, several entire blocks were replaced
with high-rise public housing; a residents
association was formed in 1969 primarily
to resist further high-rise housing. From the
1970s, Fitzroy saw a growing component
of student and artistic bohemian life which
produced an aura of authenticity that attracted a sustained wave of gentrification
from the 1980s onwards. Row-houses were renovated and industrial buildings converted
to residential use. House prices rose to almost
twice the metropolitan median as the population density fell. The ethnic mix changed as
post-war migrants moved out of the worker
housing and new migrants of Indo-Chinese,
Middle Eastern and lately African ethnicity
moved into the public housing.
The study area for analysis here comprises
a 25-hectare district surrounding the subject
site (Figure 2). The area has busy streets on all
sides. Brunswick Street to the west is a smallgrain mix of cafs, bars, restaurants and
specialty stores; the vitality and diversity of
streetlife here are a city-wide and tourist attraction. The northern and southern edges
are both heavily trafficked arterial roads.
Our focus will fall mainly on the residential
and industrial urban fabric on the interior of
the study area. Figure 3 is a series of layered
maps showing street network, zoning,
building footprints, entry types, heights and
graffiti within the study area. There are some
significant differences in lot-size, height,
2599
Figure 2. Fitzroy and study area
entry interface, permeability and functional

mix between the (traditionally residential)
northern and (traditionally industrial) southern sections. Figure 4 shows a series of typical
streetscapes within the study area ranging
from north to south. The older residential
interface is generally mediated by small front
gardens (Figures 3D, 4AB) while the converted industrial and new residential buildings generally have entrances directly on the
street (Figures 3D, 4CD), often coupled
with garage doors and blank walls. Industrial buildings in the northern section and
row-housing to the south serve to blur this
division and the transformation of most
warehouses and factories into apartments
has largely eliminated the functional divide.

Many blocks, particularly within the southern section, contain new residential infill in
various contemporary styles. The zoning code
divides the area into residential to the north
and mixed-use to the south (Figure 3B).
The commissioned urban character study
claims that Fitzroy is notable for the consistency of its Victorian streetscapes (City of
Yarra, 1997); however, these maps suggest that
this is an overgeneralisation. In the desire
to establish character areas and to find in
character something consistent and pure,
certain characteristics of the city (low-rise
Victorian) have been privileged while others
(taller industrial, contemporary) are ignored.
2600
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
Figure 3. Urban morphology
Figure 4. Typical Fitzroy streetscapes

Photos : Kim Dovey.
2601
2602
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
The study identified the prevailing character

as predominantly 12 storeys with some
buildings up to 15 metres in height. Buildings over 15 metres in height, particularly the
public housing but even the industrial heritage, were not seen as part of the character.
Over 40 buildings in the study area are three
storeys or more and the tallest is 33 metres
(Figure 3E). The taller public housing is about
600 metres away.
The Resident Experience

Resident understandings of character as
they informed this debate have been explored
through interviews with those who were active
in the residents association and in resistance to
the NKYA project.5 All quotes not otherwise
attributed are from interviews with residents.
In general terms, such resident definitions of
urban or neighbourhood character have a
good deal in common with the feel plus form
definition that meshes the tangible with the
intangible, combining elements of Fitzroys
built form with its social aspects
[Urban character is] the feel of a place, what
it represents to you; the people, the buildings,
the things that happen there are all part of the
urban character.
Common to all interviews is the idea that

Fitzroy is diverse: a mixture of buildings (type,
lot-size, style, age, height), functions (retail,
residential, industrial), practices (artworks,
graffiti, streetlife) and people (appearance,
age, household type, sexuality, social class)
Its a mixture. This block is a mixture of very
old cottages and these warehouses, and there
are warehouses and cottages in lots of blocks,
they have to co-exist.
Fitzroys all different my house is singlefronted, all the houses around me are like
that, but two blocks over they look completely
different, I dont think it detracts from the
area at all.
While interviewees are generally approving

of such juxtapositions, note that difference
is approved at a distance: two blocks over.
There is a widespread view that the conversion
of industrial buildings to residential use has
been done in a way that generally respects
both the heritage and feel of the character
I think its fascinating to see the different
types of warehouses and how creative people
are, and generally they keep in well with the
look or feel of the suburb.
Its not violating an industrial character to
make it into a 21st century dwelling, thats
adding a layer.
There is, however, an ambivalent attitude

to the taller factories which are seen as
an important component of the mix, but
of a height that is not acceptable in new
developments
[Fitzroy is] predominantly 23 storeys and
I think thats really important to its urban
character, the scale I think scale is more important than anything we have some large
buildings, we have five or six, but theyre
landmark buildings, theyre not the norm.
The mixture of built forms is linked to the

historical functional mix of worker housing
with industry. While in many parts of Fitzroy
gentrification has replaced light industrial
with residential land uses, there are pockets
where the mixture persists and some residents
see this as part of the character
You can live next to a business that runs
24 hours a day and you can have forklifts that
operate at 3 and 4 in the morning and you sort
of accept it
In social terms, interviewees characterise

Fitzroy as a place of overlapping networks
of students, artists, bohemians, academics,
professionals, left-wingers, greens, junkies,
old-timers, migrants, public housing tenants
and refugees. This is not seen as a stable or
necessarily harmonious mixture, but as having

a somewhat seedy, edgy and transgressive
character
2603
things that I would like to be, but probably

arent.
This idea of a breeding-ground or hive links

the urban morphology to the political and
social mix. The term consistent is used here
in a different way than in the official character
study; not as harmony between forms, but
more the thick consistency of connectivity
between different fringe networks. The social
diversity is generally portrayed positively
with a relaxed tolerance of difference and a
sense of liberation from conformity
Note the ambivalence in this latter passage as

Fitzroy is defined as having a character this
resident fits in to, but doesnt quite embody.
New residents become spectators in their
own neighbourhood where those who contribute such differencesoften those who are
seen really to belongare displaced.
The seedy, transgressive and edgy character
has become part of the way in which Fitzroy
now markets itself. Tourists can buy postcards
depicting multilayered posters peeling from
walls and some buildings on Brunswick
Street have been renovated in derelict style.
There is plenty of graffiti within the study
area, especially on the blank frontages of industrial buildings and newer infill housing
(Figure 5). The row-houses in the northern
section with gardens and low fences are relatively free of graffiti (Figure 3F). Attitudes to
graffiti reflect the ambivalent desire to identify
with Fitzroys character while maintaining
distance
You dont get the sense that people really care

what you look like or what you say or how
you act there are so many different sorts of
people and it wouldnt matter who you were
youd fit in there its different, its probably
I admit that when I see it on my own wall here,

you know I have a flitter of irritation. If my
whole wall got painted like that, I would
[care] but I really dont care No, I dont
mind the graffiti. I like the graffiti.
[Fitzroy] is different, it is it has that edge

that people are interesting, that it has a good
atmosphere. It has a sort of a seedy side, a sort
of an underbelly that is in a way a little bit
scary, but it also has a community, it has character and it has depth.
[Fitzroy] always has been a breeding-ground
for progressive politics a hive of coffee shops
is consistent with a hive of political activists and
fringe politics sits well with fringe music.
Figure 5. Laneway graffiti

Photo : Kim Dovey.
2604
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
Fitzroy is seen by most interviewees to be an

open community with a strong sense of social
capital. Some longer-term residents describe
the neighbourhood as a village, a walkable
spatial network with a high density of locals
in a fairly intimate scale
Everyone smiles whenever you walk past them
on the street or says, you know, hi, while
youre out walking your dog or youre out
walking in the morning its a nice feeling.
As with the general definitions of urban

character, this social capital is described as a
feel or feeling. It is linked by some residents
to the row-housing type (Figure 4AB) where
small front gardens and porches become
sites for social interaction. This sense of community and social capital is seen as under
threat from new building types
I think theres a big difference between sort
of row-living and stacked-living you know
whats going on with all your neighbours in a
row, you hear them you smell them.
The social capital is also linked to a history of

struggles against developmentmass demolitions in the 1960s, freeway construction in
the 1970s, and a threatened swimming pool
closure the 1990s. The Cheesegrater or NKYA
is just the most recent round.
Urban Jazz
The NKYA proposal required the demolition
of a range of poor quality industrial buildings to construct a cluster of attached buildings
ranging from three to eight storeys. The development was designed as four connected
buildings with separate entries and different
architectural treatments, accommodating
152 dwellings and two corner cafs. The design included a mix of housing types with a
concern to avoid a singular form and to create
different frontages to each street. Entrances
formed a row-house rhythm, avoiding blank
walls and carpark frontages. The height

peaked at 26 metres on the north-east corner
where the building was to be surmounted
by a folded section of lofts (Figure 6). The
formal image that captured most attention
was a six-storey section (19 metres high) on
the south-west cornera cluster of vertical
tapering cylinders with a grid of small windows
that was soon labelled by residents as the
cheesegrater. These small windows did not
relate directly to floor levels and, together
with the tapered cylindrical forms, created
the illusion of a taller building (Figure 1).
The proposal was submitted in 2002 during a period of intense disputation over
planning issues in Melbourne and where
major projects were generally decided by the
VCAT tribunal. Alert to the policy framework
wherein urban character would be a key
issue, the architect/developer Ivan Rijavec
undertook and submitted an extensive urban
character study that contested the official
study outlined earlier. He suggested that
urban character had been misconstrued as
what lobby groups want to see more of
rather than what is actually there. Using the
same character area of broader Fitzroy used
by the official character study, he proposed
that Fitzroys character be described as
urban jazz
South Fitzroys urban topography is typified by unregulated planning practices and
the urban character consequently appears
free-spirited, Jazz-like a riff of terraces
up against a corner pub, warehouses over the
road, up and down, in and out, a surprise at
every turn (Rijavec 2002, p. 3).
In this conception, urban jazz had two

loosely defined threads. One was the up and
down, in and out structure of a variegated
and improvised melody line applied to urban
morphology. The second thread identified
jazz as an aesthetic current that cuts across
the norm, the unleashing of a free-spirited
2605
Figure 6. The NKYA Project in context: the model as advertised

Photo : Kim Dovey.
built form. Jazz was seen as low-brow taste

cutting across mainstream taste
South Fitzroy could be described as a freestyle urbanism or an architectural multiculturalism which assimilates a variety of
scales and architectural types in a diverse
urban landscape. This is a new world typography, spirited, un-authoritarian, distinctly
Australian (Rijavec 2002, p. 4).
Rijavec suggests that the mis-perception of

character in the official discourse parallels
a neo-colonial history of viewing Australian
landscape through Eurocentric eyes. From
this view, the regulation of built form through
arbitrary height limits is a form of cultural
cringe that causes pancake solutions where
developers push the envelope to a uniform
height; it is these developments which are
most out of place in the variegated urban

typography of South Fitzroy (Rijavec, 2002,
p. 3). This argument was presented first in
the planning application and later at the planning tribunal; a large number of photographs
were used to support the contention that difference rather than uniformity characterises
the area. It showed that anyone wanting to
preserve the existing urban character of
South Fitzroy would support differences of
scale and typology; and that anyone wanting uniformity across this area would be
supporting a desired rather than an existing
character.
Heights and Boundaries
This project generated interplay between

two disputesone over vertical extensions
of height and another over the horizontal
2606
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
boundaries of the character zone. Most of

the discussion was about height, as one resident put it
It will change the character of the street as it is
now, its just a huge monolith sticking up
This will make everything else look very small.
Yet how to define everything else? As a

performance-based measure, the regulation
of character requires a judgement of how a
development proposal will perform within
its urban context within what boundaries
does this performance take place, especially
when the character is not defined by anyone
as an enclosed or bounded experience?
During the debate, the context became defined by four main boundaries as outlined
in Figure 7. The original urban character
study suggested that nearly all of Fitzroy
(and >100 hectares) was a single character
area; this is also the area drawn upon for the
urban jazz argument. However, when the
project was first proposed, the local council
determined the area of concern to be a square
of 9 hectares within about 100 metres of the
site. When resistance erupted, the residents
association defined the neighbourhood as a
larger 25-hectare precinct bounded by main
roads (our study area). The final judgement
in the planning tribunal (VCAT) inscribed a
new 13-hectare district incorporating only
the southern half of this area.
What is at stake in this inscription of
boundaries is the way in which relative and
maximum heights may be determined. What
portion of Fitzroy should set the precedent
for this site? Is it the street as presumed in
the earlier quote or the larger Fitzroy as used
by the commissioned character study and by
Rijavec? The boundaries of the character area
are key to its definition and to its use in the
politics of urban development. The territory
defined by residents does not coincide with
either the range of objectors (some formal
objections came from outside this area) nor
their arguments that height precedents for the
Figure 7. Urban character areas
NKYA site are established by buildings within the smallest character zone. In the smallest
precinct, the tallest building (the former
MacRobertson factory on the opposite corner)
has a 17-metre peak (see Figures 3E and 7).
The VCAT judgement invoked a new precinct
which incorporated a 33-metre building
over 200 metres to the east of the site (see
Figures 3E and 7). The height of the proposed
building was shown to have a precedent in
the broad urban context but not within the
local streetscape.
Interviewees were united in their concern
for height limits yet divided on what this
should be. Some would like to see a 23-storey
blanket height limit on new development.
Many also realise the impossibility and

unsustainability of this and argue for a 45storey limit, with peaks no higher than the
neighbouring MacRobertson building
[It should be] a similar height to across the
road, to MacRob. Three storeys would have
been okay, but eight, no.
Yet in the architect/developers view

MacRobertsons [diagonally opposite] is about
7 [storeys] 7 plus if you look at equivalent
storeys.
These contrasting views show the danger

of using a discourse of storeys, the height of
which varies between industrial and residential buildings. The reality is that the
MacRobertson building peaks at 17 metres
(after a setback) and the NKYA project was
to peak at 26 metres (on the street faade).
The planning tribunal largely accepted
Rijavecs conception of the urban character,
that new juxtapositions of height are consistent with the existing character. They argued
this by drawing a new character zone that
incorporates an existing 33-metre building
over 200 metres away and not visible from
the site.
If an existing character is to be the basis for
planning regulation and the existing fabric
is characterised by variegated heights, then
the state is faced with enforcing some form
of regulated irregularity of heights. While
height limits are often varied for reasons
of amenity, heritage or landmark sites, it is
difficult to require a particular site to remain
low-rise because neighbouring sites are taller
and the variegation must be preserved. No
landowner wants their site to be a shady low
note in the urban jazz. Consistent application
of the rule of law suggests that, if 26 metres
is permitted on one block, then this sets a
precedent. What will stop the entire neighbourhood being redeveloped to that height,
effecting a loss of variegation? This issue was
addressed by Rijavec in interview
2607
In our case, it wont happen because the

adjoining properties are on much smaller
allotments.
Thus, height variegations are seen to be protected not by planning regulation, but by the
inertia embodied in the smaller lot-size of
19th-century development and their heritage
controls. If further site amalgamations do
occur, then one can imagine the future
residents of NKYA mobilising to stop similar
developments and protect their views down
onto this mixed low-rise neighbourhood.
Jazz Grates
There are important parallels and differences
between Rijavecs idea of urban jazz and
interviewees experience of Fitzroys character
as formal, functional and social diversity. In
both views, the character of Fitzroy is seen
as an edgy mix, a contested place characterised by difference and change rather than
uniformity or stability. Its identity is seen to
be forged from on-going juxtapositions and
oppositions to mainstream conformity; it
is home to a range of people and activities
that are often identified with the ideal of the
creative city, a community unified in the
minds of its proponents by an ethic of tolerance (Florida, 2005).
One key difference lies in the distinction
between the horizontal diversity of form
produced by small lot-sizes and the vertical
diversity of varied heights. While Rijavec
sees both as important, the design proposal
privileges vertical differences of height over
horizontal differencesvariations on different street faades do not disguise the fact of
a large single development on a consolidated
site. Most interviewees, by contrast, tend
to privilege horizontal differences between
building styles, functions and people. While
recognising existing height differentials,
they see the taller buildings as landmarks
of industrial heritage and want no more
of them.
2608
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
A further difference stems from Rijavecs

propensity to emphasise Fitzroys formal
character and interviewee tendencies to highlight Fitzroys social character. Rijavec privileges an architectural edginess; character is
a form of urban drama or surprise where
friction and abrasiveness enhance the drama.
Interviewees tend to privilege the social edginess and tolerance for difference, judging
built form according to how well it sustains
or erodes the social character. This is reflected
in the distinction in scope of urban character
areashighly localised for residents versus
up to 100 hectares for Rijavec. Yet Rijavecs
urban character study was also based in a
phenomenology of eye-level photography of
immediate streetscapes
What I love doing is just opening any page
and just pointing; because you dont have
to say anything, the picture tells the story
(Rijavec: interview).
Streetscape perspectives of the proposed

development in context were, however, notable for their absence.
Part of what interviewees fear is the dominance not only of tall buildings but of those
who enter and leave via the garage door,
more comfortable looking down on Fitzroy
than living in it, who want to clean up the
graffiti and remnants of transgression. The
resistance is primarily from the gentrifiers
who are paradoxically defending Fitzroy
against more of themselves. Many of those
who opposed the new development lived in
up-market apartments and acknowledged
that it would be inhabited by people just like
us. Yet they also saw themselves as defending
Fitzroy against the wrong kind of gentrifier
Some of them are positively regressive, they
want their million-dollar apartment and you
know: Leave me alone, and if I want to be selfish and destroy everyone elses urban amenity,
then, bad luck, pal, you know, thats my right.
While residents value change, they experience

urban character in relatively static terms
evolving only through creative small additions.

Rijavecs conception of urban character is
more dynamic, always in a process of creation
Regulations, whatever they are, should allow
for a growth that continues that experiment
of what urbanism is about rather than caps
it and regulates it in relation to something that
happened before, doing that presumes that we
can never improve (Rijavec: interview).
This desire to produce new forms of urban

creativity is consistent with the Fitzroy character of transgression and edginess. However,
Rijavecs conception of urban jazz was generally seen by interviewees as a rhetorical
cover for a sharp increase in height, bulk and
density along with a diminution of horizontal diversity.
The labels given to this project by the residents and developersthe cheesegrater and
urban jazz respectivelywere each regarded
by the other as forms of marketing spin.
The six-storey extruded cheesegrater form
with its accentuated verticality (Figure 1)
became the iconic image in the mass media
where it was frequently described as an eightstorey tower. Yet the taller folded section on
the north-east corner (Figure 6) defied an
easy iconography; it was variously referred
to by residents as a spaceship, an upturned
bathtub and an army tank. The iconic
image of the cheesegrater became the hook
for public debate and made it appear that
residents were opposing the project on aesthetic grounds when their key concerns
lay with bulk and height. The transgressive
aesthetic of urban jazz played well in the
planning tribunal where a string of expert witnesses testified to its innovative qualities
arguments that were implicitly used to justify
approval of its height. An architecture that
grates against mainstream taste has long
been a measure of its avant-garde credentials.
And in Fitzroy, as we have seen, a project that
grates can also be considered consistent with
the idea of characterjust as the industrial
uses once grated against the residential, these
renovated factories grate against the lowrise housing and the graffiti grate against
the gentrified social order. So how was the
cheesegrater any different?
One line of thought is to pursue the analogy
of urban jazz into the language of musical
notation. If a streetscape is construed as a
series of jazz riffs, then perhaps buildings
can be seen as notes (the notable building)
with a certain pitch (height) and duration
(lot-size). The tone of the neighbourhood
has a similar meaning to urban character
and suggests consistency. The musical key
is an arbitrary framework or semantic field
within which notes, melodies and rhythms
intersect; a tune can be played in a different
key, yet all performers generally remain in
one key for the performance to work. The key
also establishes a home base (the tonic note
and chord) within this framework to which
the music returns; the return (the tonic note,
rhythm, rhyme, refrain) will sound similar in
a different key. The key is the framework of
power that establishes certain flexible rules
and there is a parallel with an urban design
framework, a context within which different
buildings establish harmony and discord. Jazz
is a musical form that encourages improvisation and a stretching of the rules. It is
experimental, low-brow and has often been
linked to political subversion, perhaps because people can talk under it. The idea of
urban jazz that was used to legitimate the
project was inspired by this creative rulebreaking and juxtaposition of differences. Yet
from the interviewees perspective, the shift
of height was seen to change the tone of the
neighbourhoodjazz in a new key.
Rijavecs conception of urban character situates it as part of a narrative of urban development that proceeds through a series of layers
If you look at the way the suburb developed
there were certain economic and creative impetuses that established a kind of a typology
which was then overrun by the next one and
then overrun by the next one and overrun by
2609
the next one and so its a very dense, layered

urban topography (Rijavec: interview).
This quote suggests that the source of renewal

of urban character lies in these economic
and creative impetuses that establish a new
typology and give the place a fresh identity.
The earlier layers are seen to be overrun yet
also remain as remnants within a layered
urban fabric. In this sense the proposal can
be argued to move the neighbourhood into
a new key.
The planning process provided plenty of
spectacle for the mass media and a feast of
legal and consulting fees. There is widespread
concern among interviewees that when character was deployed as a legal term, it became
something else which ironically enabled the
transgression of character
Urban character is problematic as a subject
matter that is designed to inform planning
decisions a well-qualified practitioner
can define it as being a jigsaw of all things
dissimilar and therefore Im going to put
up something entirely dissimilar and its
not out of character all [character] is, is a
vehicle by which someone can say, Oh, I like
it or I dont like it.
Despite winning the case, the architect/

developer is also caustic about the planning
process
Its a ludicrous system because the government, by shirking its responsibility, it sets up
a framework for a fight and then the people
who pay for the fight are those people who live
there and those people who are trying to do a
development there it might be a politically
expedient system because everyone vents
themselves, they feel there is this idea that
justice is being done (Rijavec: interview).
In this flexible and performance-based

planning system, conflict is all but guaranteed
by a practice of developers making ambit
claims which local authorities reject. These
proposals are then appealed to the planning
2610
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
tribunal VCAT where a compromise is generally approved. In this case, the initial proposal for 128 apartments was expanded to
152 apartments before it went to VCAT; the
architect/developer concedes that the approved project was an ambit claim
VCAT approved everything we did In
most cases you go in with scheme A and
you come out with, you know, Can you drop
a storey here and do this, that and the other
thing (Rijavec: interview).
Slippery Characters
The discourse on urban regulation we have
seen here is partly a product of different
desires: desires of residents to conserve valued
neighbourhoods and to limit change; desires
of architects to add new character to the city
and of developers to build a taller building
at a higher profit; market desires for a commanding view; and those of strategic planners
and the state for higher density development.
The initial eagerness of residents to put this
test of character at the centre of the planning
process was matched by the eagerness of
developers to engage in site-by-site exceptions
to urban regulation. Like its cousins identity,
place, home and community, the term
character is not easily contained or legislated.
In terms of urban regulation, these are slippery characters.
There are many theoretical lenses we might
deploy to understand what it is that was being
threatened and constructed here and it may be
useful to view this case through a few of them.
For Harvey, the politics of place operates in
a context where local character is a form of
local monopoly value in tension with global
capital (Harvey, 1996, pp. 297298). From
this view, the experience of place serves at
once to ground a phenomenology of dwelling
(in the Heideggerian sense) and to attract
capital through the market desire for uniqueness and authenticity. Capital seeks to retain
character because it cannot afford to kill
the goose that lays the golden egg (Harvey,

2001, pp. 394-411). Thus capital opens up
spaces of antagonism to its own processes
and these are spaces of hope for a better
planning process so long as the politics of
place is not parochial. Massey has been the
key proponent of a progressive, global and
open sense of place that is open to difference,
forward looking and globally connected
(Massey, 1994, 2005; Cresswell, 2004). For
Massey, Heideggerian notions of place identified with stasis, nostalgia and enclosure
are limited and problematic because they
privilege deeply rooted identities that marginalise difference (Massey, 1993, p. 64).
The progressive sense of place is always in
process; it valorises routes rather than roots
(Massey, 1993, pp. 6667; 1992, p. 14). In this
view, place can have a complex and unique
character without essentialism, a sense of
home for residents that is neither inwardnor backward-looking. In its embrace of
difference, Fitzroy could be construed as a
paradigm case of Masseys progressive sense
of place. Yet while Fitzroy was not defended
on essentialist grounds, the resistance to
change was deep-seated. Masseys antiHeideggerian conception of place tends to
distance the experience of place from the
ontology of dwelling and it does not fully explain the depth of antagonism towards the
cheesegrater.
This is scarcely the place to open debate
on Heideggerian philosophy, but it may be
useful to distinguish between Heideggers
ontology (the spatiality of existence) and
his essentialism (the primordiality of place).
Heidegger can be read in both these ways, yet
the claim that place is a taken-for-granted ontological ground (existence takes place) does
not necessarily suggest that senses of place are
rooted or fixed in the ways that Massey and
many others rightly condemn. The evidence
here and elsewhere shows that the experiences of place in everyday life, whether or not
taken-for-granted until threatened, surface
as part of the politics of place where they are

further constructed and shaped.6 Spatiality
and sociality are inextricably intertwined;
space is socially constructed as the social is
spatially constructed (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey,
1993). This reciprocity is apparent in the
continual slippage (often in mid-quote) between social and material aspects of Fitzroys
character. In this context, there is a clear need
for concepts and approaches that cut across
the sociality/spatiality divide, a need to move
beyond a false choice between place as pregiven (fixed, essential) or as entirely socially
constructed. We suggest that the conceptual
frameworks of Bourdieu and Deleuze may
be fertile in this regard.
There are clearly aspects of urban character
that residents have difficulty articulatingthe
proposed project violates a sense of appropriateness or feel, something pre-conceptual
and taken-for-granted. Bourdieus (1977)
conception of the habitus is a set of preconscious dispositions that structure the
taken-for-granted doxa of everyday life
He inhabits it like a garment [un habit] or a
familiar habitat. He feels at home in the world
because the world is also in him, in the form
of habitus (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 142143).
The habitus is described as a sense of ones

place but also a sense of the others place
(Bourdieu, 1990, p. 113) and as a feel for
the game of social practice (Bourdieu, 1993,
p. 5). The concept of habitus is derived in
part from Merleau-Pontys phenomenology
of embodied spatiality (Carman, 2008,
pp. 217219). The resonance between habitus
and habitat can be a useful conceptual frame
here because it parallels that between social
and physical character, between the feel and
the form. As we turn place identity into planning codes, we move from the pre-conscious
experiences of place in everyday life to the
production of a discourse of place and
character within institutionally structured
fields of power (Bourdieu, 1993): news media,
2611
housing markets, planning tribunals. From

this view, character is the taken for granted
doxa of urban life that becomes a para-dox
of urban design and planning. The habitus
is the feel that is threatened by the form.
In this case study, resident opposition was
deep-seated without being deep-rooted
in a singular or purified identityhence
the paradox of gentrifying residents selfconsciously defending the mix against their
own domination.
This conception of character as deep-seated
but not deep-rooted suggests that it is immanent rather than transcendent; grounded
in the myriad particularities and everyday
practices of place revealed by morphological
analysis. Another useful conceptual framework in this regard is the work of Deleuze
and Guattari (1987) on assemblages and
multiplicities. An assemblage is not a collection of things (whether buildings or people),
but an entity that emerges from the interaction of parts. Assemblages are at once social
and spatial territories connecting material
forms with discursive practices (DeLanda,
2006). The assemblage is thus a conceptual
framework that potentially connects both
the feel + form and the social + physical
dimensions of place. The concept of place
can then be seen not as bounded location
but as an assemblage of connections. Such a
conception cuts against any notions of place
as an organic tree-like concept that organises
spatial meanings around an essentialised stem.
The pre-conceptual doxa of everyday place
experience maps usefully against Deleuzean
notions of sensation, affect, desire and
intensity. Urban character can be described
as a kind of intensity that haunts the urban
assemblage. The sense, feel, atmosphere
and character can be seen as intensities
in the sense that desire, love, flavour, light,
colour, tone and experience have intensity
(while height and bulk have extension). The
widespread description of Fitzroys character as a complex social and formal mix
2612
KIM DOVEY ET AL.
suggests an intensive multiplicitymore

like a soup than a salad in the sense that the
flavour is found more in the interaction of
ingredients than in fragmented parts. When
taller buildings or different faces appear on
the street, the tone of the neighbourhood
changes. Again, as character is legislated, as
feel is reduced to form, intensity is reduced
to extension. Urban regulation is a process
of coding: character is coded into characteristics; parts are made to stand for the whole;
desires are captured and identities are fixed.
The desire from both Fitzroy residents and
the architect/developer to retain the mix
and the intensity of Fitzroy in a context of
potentially escalating heights suggests that
it may be useful to conceive of Fitzroy as a
plateau. While often associated with Deleuze
and Guattaris book A Thousand Plateaus
(1987), the term originates with Bateson
(1973) where it is defined in opposition to
schizmogenesis: the way a positive feedback
process escalates out of control (like an
arms race). The way that one tall building in
a neighbourhood can set a precedent that
triggers the right to go ever higher is an
example of schizmogenesis. There are links
here to Jacobs (1965) theory of the selfdestruction of diversity and to Harveys
(1985) work on the circuits of capital leading
to creative destruction. For Bateson, the
plateau is a stable state that is valued for its
intensity and where schizmogenesis is held
at bay. It is a self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids an orientation towards a culmination point (Bateson,
1973, p. 113). For Deleuze and Guattari, the
plateau is also a plane of consistency in an
assemblage that is open to change but not
to suicidal escalation. The concepts of place,
plateau or plane (note the shared etymology
of these the pla words) denote immanent
fields of everyday practice that ground modes
of thought and identity formation without
transcendent ideals (Stagoll, 2005).
There is no suggestion here that any particular view of character is right or wrong, nor
that character is always seen in the ways it is in
Fitzroy. The suggestion is that character can be
seen as an urban intensity that is threatened
by escalating heights and that height control
can be conceived as a socio-spatial plateau:
a place assemblage that is open to change
but not to suicidal escalation. While there
may well be a strategic need for dramatic
transformations of place, the practice of applying performance-based regulation of
character on a site-by-site basis is a recipe
for trouble. While it may appear that site-bysite planning may be more sensitive to the
differences between places and the nuances
of place experience, one of its effects in this
case was to move the practice of urban regulation out of the framework of democratic
planning and into the control of the judiciary.7 Slippages between social and physical
aspects of character tend to confound attempts to operationalise it as a code of urban
regulation and this very slipperiness becomes
attractive to proponents of deregulated and
flexible planning systems. Many aspects of
character become discursively constructed
in the field of politics where character comes
to mean what different interests want it to
mean. Carroll [as Alice] put it in a different
context: The question is whether you can
make words mean so many different things.
Or, as Humpty Dumpty responded: The
question is which is to be masterthats all
(Carroll, 1871, ch. VI).
While planning codes and consultants
studies generally try to reduce character to a
set of formal elements, the ways it is experienced in everyday life tend to resist attempts
to separate the social from the physical. Struggles to prevent the wrong kinds of building
can easily slip into the exclusion of the wrong
kinds of people. It is the tendency to presume
that urban or neighbourhood character is
somehow embedded in built form, waiting
to be defined, fixed and protected that needs

to be rethought. The pursuit of it is akin to
Carrolls (1876) Hunting of the Snark
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it
with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
4.
5.
Just as the pursuit of the snark slides between

thimbles and care, forks and hope, smiles
and soap, so the pursuit of urban character
slides between such ethereal and corporeal
categories (Deleuze, 1990), between feel and
form. In this case, they threatened its life
with a cheesegrater, yet a more serious threat
to character may lie in the desire to reduce
it to a series of fixed features which turn
character into caricature.
6.
Notes
1. The project was then marketed off the plan
but did not sell and was abandoned for 3 years
until a new developer purchased the site
along with the plans and development rights.
The building shape was retained with a new
interior layout geared to a different market.
Construction commenced in 2009.
2. This work is part of Australian Research Council
project (DP0344105) entitled What is urban
character? (200306). The project comprised
six case studies which included both the
protection of existing character and the instant
creation of character in new suburbs. For other
case studies see: Wood et al. (2006) and Dovey
et al. (forthcoming). For comparative studies
see: Woodcock et al. (2008), Dovey et al. (2008)
and Dovey (2009, ch 5).
3. The work of urban theorists such as Jacobs
(1965), Lynch (1972) and Alexander (1979)
from the 1960s and 1970s was supplemented
by the phenomenology of Relph (1976), Tuan
(1977), Norberg-Schulz (1980) and Seamon
and Mugerauer (1985) and the environmental
psychology of Altman and Werner (1985),
Canter (1977), Rapoport (1982) and Altman
and Low (1992). An international research
7.
2613
conference in Melbourne in 1985 was focused

on the theme of Place and Placemaking
where both Relph and Rapoport were keynote
speakers.
For a more complete account of the rise of urban
character discourse in Victoria, see Woodcock
et al. (2004).
A total of eight interviews with residents and
one with the architect/developer were conducted of 12 hours each. Interviewees were
contacted through the Fitzroy Residents
Association; this is not a random sample of
local residents but is designed to understand
the conceptions of character that were driving
resident resistance. All interviewees were professionals, including males and females aged
from 30s to 60s. All interviews were conducted
in 2004, after the proposal was approved and
before it collapsed. Additional interviews with
an urban planner from the local authority
and the planning consultant who conducted
the Urban Character Study were used for
background only.
Case study methods can be peculiarly pertinent to theories of place both because they
have the depth to explore the nuances of sociospatial reciprocity and because differences
between places are central to their definitions
places are cases. While case studies may lack
generalisability, they draw their lessons from
senses of place that may be missing from the
distant geographical gaze.
VCAT occupies a very low rung on the judicial
hierarchy with correspondingly low levels
of independence. Tribunal members rely
on political capital to secure and maintain
appointments.
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(B) (J) (R) DOVEY - A Test of Character Regulating Place-Identity in Inner-City Melbourne

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A Test of Character: Regulating Place-identity in Inner-city Melbourne

>> Version of Record - Oct 16, 2009

46(12) 25952615, November 2009

A Test of Character: Regulating

meets powerful resident resistance to change,

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

activity centres. Meanwhile, Melbournes

Figure 1. The Cheesegrater: advertising image

project the Cheesegraterit cheesed them

is defined by a host of factors: landform,

Note how heritage is separate in the title

During the 1990s, requirements to respect

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

Figure 2. Fitzroy and study area

entry interface, permeability and functional

has largely eliminated the functional divide.

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

Figure 3. Urban morphology

Figure 4. Typical Fitzroy streetscapes

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

The study identified the prevailing character

The Resident Experience

Common to all interviews is the idea that

While interviewees are generally approving

There is, however, an ambivalent attitude

The mixture of built forms is linked to the

In social terms, interviewees characterise

necessarily harmonious mixture, but as having

things that I would like to be, but probably

This idea of a breeding-ground or hive links

Note the ambivalence in this latter passage as

You dont get the sense that people really care

I admit that when I see it on my own wall here,

[Fitzroy] is different, it is it has that edge

Figure 5. Laneway graffiti

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

Fitzroy is seen by most interviewees to be an

As with the general definitions of urban

The social capital is also linked to a history of

walls and carpark frontages. The height

In this conception, urban jazz had two

Figure 6. The NKYA Project in context: the model as advertised

built form. Jazz was seen as low-brow taste

Rijavec suggests that the mis-perception of

most out of place in the variegated urban

This project generated interplay between

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

boundaries of the character zone. Most of

Yet how to define everything else? As a

Figure 7. Urban character areas

Many also realise the impossibility and

Yet in the architect/developers view

These contrasting views show the danger

In our case, it wont happen because the

KIM DOVEY ET AL.

A further difference stems from Rijavecs

Streetscape perspectives of the proposed

While residents value change, they experience

evolving only through creative small additions.

This desire to produce new forms of urban

the next one and so its a very dense, layered

This quote suggests that the source of renewal