Urban Geography
Urban and regional studies are concerned to promote understanding of the way changing economic, social and demographic conditions impact on different localities, and how the local situation can mediate such change.
These processes can be viewed at a variety of scales. Increasing globalisation means that even more remote regions are now influenced by changes in the world economic order. The new international division of labour, deregulation of trade and finance, the growing dominance of transnational corporations, and an increased mobility of capital, enterprise, and people means that urban and regional systems are increasingly subject to forces at a supranational level. Yet the impacts must still be evaluated at the local level, as the nature of the local milieux will mean different outcomes in different locations. Thus urban and regional studies are concerned to study both world systems of social and economic activity, and local patterns of social composition, economic opportunity, difference, and disadvantage as expressed through employment, housing, and social relations.
The School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University has interests at both the international and the local scales. A concern with Australian patterns and processes are important in both the course structure and research, but a wider focus is applied to both the developed and developing world. Teaching and research on areas such as Urban restructuring, and Dilemmas of Policy and Planning focus specifically on Australia. Courses concerned with Cities and Communities, and Society, Nature and Settlement in the New World, develop the relationship of Australia with the wider world scene. Complementary courses in Development Studies, and the Geography of South East Asia expand the offerings which may be taken in this stream, while a number of courses with an explicitly environmental focus also can be linked in.