ARCH1411:Urban Planning and Environment Project Literature Review

ARCH1411/1405 Assessment task 1 further instructions and guidance

Generally

- Make sure you read and understand the marking rubric for this assessment task.

- There is some flexibility in the word lengths between the sections: you decide.

Introduction and Background

- Discuss the policy/planning/environmental, economic or other significant contexts of your research.

- Think about your audience: is there a specialist terminology you need to explain?

- Key concepts/terms should always be defined on first use.

- Why is your topic significant? What is problematic about it, and for whom is it a problem? Is it an industry or governmental concern, or a wider social problem?

- How does your research address the problem?

Research Question

- Not all research reports are guided by a specific question(s). A set of aims and objectives can be developed to underpin the inquiry. This structure includes elements of the research design (eg. identifying the objectives you will fulfil to achieve the research aim).

- Make sure the question cannot be answered with a yes/no response. (For example: Have planning controls introduced to limit building in bushfire prone areas resulted in less development applications?)

Literature Review

- The purpose of the literature review is to enable you to identify existing knowledge that you can build in your research. The aim is to situate your topic within the field of scholarly publications, and in some cases also in the context of policy, industry or ‘grey’ literature.

- Your literature review should:

• Provide background information you (and the reader) need to understand and frame your research topic.
• Demonstrate familiarity with the important research done in your area.
• Identify how your research contributes to the existing body of knowledge (you may be addressing a research gap, or contributing new case study or analytical perspective, or providing further support for (or arguments against) a theme in the literature)
• Critically evaluate independently sourced peer-reviewed articles and construct a coherent argument supporting your research topic.

- It is very important that you do not simply list and describe peer-reviewed sources relevant to your topic. Instead, you should analyse these sources by critically evaluating them in the context of your research topic.

- Good literature reviews bring sources together to support an underpinning narrative that justifies the research you are conducting.

Research Methodology

- Discuss your overall research methodology that you plan to adopt (this may vary in the final report as you search for data and your thinking evolves).

- For each methodology chosen, define it (referencing the methodological literature), discuss why it is suitable to answer your research question, and identify the data/information sources you plan to use.

Referencing

- You must use Harvard-style in-text citations and include a complete reference list.

- All sources must be referenced appropriately, particularly where quotations, paraphrases or ideas have been found in/taken from sources.