ENVS10010: Owned Environments

The first assessment is in pairs going to Northcote and doing a short, 1000 word investigation on the development of the suburb. Not too bad but it’s done on a wiki which is an awful format to do an investigation, especially when everyone else in the subject can see your work…

Second is a VCAT mock trial style role-play. Won’t go into too much detail but this is just easy marks, the only difficult part is the reflective writing component.

Last assignment is in groups of 4 doing a market valuation of a chosen property in Northcote. Again, won’t go into it too much but it was a pretty good assessment if you had a good group.

Exam today wasn’t too bad, a few too many questions on Week 11 stuff and not enough about Torrens Title

The subject should be called Principles of Property Law/Introduction to Property Law but I guess all the Envs subjects need to be called XYZ Environments. Definitely been the best and most interesting subject I’ve done so far and I would definitely recommend it to everyone else.

Audio for each lecture + Slides

Kimberly Winson-Geideman: Head Lecturer

Guest Lecturers

Ole Fryd

Phil Nolan

Brian Davidson

Joe Barrins

others…

1 past exam (2013), I assume today’s exam will be released too

5 Out of 5

Just 1-3 extra readings to do each week, largely unrelated to assessments but important for the exam

Week 1 is a basic introduction to property rights and the theory that will underpin the rest of the course. Kimberly will talk about 3 systems throughout the semester, Legal - Social - Economic. Know them because they all connect with each other as you’d expect.

Another set of two fantastic lectures, the first given by Joe again, and the second by a PhD candidate. They both concern Intellectual Property and all the theory that comes with the topic. Joe looks at a few case studies that were (about my umpteenth time saying it) very interesting. Monsanto v Percy Schmeier, Henrietta Lacks, and Metallica v Napster. Again he delivers the lecture in an engaging and exciting manner that makes a potentially boring topic into one of the best.

The second part of the lecture given by Solmaz(?) was about the privacy of data and how technology is evolving rapidly, all that jazz. More detail in the tutorial but it was a good one.

My least favourite lecture by a mile… This was something to do with land information systems and geomatics, and to be completely honest I still don’t understand what it was about.

Review.

Phil Nolan, a charismatic and very interesting lawyer, gives the week 2 lecture about land titles and all the major cases related to property and ownership. As someone who enjoyed Year 12 Politics & Law, this week was probably my favourite and the cases and all the different types of ownership interests were very interesting. Who owns land? How have property rights evolved over time? etc.

I’d argue this is also the most important lecture as the content will keep appearing through the rest of the course, and really forms the core of what the subject is about.

Pretty basic lecture about different perspectives of property and ownership (capitalism, communism, traditional societies). Also learning about the explicit and implicit ‘bundle of rights’ that come with owning property.

Ole Fryd, another guest lecturer this week to talk about the importance of urban planning. An interesting one that looks at planning in theory and in practice, and the framework that Victoria uses for policy and planning

Looking at systems in other countries (UK, USA, NZ, China). Nothing too spectacular but you get some insight as to how terrible the US system is

This lecture is properly split into two. The first is given by a PhD candidate and she talks about informal settlements and how they have developed over time. Not as dull as it sounds and the stuff about Favelas in Rio de Janeiro was quite good.

Joe Barrins (my tutor) gives the second part of the lecture which is all about the different types of value. Subjective/Objective, Extrinsic/Intrinsic, etc. This was probably one of the best lectures of the semester and Joe is a very engaging lecturer and fantastic tutor.

Can’t remember who gave this lecture about Land Economy and Value, but it was a pretty good one. The content gives some background and history into how Melbourne has developed, as well as discussing the five major models of land economy. The theory was very interesting and it’s a shame there was only 1 lecture on this.

Land Value. I didn’t actually go to this lecture but the material is extremely important as the 3rd assignment is about giving a property a market valuation. The tutorial that goes with this lecture was also very good, we got to put the theory into practice and find out how to properly valuate property.

Brian Davidson gives this lecture, and he is the head lecturer for the 2nd Semester subject, Governing Environments. The subject matter (value of water and markets) was pretty dry but he made it great. If you’re doing Reshaping Environments in Semester 1 alongside this, then you’ll hear some contradicting things about how valuable water is. As expected though, Davidson offers a practical approach whereas Reshaping uses scare tactics to make you think there isn’t a drop of water left…

The lecture also looked at some basic economic principles like supply, demand, equilibrium, price determination, etc. which was just a basic refresher of 2AB.

1 x 2 hour lectures a week
1 x 1 hour tutorial

2014, Semester One