The Routledge Handbook of Australian Urban and Regional Planning

Neil Sipe, Karen Vella, Neil Sipe, Karen Vella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317604624
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Aménagement urbain et paysager

Where is planning in twenty-first-century Australia? What are the key challenges that confront planning? What does planning scholarship reveal about the state of planning practice in meeting the needs of urban and regional Australians? The Routledge Handbook of Australian Urban and Regional Planning includes 27 chapters that answer these and many other questions that confront planners working in urban and regional areas in twenty-first-century Australia. It provides a single source for cutting edge thinking and research across a broad range of the most important topics in urban and regional planning.

Divided into six parts, this handbook explores:

• contexts of urban and regional planning in Australia
• critical debates in Australian planning
• planning policy
• climate change, disaster risk and environmental management
• engaging and taking planning action
• planning education and research

This handbook is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in urban planning, built environment, urban studies and public policy as well as academics and practitioners across Australia and internationally.

1
AUSTRALIAN URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Karen Vella and Neil Sipe

Introduction

In 1914, George Taylor wrote Town Planning for Australia: this was Australia’s first book on urban planning. Written for a new, and highly urbanized Australia, it proposed a case for planning to achieve the ideal city: a more beautiful environment, improved living conditions, a safer city, a better class of individual, and more cooperative and cohesive communities (Taylor & Freestone, 2015). The diverse interests it raised led into the first university level planning qualification, at Sydney University from 1949 (Freestone, 2015).

One hundred years later, planning in Australia has grown substantially and matured as a profession. Australia now has 24 accredited educational programs in place, a steadily increasing number of planning academics, and a growing body of planning research (Byrne, Chapter 26). Student enrolments continue to grow and between 2000 and 2013 the number of employed planners had more than doubled across Australia (Mayere and Grant-Smith, Chapter 25). Planners today work in diverse urban and regional contexts and across fields of planning and the scholarship of urban and regional planning has evolved since its early beginnings with this broadening base (Freestone, Chapter 7).

It is timely to ask, where is planning today in Australia? What would a snapshot of critical essays on urban planning reveal about the practice of planning and the key challenges it confronts? What would it reveal about the state of planning policy and extent of planning action in urban and regional Australia?

Critical Commentary on Urban and Regional Planning

The Australian Handbook of Urban and Regional Planning aims to provide critical thinking and commentary on some of the important topics confronting Australian planning in the twenty-first century. It presents considered reflections on a diverse range of planning dimensions, contexts, and issues and aims to be provocative about where planning is, or perhaps ought to be.

Though the book aims to be provocative, it does not seek to be comprehensive: this would be a herculean task. Our approach was to canvas contributions from people with experience and insights that we considered to be an essential part of benchmarking the state of urban and regional planning in Australia. We sought perspectives that crossed urban and regional divides, were not dominated by perspectives from southern Australia, considered social, economic, and environmental topics in planning, and where women were active participants.

We aimed to give consideration to topics of interest to students at the Masters and PhD levels and planning professionals and urbanists who might use this book for cutting-edge thinking about urban and regional planning in Australia. With this in mind we sought critical perspectives on contexts of urban and regional planning, planning policy, matters of governance, the planning profession and the planning academy. The aim of each chapter was to allow authors the chance to provide commentary on various topics based on their expertise and experience. We were not prescriptive about chapter structure; we gave authors the scope to canvas debates and reflect on urban and regional planning practice in Australia in relation to their subject matter.

The Structure of This Book

This book brings together a collection of 26 critical essays from 43 diverse Australian and selected international academics and practitioners. Each reflects on case studies and challenges for Australian urban and regional planning. The essays are presented in six parts:

Part One: The Context of Urban and Regional Planning. This part contains two chapters. First Elin Charles-Edwards looks at Australia’s changing demographic characteristics in the twenty-first century. Charles-Edwards examines population patterns in four region types—Capital Cities, Coastal Centers, Regional Australia and Remote Australia—and provides an important backdrop for the commentary and debates canvassed throughout the book (Chapter 2, The Changing Population Geography of Australia: Implications for Planning and Policy).

Second, David Wadley provides a critical perspective on planning and employment, income and (in)equality outcomes in cities. Wadley considers whether planners are able to influence employment, income and (in)equality trends through typical planning interventions and provides prognostic conclusions about implications over the next 50 or so years (Chapter 3, Employment, Income and (in)Equality: Planning Issues Hidden in Plain Sight).

Part Two: Critical Debates in Australian Planning. This part contains eight chapters. It begins with Glen Searle’s review of Australia’s preoccupation with economic development. Searle provides a critical commentary on how economic development has dominated the focus of planning over the last several decades and how this has subverted the achievement of balanced planning outcomes (Chapter 4, Planning and the Nirvana of Economic Development).

Next John Byrne, an urban design practitioner, presents an alternative view. Byrne considers how urban design and city making has changed over time in Australia. Using examples from around Australia, Byrne shows how urban design has improved in response to contemporary challenges (Chapter 5, Urban Design for a Sustainable Future: Heading in the Right Direction?).

Jennifer Bellamy and Brian Head consider how the region has become a basis for planning and service delivery within Australia’s multilevel system of government. They examine the impact that policies of regionalization and regionalism have had on urban and regional planning action (Chapter 6, Regionalization and Regionalism: Present Challenges and New Frontiers).

Robert Freestone outlines the changing focus of urban and regional planning in Australia since the early 1900s. Against the different eras of planning, this chapter uses iconic texts to consider how planning has matured and adapted to changing circumstances, and continues to do so (Chapter 7 Evolution of Australian Urban and Regional Practice: A Textual Analysis).

Next Allan Dale, Ruth Potts and Sharon Harwood balance southern perspectives on planning that typically dominate Australian planning texts. They describe how the north-south culture war in Australia has played out through failed experiments in the planning for northern Australia’s contested landscapes (Chapter 8, Northern Australia: A Contested Landscape).

Kristian Ruming, Nicole Gurran, Paul Maginn and Robin Goodman add further commentary on the governance of planning. They consider how planning system reform provides a governance lever for government to shape, direct and facilitate development in urban and regional Australia (Chapter 9, Australian Planning System Reform: Tinkering at the Edges or Instrumental Change?).

In addition to matters of governance, Patrick Troy considers physical determinism and Australia’s major cities. Troy describes a series of environmental and social arguments that challenge the goal of increased urban density: he argues instead for physical expressions of the city that are appropriately contextualized in Australia’s diverse socio-political landscapes (Chapter 10, Physical Determinism and Australian Cities).

Joe Hurley, Elizabeth Taylor and Jago Dodson present an alternative view on urban density and compact city policy. In addition to Troy, they examine why increased density has been so difficult to achieve in Australian cities. They consider how physical, institutional and cultural attachment has led to low density urban form. They also describe the contested nature of policy arguments about densification and question the feasibility of densification to improve urban conditions (Chapter 11, Getting Dense: Why Has Urban Consolidation Been So Difficult?).

Part Three: Topics in Planning Policy. This part presents perspectives on five urban policy subjects. First Keith Jacobs looks at the role and capacity of planning to address Australia’s housing affordability crisis. Jacobs considers the impact of neoliberalist policy on low-income housing, the difficulties planning instruments face in regulating the development industry, and lays down a call for major political reform (Chapter 12, Neoliberalism and the Housing Affordability Crisis).

Caryl Bosman considers Australia’s aging population and emerging markets for Active Adult Lifestyle Communities (AALCs). Bosman compares AALCs and existing suburban landscapes and considers how they address health and wellbeing goals of older Australians and their financial costs. Bosman concludes with a call for greater housing choice to meet the needs of Australia’s aging population (Chapter 13, Gerotopia: The “Good Life” for Life Hereafter).

Matt Burke and Jianqiang Cui provide a critical analysis of transport problems in Australia’s car-dominated cities and consider how planners are responding to transport needs. They examine growing problems with new infrastructure funding, trends in transit-oriented developments and active transport, and how existing infrastructure and new technology can be better used to meet transport needs. They suggest transport planning of the future will require greater, but also different types of, urban design skills (Chapter 14, How Did We Get Here? Plotting the Route to “Balanced” Mobility and Transport Planning).

Gavin McCullagh and Douglas Baker add a ports perspective on infrastructure planning. They consider the changing relationship between ports infrastructure and their city contexts and examine the increasing complexity of port development and urban planning. They call for better planning to manage the relationship between ports and their urban and regional interfaces (Chapter 15, Ports as Critical Infrastructure: Keeping Connected Requires a Long-Term View).

Nicolette Larder turns our attention toward notions of food justice in Australian cities and regions. Larder highlights food justice as an overlooked area of contemporary planning policy and lays down a call for urban policy to better address food systems to achieve more equitable and just outcomes (Chapter 16, Planning for Food Justice within Urban Australia).

Part Four: Climate Change, Disaster Risk and Environmental Management. This part presents several perspectives on planning progress in addressing environmental concerns. Ian Lowe outlines the imperatives for Australia to move away from fossil fuels. Lowe explores the challenges associated with adapting urban systems and argues for a different economic approach and a revival of urban and regional planning to aid the transition to a low energy future (Chapter 17, How Planning Can Address the Challenge of Transitioning to Low-Carbon Urban Economies).

Second Anne Leitch considers adapting to sea-level rise at the local community scale as a complex and wicked climate change problem. Leitch argues that effective planning requires strong leadership that facilitates a broader approach to stakeholder engagement (Chapter 18, Climate Change: Local Governments Adapting to the Wicked Problem of Sea-Level Rise).

Alan March and Stephen Dovers add a disaster risk reduction perspective to urban planning and climate change adaptation. They argue that urban planning can play an important role in reducing disaster risks. Drawing on lessons from the 2009 Victorian Bushfires and 2010–2011 Queensland Floods, they identify a normative framework to guide urban planning (Chapter 19, Mainstreaming Urban Planning for Disaster Risk Reduction: Five Capabilities for Australian Urban Planning).

Michael Lockwood and Andrew Harwood examine the quality of planning undertaken by Australian Natural Resource Management (NRM) bodies under devolved governance arrangements. They develop a framework to assess plan quality and apply this to assess the quality of second ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword by Ann Forsyth
• 1 Australian Urban and Regional Planning in the Twenty-First Century
• Part I The Context of Urban and Regional Planning
• Part II Critical Debates in Australian Planning
• Part III Topics in Planning Policy
• Part IV Climate Change, Disaster Risk and Environmental Management
• Part V Engaging and Taking Planning Action
• Part VI Planning Education and Research
• Index