Australian urban land use planning


Book Description

Urban and regional planning is increasingly central to public policy in Australia and internationally. As cities and regions adapt to profound economic, societal and technological shifts, new urban and environmental problems are emerging - from inadequate systems of transport and infrastructure, to declining housing affordability, biodiversity loss and human-induced climate change. Australian urban land use planning provides a practical understanding of the principles, processes and mechanisms for strategic and proactive urban governance. Substantially updated and expanded, this second edition explains and compares the legislation, policy- and plan-making, development assessment and dispute resolution processes of Australia's eight state and territorial planning jurisdictions as well as the changing role of the Commonwealth in environmental and urban policy. This new edition also extends the coverage of planning practice, with a new chapter on planning for climate change, a more detailed treatment of planning for housing diversity and affordability, and a comprehensive analysis of the New South Wales planning system and its evolution over the last 30 years. Nicole Gurran is an associate professor in the Urban and Regional Planning Program at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on comparative planning approaches to housing, ecological sustainability and climate change. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, she practised as a planner in several state government roles, focusing on local environmental plan-making, environmental management and housing policy. She is on the Executive Board of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association.




Planning Australia


Book Description

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the major issues and activities that constitute urban and regional planning in Australia today.




Breaking Point


Book Description

The way we plan and build cities in Australia needs to change. Australia’s population is growing: between 2017 and 2046 it is projected to increase by 11.8 million, the equivalent of adding a city the size of Canberra each year for thirty years. Most of this growth will occur in the major cities, and already its effects are being felt: inner-city property prices are skyrocketing and the more affordable middle and outer suburbs lack essential services and infrastructure. The result is inequality: while wealthy inner-city dwellers enjoy access to government-subsidised services – public transport, cultural and sporting facilities – new home buyers, pushed further out, pay the lion’s share of the costs. So how can we create affordable housing for everyone and still get them to work in the morning? What does sustainable urban development look like? In this timely critique of our nation’s urban development and planning culture, Peter Seamer argues that vested interests often distort rational thinking on our cities. Looking to the future, he sets out cogent new strategies to resolve congestion, transport and expenditure problems, offering a blueprint for multi-centred Australian cities that are more localised, urban and equitable in nature.




Planning Metropolitan Australia


Book Description

Australia has long been a highly (sub)urbanized nation, but the major distinctive feature of its contemporary settlement pattern is that the great majority of Australians live in a small number of large metropolitan areas focused on the state capital cities. The development and application of effective urban policy at a regional scale is a significant global challenge given the complexities of urban space and governance. Building on the editors’ previous collection The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History (2000), this new book examines the recent history of metropolitan planning in Australia since the beginning of the twenty-first century. After a historical prelude, the book is structured around a series of six case studies of metropolitan Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, the fast-growing metropolitan region of South-East Queensland centred on Brisbane, and the national capital of Canberra. These essays are contributed by some of Australia’s leading urbanists. Set against a dynamic background of economic change, restructured land uses, a more diverse population, and growing spatial and social inequality, the book identifies a broad planning consensus around the notion of making Australian cities more contained, compact and resilient. But it also observes a continuing gulf between the simplified aims of metropolitan strategies and our growing understanding of the complex functioning of the varied communities in which most people live. This book reflects on the raft of planning challenges presented at the metropolitan scale, looks at what the future of Australian cities might be, and speculates about the prospects of more effective metropolitan planning arrangements.




Urban Nation


Book Description

Urban Nation: Australia's Planning Heritage provides the first national survey of the historical impact of urban planning and design on the Australian landscape. This ambitious account looks at every state and territory from the earliest days of European settlement to the present day. It identifies and documents hundreds of places - parks, public spaces, redeveloped precincts, neighbourhoods, suburbs up to whole towns - that contribute to the distinctive character of urban and suburban Australia. It sets these significant planned landscapes within the broader context of both international design trends and Australian efforts at nation and city building.




The Routledge Handbook of Australian Urban and Regional Planning


Book Description

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.




Politics, Planning and Housing Supply in Australia, England and Hong Kong


Book Description

In recent years many nations have asked why not enough housing is being built or, when it is built, why it isn't of the highest quality or in the best, most sustainable, locations. Politics, Planning and Housing Supply in Australia, England and Hong Kong examines the politics and planning of new homes in three very different settings, but with shared political traditions: in Australia, in England and in Hong Kong. It investigates the power-relationships and politics that underpin the allocation of land for large-scale residential schemes and the processes and politics that lead to particular development outcomes. Using a comparative framework, it asks: how different systems of urban governance and planning mediate the supply of land for housing; whether and how these system differences influence the location, quantity and price of residential land and the implications for housing outcomes; what can be learned from these different systems for allocating land, building consensus between different stakeholders, and delivering a steady supply of high quality and well located homes accessible to, and appropriate for, diverse housing needs. This book frames each case study in a comprehensive examination of national and territorial frameworks before dissecting key local cases. These local cases – urban renewal and greenfield growth centres in Australia, new towns and strategic sites in England, and major development schemes in Hong Kong – explore how broader urban planning and housing policy goals play out at the local level. While the book highlights a number of potential strategies for improving planning and housing delivery processes, the real challenge is to give voice to a broader array of interests, reconstituting the political process surrounding planning and housing development to prioritise homes in well-planned places for the many, rather than simply facilitating investment opportunities for the few.




Australian Metropolis


Book Description

The Australian Metropolis splendidly fills a huge gap in the literature on Australian cities. It is the definitive account of the history of Australian cities and the crucial role which planning has played in their genesis and growth. Spanning two centuries from the very beginning until the present day, it will instantly become a standard work ' Professor Sir Peter Hall, author of Cities in Civilisation.. The Australian Metropolis provides a single-volume introduction to the development of urban planning. It fills the need for a convenient, initial resource for anyone interested in the broad evolutionary sweep of modern planning. By setting the evolution of Australian planning within its broader societal context, The Australian Metropolis presents a balanced appraisal of the positive, negative and ambivalent legacies resulting from attempts to plan Australia's major cities. This book is the winner of two Royal Australian Planning Institute Awards for Planning Excellence in 2000/2001, including the New South Wales' Division Prize for Planning Scholarship in February 2001.




Australia's Metropolitan Imperative


Book Description

Since the early 1990s there has been a global trend towards governmental devolution. However, in Australia, alongside deregulation, public–private partnerships and privatisation, there has been increasing centralisation rather than decentralisation of urban governance. Australian state governments are responsible for the planning, management and much of the funding of the cities, but the Commonwealth government has on occasion asserted much the same role. Disjointed policy and funding priorities between levels of government have compromised metropolitan economies, fairness and the environment. Australia’s Metropolitan Imperative: An Agenda for Governance Reform makes the case that metropolitan governments would promote the economic competitiveness of Australia’s cities and enable more effective and democratic planning and management. The contributors explore the global metropolitan ‘renaissance’, document the history of metropolitan debate in Australia and demonstrate metropolitan governance failures. They then discuss the merits of establishing metropolitan governments, including economic, fiscal, transport, land use, housing and environmental benefits. The book will be a useful resource for those engaged in strategic, transport and land use planning, and a core reference for students and academics of urban governance and government.




Planning for Coexistence?


Book Description

Planning is becoming one of the key battlegrounds for Indigenous people to negotiate meaningful articulation of their sovereign territorial and political rights, reigniting the essential tension that lies at the heart of Indigenous-settler relations. But what actually happens in the planning contact zone - when Indigenous demands for recognition of coexisting political authority over territory intersect with environmental and urban land-use planning systems in settler-colonial states? This book answers that question through a critical examination of planning contact zones in two settler-colonial states: Victoria, Australia and British Columbia, Canada. Comparing the experiences of four Indigenous communities who are challenging and renegotiating land-use planning in these places, the book breaks new ground in our understanding of contemporary Indigenous land justice politics. It is the first study to grapple with what it means for planning to engage with Indigenous peoples in major cities, and the first of its kind to compare the underlying conditions that produce very different outcomes in urban and non-urban planning contexts. In doing so, the book exposes the costs and limits of the liberal mode of recognition as it comes to be articulated through planning, challenging the received wisdom that participation and consultation can solve conflicts of sovereignty. This book lays the theoretical, methodological and practical groundwork for imagining what planning for coexistence might look like: a relational, decolonizing planning praxis where self-determining Indigenous peoples invite settler-colonial states to their planning table on their terms.