Planning Metropolitan Australia

Stephen Hamnett, Robert Freestone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315281353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

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.

Chapter 1
The Metropolitan Perspective

Stephen Hamnett and Robert Freestone

While the notion of metropolitan planning is not new, there has been a recently renewed focus internationally on the burgeoning growth of large extended metropolitan regions and their continuing policy challenges (see, for example, Roberts et al., 1998; Laquian, 2005; Ross, 2009; Hall, 2011; Sassen, 2011; Xu and Yeh, 2011; Rosan, 2016; Lang and Török, 2017). Katz and Bradley (2013, p. 1) have written about a ‘metropolitan revolution’ in the USA which rests on ‘a simple but profound truth: cities and metropolitan areas are the engines of economic prosperity and social transformation’.

Murphy (2012, p. 156) has defined the essence of metropolitan planning as the adoption of ‘a synoptic view of large urbanised regions’ which aspires to integrate related issues of population growth, economic development, the planning of transport and infrastructure, growing environmental concerns and increasing socio-spatial inequality. The same author also notes a ‘renaissance of planning’ at the metropolitan scale in Australia in the early decades of the twenty-first century, expressed in a series of new planning strategies for the major metropolitan regions centred on the mainland state capitals. These regions are the paramount feature of Australia’s settlement structure. More than half of the national population now resides in Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne and the evolving conurbation of South-East Queensland.

The main focus of this book is on the spatial strategies employed to manage growth and change in these metropolitan regions –the circumstances which have produced them, their achievements and their shortcomings. There is also an examination of the extent to which these strategies share distinctive common elements (see Bunker and Searle, 2009; McCosker and Searle, 2016) as well as of the subtle ways in which they differ, one from another, in, for example, the relative importance attached to economic, social and environmental objectives over time; the balance drawn between global ambitions and the need to be responsive to local communities and interest groups; their depth of analysis; and in the formats and visual language that they adopt to express their proposals and aspirations.

The next part of this chapter sets Australian metropolitan plans against a broader backcloth by briefly examining the recent international literature on strategic spatial planning and by pointing to some distinctive features of Australian plans when compared to the more fluid and ‘relational’ plans characteristic of European and other developed countries in the early twenty-first century. The structure of the book is then outlined and this is followed by a contextual discussion of the changing nature of Australia’s society and economy as the prelude to an analysis of recent trends in the growth, changing composition and distribution of the Australian population. This provides further details of the dominance of the larger metropolitan regions and also of the changes occurring across and within these regions. Australia’s vulnerability to climate change-related events and other environmental threats is considered next, as is the apparent inability of Australia’s federal system of government to develop a coherent response to these threats, and this leads into a more specific discussion of the nature of, and challenges to, governance at the metropolitan scale. Having established this context, the chapter then examines in more detail the characteristics, aims and leading policies of twenty-first century Australian metropolitan plans and shows how these plans, and planning systems more generally, have been shaped by the dominant ideology and practices referred to as ‘neoliberalism’. This is followed by an assessment of the achievements of metropolitan plans and leads to an overall conclusion that there remains a significant gap between the ambitions of the plans and the evolving character of the metropolitan regions.

Strategic Spatial Planning

A rich literature has developed in recent decades about emerging styles of strategic spatial planning, led in particular by European planning theorists (see, for example, Albrechts, 2006, 2011, 2017; Healey, 2007; Hillier, 2007; Albrechts et al., 2017). The essence of strategic spatial planning is defined succinctly by Albrechts (2011, p. 79) as:

a transformative and integrative public-sector led, and socio-spatial process through which visions/frames of reference, justification for coherent actions, and means for implementation are produced that shape and frame what a place is and what it might become.

This is a targeted process, focusing on a limited number of key issues likely to shape the future trajectory of a metropolitan region, and also a normative process, underpinned by notions of what ought to be –the ‘issues that really matter’ (Albrechts, 2011, p. 82). Implementation also requires careful consideration, encompassing strategies to engage multiple actors, shorter-term action plans and explicit budget commitments.

In the European context such strategic spatial plans came increasingly to be described as ‘relational’ in the early twenty-first century, drawing in particular on the popularity amongst geographers of views of space which gave rise to new conceptions of cities and regions as:

nodes that gather flow and juxtapose diversity, as places of overlapping but not necessarily locally connected relational networks, as perforated entities with connections that stretch far back in time and space. (Amin, 2004, p. 34)

The eminent British planning theorist Patsy Healey (2007) explained the shift towards a relational view of strategic spatial planning as follows:

In the confident mid-twentieth century, an urban area was understood as a coherent entity, with a concrete physical pattern expressing a simple relation between economic and social dynamics on an environmental surface. Such an entity could be managed by strong spatial plans backed by powers of public ownership of land and engagement in development activity. This conception has given way to the contemporary recognition of the complexity of the relations that co-exist and transect in urban areas and the range of governance processes which affect how these relations evolve. (Healey, 2007, p. 266)

This complexity, according to Healey (2007, p. 267), required a new form of spatial strategy which was less a rigid plan and more a frame of reference:

Strategies exist as revisable, fluid conceptions continually interacting with unfolding experiences and understandings, but yet holding in attention some orienting sensibility. Such a notion of evolving strategy, continually in formulation, is a necessary complement to the recognition of the relational multiplicity of the lived experiences of contemporary urban worlds.

McCosker and Searle have suggested recently that, while relational thinking has certainly influenced recent Australian metropolitan plans, most retain elements of a traditional blueprint form. They ascribe this to:

an institutional context in which state governments had sole constitutional responsibility for urban planning and development and a historical context whereby they operated or had close regulatory control over major urban infrastructure. (McCosker and Searle, 2017, p. 671)

In other words, there is a clear path dependency between this historical context and the characteristics of the crop of metropolitan planning strategies prepared in the early twenty-first century. But the style and nature of these strategies have also, inevitably, been modified in recent decades by broader forces of globalization and neoliberalism, leading to hybrid metropolitan plans which combine global practices with distinctly Australian cultural and spatial elements, and which reflect changes in the relationship between public agencies and private developers in the building and management of Australian cities.

The Framework for the Book

The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History (Hamnett and Freestone, 2000) was a first attempt to provide a single-volume introduction to the historical development of metropolitan planning in Australia. It traced the evolution of metropolitan planning from the first colonial settlements to the late 1990s, by which time most state governments were pursuing strategies intended to make their capital city-regions more sustainable, particularly through encouraging more compact urban forms and reduced car dependency. This growing environmental awareness was seen as underpinning some renewed popular and political support for public planning, but at odds with broader currents of ‘market-triumphalism’, preoccupied with deregulation, market-based solutions to public policy issues and the growth and global competiveness of Australia’s cities.

The first of a biennial series of conferences on the ‘State of Australian Cities’ was held in 2003 and these have contributed significantly to a growing body of academic urban research which has allowed the complexity of Australian cities to be better understood. A number of commentators have also focused specifically on metropolitan planning issues and the chapters which follow draw from their theoretical, thematic and comparative research (see, amongst others, Gleeson and Low, 2000; Gleeson et al., 2004, 2010; Forster, 2006; Dodson, 2009; Searle and Bunker, 2010; Abbott, 2011; Davidson and Arman, 2014). The issues identified in The Australian Metropolis at the end of the twentieth century have not disappeared and some have intensified. There are also new agendas –economic, social, technological, and environmental –which are reshaping Australian cities in the twenty-first century. These include some evidence of a willingness to experiment with new forms of metropolitan governance and a revived, if spasmodic, interest in cities on the part of the Commonwealth government, tending to emphasize the contribution of well-planned and efficient cities to national productivity (Productivity Commission, 2011; Commonwealth of Australia, 2016).

This new book looks at what has happened to Australian metropolitan planning in the years since The Australian Metropolis was published.¹ As with the original work, the book comprises invited chapters from expert contributors. But rather than covering large periods of time synoptically and sequentially, here the brief was to focus more intensively on the recent history of specific cities. Each chapter covers some common ground, but they we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Contributors
• Chapter 1 The Metropolitan Perspective
• Chapter 2 Beginnings: The Evolution of Metropolitan Planning to the Late Twentieth Century
• Chapter 3 Melbourne: Growing Pains for the Liveable City
• Chapter 4 Sydney: Growth, Globalization and Governance
• Chapter 5 Adelaide: Tough Times in the City of Light
• Chapter 6 Perth: From ‘Large Provincial City’ to ‘Globalizing City’
• Chapter 7 South East Queensland: Change and Continuity in Planning
• Chapter 8 Canberra: ‘Normalization’ or ‘the Pride of Time’?
• Chapter 9 The Metropolitan Condition
• Index