Australian Environmental Planning

Challenges and Future Prospects

Jason Byrne, Neil Sipe, Jago Dodson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317800569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

Winner of the Planning Institute of Australia's 2015 Cutting Edge Research and Teaching Award!

Australians from all walks of life have begun to realise the nation's cities cannot sustain profligate growth indefinitely. Dwindling water supplies, failing food bowls, increased energy costs, more severe bushfires, severe storms, flooding, coastal erosion, rising transport expenses, housing shortages and environmental pollution are now daily news headlines. Australia's cities may have reached their ecological limits: a new model for planning the places we live is needed.

Understanding the natural cycles of the city is just as important to planning our cities as knowledge of local ordinances, indeed much more so. A profound knowledge of environmental processes is critical for successful planning in today's world. Environmental planners take as their guiding principle the concept of designing with nature, approaching cities as living organisms that consume water, energy and raw materials, and produce waste. This metabolic view of cities means we can find new solutions to old problems, and steer our cities towards a more sustainable form of planning.

Written specifically for students and professionals working in city planning in Australia, this ground-breaking new book enables Australian planners, architects and developers to get a better understanding of the fundamental principles of environmental planning for cities, showing how land, water, air, energy, wildlife and people shape our built environments, and how in turn environmental processes must be better understood if we are to make informed decisions about developing cities that are more sustainable.

The book's coverage is comprehensive: from an overview of the concepts and theories of environmental planning, through analysis of governance systems and urban environmental processes to agendas and policies for the future, all the key topics are covered in depth, with recommendations for supporting reading and an unrivalled selection of additional materials. Ideal for students, essential for professionals, Australian Environmental Planning is vital reading for more sustainable cities in a more sustainable world.

Part I
Introduction

Chapter 1
What is environmental planning?

Jason Byrne, Neil Sipe and Jago Dodson

Introduction

Traditionally, Australian urban planning has tended to shun its connections with the so-called ‘natural world’. Urban planning and, to some extent, regional planning have been plagued by the long-standing belief that cities and humans are somehow separated from, or outside of, the natural world. Not surprisingly, Australian cities are now among the most energy-intensive, carbon-polluting and water-consumptive settlements on Earth. Recently though, Australians from all walks of life have begun to realise that the nation’s cities cannot sustain the type of growth they have experienced since the mid-twentieth century. Dwindling water supplies, failing food bowls, increased energy costs, more severe impacts from environmental disruptions (e.g. bushfires, severe storms, flooding, coastal erosion), rising transport expenses, housing shortages and environmental pollution are daily news headlines. It seems that if we continue as we have in the past, Australia’s cities will reach their socio-ecological limits. Worryingly, land use planners and other urban professionals appear to be ill-equipped to cope with these challenges. But there is hope.

Some four decades ago, a group of international land use planners, architects, environmental scientists and other built environment specialists began to formulate an alternative approach for land use planning and development – an idea called ‘designing with nature’ (see chapter 3). These ‘environmental planners’ have since shown us that human settlements are in fact intimately and irrevocably dependent upon, and enmeshed with, the biophysical environment. Humans and their settlements are in fact part of nature, not separate from it. This ‘new’ planning discipline has helped us to better understand that biophysical processes (e.g. water, carbon, phosphorous and nitrogen cycles) shape the success or otherwise of our cities. Environmental planners recognise that cities are in fact ‘metabolic entities’. In other words, built environments act like organisms; they consume water, energy and raw materials in building and remaking their tissue, and excrete waste heat, liquids and solids.

This ‘metabolic’ view of cities enables us to look afresh at built environments, and to pose new solutions for intractable problems. Instead of imagining cities as artificial entities through which materials and energy simply pass, we should see them as dynamic ‘socio-ecological’ spaces (see chapter 18). Knowledge about nitrogen, carbon, phosphorous and water cycles; nutrient and energy pathways; habitat ranges; hydrology; atmospheric circulation; plants and animals; and landform processes is critically important for the long-term planning and management of human settlements (see chapter 6). Such knowledge assumes central importance when thinking about how our cities might become better adapted to global environmental changes such as peak oil, peak phosphorous and climate change, which will characterise the twenty-first century.

Purpose of this book

This book aims to give Australian land use planning and property development students, environmental science and management students, and environmental planning practitioners and academics a foundational understanding of environmental planning principles and practices. We address the important questions of how land, water, air, energy, vegetation, animals and people shape Australian built environments, and how in turn environmental processes must be better understood if planners, property developers, elected representatives and urban managers are to make smarter decisions about development, so that our cities become ecologically viable over longer timeframes (in other words more sustainable). Despite a growing list of environmental challenges facing Australia’s cities, much land use planning in Australia seems oblivious to the fundamental importance of biogeochemical processes in sustaining human life and livelihoods. This book addresses that problem. It has been written by internationally recognised scholars and practitioners to enable an Australian audience to better understand built environments as ‘socio-natural’ entities; in other words as ecological spaces mediated through human culture and actions.

Traditional land use planning has contributed to widespread social and environmental problems. These problems include: declining biodiversity; habitat loss; air, water and soil pollution; socio-economic polarisation; hyper consumption; obesity epidemics; housing shortages; traffic congestion; sanitation and waste management problems; water scarcity; and the loss of viable agricultural land, to name just a few (Wilby and Perry 2006). Yet the economies of scale that come with urban living – such as the ability to rapidly deploy new innovations, the potential for energy, water and waste efficiencies, and the benefits of mass transit – what we might call the ‘transformative potential of cities’ – mean that human settlements can play a major role in providing solutions to contemporary environmental dilemmas (Dodman 2009; Birkeland 2008). Just as certain widespread behaviours are highly destructive to ecological systems (e.g. deforestation), harnessing the vast labour resource and ingenuity of humans and applying them to ecologically sustainable practices (e.g. reafforestation) can produce dramatic impacts within short timeframes, as we have seen with reforestation efforts in some parts of China (Zhang and Song 2006). If we are to achieve such a turn-around within our built environments though, we need to adopt a different kind of land use planning, a type of planning known as environmental planning.

What is environmental planning?

Environmental planning is concerned with how we can apply the principles of ecology to better manage our interactions with the biophysical environment – that is with air, soils, water, land-forms, plants and animals (Armitage 1995; Slocombe 1993). Environmental planners recognise that built environments that are more responsive to biophysical limitations will ultimately be more sustainable (Low et al. 2005). For example, by identifying soil types that are prone to erosion, floodplains prone to inundation, or the habitats of rare and endangered species, we can then devise strategies for protecting and managing these areas for compatible uses (which may mean no human use). This enables us to create new built environments, or retrofit old ones, making places that are better integrated with, rather than superimposed upon, biotic systems (Baldwin 1985; Conacher and Conacher 2000; Bammi et al. 1976).

Environmental planning therefore incorporates principles from ecology, conservation biology and environmental science into land use planning (see chapter 18) (Lein 2003; Selman 2000). It is a type of planning that recognises ecological limits, seeks to preserve biodiversity and is based upon scientifically informed studies of the capabilities of terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric environments to tolerate and sustain certain forms of development (McHarg 1992). Environmental planning is not standard land use planning with a ‘green tinge’ or a business-as-usual approach with some ecological icing on top (see chapter 20). Environmental planning is a different kind of planning, and has recently become a cutting-edge leader in efforts to adapt and transform built environments to make them more viable over the longer-term (that is over hundreds or even thousands of years, rather than a single human lifetime or an election cycle).

Guiding aims and principles

According to Lein (2003), environmental planning is underpinned by several key principles. These include: operating within the carrying capacity (ecological limits) of resources and using them efficiently; understanding and working with biophysical processes; respecting environmental thresholds; designing for long-term use and ecological resilience; anticipating risks and planning accordingly; identifying opportunities and constraints to development based upon the biophysical characteristics of a place; preserving biodiversity and ecological integrity; working towards sustainability; and respecting the ‘intrinsic value’ (right to exist) of non-human species. These principles underpin the practice of environmental planning, as it is discussed in this book (see chapter 18).

Structure of the book

Figures 1.1 and 1.2 Coastal erosion, Gold Coast City, 1967 and 2013. Could environmental planning have changed this outcome?

Source: Gold Coast City Council Local Studies Library and J. Byrne.

The book is divided into six parts. The first part provides an introduction to the field of environmental planning, over-viewing the key arguments of, and the contemporary agenda for, environmental planning. This part also covers the central concepts and theories of environmental planning, the discipline’s history in Australia, contested areas of knowledge and practice, and fruitful subjects for further enquiry. This part seeks to answer fundamental questions such as: ‘what is land use planning?’ and ‘why do we plan?’ before briefly exploring the legal and institutional basis for planning – or ‘how we plan’. Part chapters review the antecedents and history of Australian environmental planning and identify lessons this history can teach us about designing cities that are resilient to global environmental change. This part also acknowledges that the traditional custodians of Australia – Aboriginal Australians – can teach us much more about how to live within the continent’s environmental limits than colonial Australians could have ever imagined. We examine their perspectives in chapter 2 of this part.

The second part, governing Australian environmental planning, discusses Australian environmental planning systems (how we plan) in greater detail. This is not a detailed overview of planning legislation. Legislation changes so quickly that the book would rapidly become redundant. Instead, part chapters consider the constitutional basis for Australian land use planning, and the similarities and differences between environmental planning legislation across the Australian states, between state, local government and Commonwealth environmental planning agendas, responsibilities, planning powers and planning levers.

In the third part, the urban environment and its challenges, we synthesise knowledge from the urban natural and social sciences – a daily challenge land use planners face. The part considers the complex biogeochemical urban environments for which we must plan. Chapters cover topics including: how to plan for and manage: land use; water use; the urban atmosphere; and urban plants and animals. The focus is upon explaining why an understanding of urban environments is necessary for planning our future urban settlements and in retrofitting our existing settlements to be more ecologically resilient, and how such an understanding can be marshalled to improve the life-chances, livelihoods and lifestyles of human and non-human urban residents alike.

The fourth part takes an applied approach and addresses key urban environmental processes – namely transportation, waste management, energy generation, raw-material processing/manufacturing and pollution control. Chapters in this part address emerging trends such as peak oil, industrial ecology, bio-mimicry, clean energy and their challenges – for example citizen opposition to wind farms.

In the fifth part, we move to the socio-cultural concerns of environmental planning. Under the title of key agendas in managing environmental change, chapters within this part address important urban environmental agendas such as affordable and sustainable housing, healthy cities (e.g. coping with the obesity epidemic or climate change-related heatwaves), participatory democracy, social inclusion and environmental equity. If planners are not attentive to social dynamics, it becomes impossible to achieve environmental objectives.

The book concludes by addressing new directions and potentialities for Australian environmental planning. Chapters within this part address green urbanism and ecological restoration, bioregional and performance-based planning, and positive development. Their authors ask ‘how can we make cities more sustainable?’ Chapters examine a wide variety of innovations that promise to make Australian cities more resilient and better adapted to our changing global environment.

The responsibility and limitations of environmental planning

While environmental planning recognises the intrinsic value of the biophysical world, it has an anthropocentric (human-centred) focus. Environmental planners do not pretend that we can quarantine ourselves from the biophysical world; nor do we imagine that non-human habitats are pristine places, free from human influence. Rather we are attentive to the hybrid character of socio-ecological systems (Swyngedouw 1996), and we understand that while human actions have deeply impacted our planet in the past, we also have the potential to create a future where humans are stewards of the biophysical world, nurturing, protecting, cultivating, using, managing, respecting and ultimately living alongside non-human life-forms and the biogeochemical systems upon which they, and we, depend. As geographer David Harvey has reminded us, we are but one species among many – including beavers, ants, termites, bees, wasps and even blue-green algae – that have changed, and continue to modify and transform, the environments around us to suit our needs (Harvey 2000, p. 199). What separates us from other species though, is that we are con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• List of abbreviations
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Governing Australian environmental planning
• PART III The urban environment and its challenges
• PART IV Urban environmental processes
• PART V Key agendas in managing environmental change
• PART VI Conclusion: new directions and potentialities
• Epilogue
• Index