Planning transport infrastructure: examining the politics of transport planning in Melbourne,Sydney and Perth

Abstract

Australian cities have observed a “consensus turn” expressed as broad public support of greater accessibility and public transport provision as revealed in metropolitan strategic plans. In contrast large-scale road projects proposed to traverse the inner-city of three major Australian cities reveals an ongoing and deep-seated attachment by some to car-based travel in Australian urban transport planning. Comparative case studies of these three road projects in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth explores the impact that an antagonistic relationship between the state and community has on the culture of transport planning. Through observational insights, policy and media analysis and interviews with community groups, we show that this antagonistic planning culture arises when there is a fracture between metropolitan strategic plan-making and project planning, and when clear channels of communication and deliberation are undermined.     

Theory and Practice in Metropolitan Strategy: Situating Recent Australian Planning

Over the last several years, metropolitan strategies have been produced for the five mainland state capital cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The distinctive characteristics of Australian urban planning mean that they can be shown to reflect an Australian paradigm of planning. However, this paradigm is rewritten in different ways in each strategy reflecting the particular institutional circumstances and political culture of each state. In doing so there is some strong reaffirmation of this paradigm, but also indications of a more relational and transactive manner of planning adding further process to product. Here there is some resonance with recent developments in planning theory and to some extent in practice—largely in Europe.

     

Immigration and the City: Some Demographic Facts and Issues

Unquestionably, migration has become a predominant factor in the growth of all mainland capital cities of Australia, partly because of the relatively low fertility extant, partly because of the level of immigration to Australia and, also, because of high levels of interstate internal migration. In fact, the migration components oif growth have varied for decades between Australian cities – with strong overseas migration and internal migration together resulting in annual rates of growth of over 3 per cent per annum in Perth, and strong internal migration and lesser but significant immigration sustaining almost comparable growth rates in metropolitan Brisbane. Much of the internal migration net gain to these two cities comprises migration from Sydney and Melbourne, particularly the former.     

Funding and Governance of Regional Public Land Acquisition in Perth and Sydney

This article reviews the history of the governance approaches and planning and funding tools utilised for regional public land acquisition in Perth and Sydney. Focus in this analysis is placed on the hypothecated land tax model used in Perth of the Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax (MRIT). The main outcome of the comparison and contrast of the approaches taken in Perth and Sydney is to present the case for the extension of the “Perth model”, which includes the MRIT, to other Australian cities. The benefit, from the perspective of the implementation of public policy and strategic metropolitan planning, of the availability and utilisation of a hypothecated tax for public land acquisition, is a key conclusion of this article.     

Spatial Planning and High-Speed Broadband: Australia's National Broadband Network and Metropolitan Planning

The Australian government is constructing a National Broadband Network (NBN), which at an estimated cost of $43 billion will be Australia's largest ever infrastructure project. The NBN, if its full benefits are to be realized, raises a number of important, but largely unexplored, questions for planning. This paper investigates the implications of the NBN for Australian metropolitan planning focusing on the question of how these plans will exploit the NBN to improve urban outcomes. The paper examines the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane metropolitan areas and analyses the strategies shaping the future of these regions during the rollout and implementation of the NBN. This comparative analysis reveals similarities across these three metropolitan areas in their weak stance towards the NBN. Some key findings include: (1) a segregation of infrastructure planning and metropolitan planning; (2) a lack of consistency between different policies within each metropolitan area and (3) policy gaps regarding the role of telecommunications at the metropolitan level. Considering the number of governments worldwide that are making large investments in high-speed broadband, this paper addresses policy issues that will impact upon metropolitan planning well beyond the borders of Australia.     

Master plans and planning commissions in the 1920s: the Australian experience

Through the 1920s in the United States, the number of cities which had appointed planning commissions or secured comprehensive master plans increased significantly. This was the era of the ‘city functional’, with planning ideology focused on goals of order, efficiency, and growth through methodologies based on scientific data analysis. Australian cities in the 1920s were amenable to this approach. Though small in population terms, they confronted similar problems of sprawl, uncoordinated infrastructure provision and traffic congestion. Leading planning advocates turned away from small area planning schemes based on British precedents towards an American-style master planning approach. In the wake of the ill-fated Sydney Regional Plan Convention (1922-6), came two notable Town Planning Commissions in Melbourne and Perth. While obviously inspired by American models, the form and functioning of these organizations reflected the influence of distinctive governmental, financial and cultural conditions.     

Auckland'S Regional Growth Policy: Developments During The Last Two Decades

Introduction

The issues and planning practices now being experienced and used to plan the outward growth of Auckland, New Zealand, are discussed as part of a series reviewing planning the outward growth of Australia's metropolitan areas. While in the Australian context the largest metropolitan areas are also State capitals, in Auckland's case it can only lay claim to being New Zealand's largest and fastest growing metropolitan area. In settlement hierarchy terms Auckland is on a comparable level to Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.     

An exemplar for modernism: Le Corbusier's Adelaide drawing,urbanism and the Chandigarh plan

The paper closely examines a plan drawing of the city of Adelaide, South Australia, made by the architect Le Corbusier in 1950, shortly before he took up the commission to design the city of Chandigarh in the Indian Punjab. A series of parallels are made between the Adelaide drawing and the production of the Chandigarh master plan, which are used to re-open questions of Le Corbusier's famous design for the city and aspects of his urbanism. In doing so the paper also points to Adelaide's peculiar status as an exemplar for critical modernist agendas regarding the organisation and planning of cities subscribed to by Le Corbusier and earlier city reformers like Ebenezer Howard. The paper concludes by offering a fresh assessment of the role of technique and process in Le Corbusier's urban projects including Chandigarh, which the architect's Adelaide drawing can help to evidence.     

The historical rise and fall of community facility provision standards in the metropolitan planning of Melbourne

Underpinning strategic metropolitan planning is a host of planning standards that deal with the design and regulation of the built environment. This paper is particularly interested in identifying to what extent planning standards dealing with the provision of public open space had been used in strategic metropolitan plans for the city of Melbourne, Australia. Using a historical perspective, this paper traces the historical adoption and adaption of community facility delivery standards over a 100-year period, via the analysis of several metropolitan plans of Melbourne. Their initial adoption and then progressive demise is attributed to a variety of factors including shifts in planning practise, regional politics and the fluctuating economic fortunes of Melbourne since the mid-1970s. This city-specific example is considered to be unique not only because it captures the shifts that had taken place in the metropolitan planning of Melbourne but it also focuses upon the provision of community facilities which remains a much neglected feature of historic metropolitan strategic planning.     

Housing Factors in Welfare Migration to and from Metropolitan Cities in Australia

This article ascertains dimensions of welfare migration to and from two large Australian cities (Sydney and Adelaide) and persons' motivations and perceptions of well-being after moving. Housing costs were crucial in out-movement from metropolitan areas, particularly Sydney. The desire to obtain work and to be closer to family members was important for an appreciable proportion of metropolitan-ward movers. Respondents were not turnover migrants since a strong majority had lived in their origin community for over five years. The welfare migration investigated here is an important part of wider intra-state migration.     

Major Projects–in the Public Interest?

State governments seem pre-occupied with promoting large developments in their capital cities as exemplified by Sydney's Darling Harbour Development, Perth's Burswood Island Casino, the Expo 88 Project in South Brisbane, the Adelaide Railway Station Complex and the Victoria Project in Melbourne.     

Concentration and Mobility of Knowledge Workers: An Intercity Analysis of Sydney,Melbourne, and Brisbane

This study investigates the knowledge capacity and the competitive relationship between cities in contemporary globalization. Drawing upon the global city thesis regarding advanced producer services and the city network model, this study measures the concentration and mobility of knowledge workers between three Australian global cities: Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. It argues that knowledge workers are important agents in the making of urban knowledge space and intercity knowledge flow. It finds that Sydney's dominance in the Australian urban system has been strengthened despite challenges from Melbourne and Brisbane in certain knowledge sectors. The findings ascertain the linkage between the ranking of a global city and its knowledge capacity. They provide new insights into the current debates on Australian global cities and suggest possible new directions for global city aspirations, in the cases of Melbourne and Brisbane, in particular. Conceptually and methodologically, this study is an effort to bridge the global-city and the knowledge-city discourses, whose cross-fertilization suggests a potential need for new policy thinking.     

Delivering the Compact City in Australia: Current Trends and Future Implications

This article presents an overview of the characteristics of the market for higher density residential property (flats, units and town houses) in the three largest Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The article then discusses some of the implications of current planning proposals for further higher density housing in Australian cities under urban consolidation or compact city policies and reviews a range of issues that may well arise. In particular, issues concerning the role of the rental investment market and Strata Title framework in determining the outcomes of current metropolitan compact city policies and the implications of higher density housing for social stability are discussed.     

Delivering the Compact City in Australia: Current Trends and Future Implications

This article presents an overview of the characteristics of the market for higher density residential property (flats, units and town houses) in the three largest Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The article then discusses some of the implications of current planning proposals for further higher density housing in Australian cities under urban consolidation or compact city policies and reviews a range of issues that may well arise. In particular, issues concerning the role of the rental investment market and Strata Title framework in determining the outcomes of current metropolitan compact city policies and the implications of higher density housing for social stability are discussed.     

The Provision of Social Infrastructure in New Urban Development in Three Australian States

Improvements in the planning and provision of social infrastructure in new urban development in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney have been implemented over the last decade. The main focus of attention has been on improved ‘metropolitan coordination systems’ or ‘urban development programs’. The systems operating in the three states are examined with particular reference to the origin of the initiatives, the bureaucratic and financial arrangements which are in place, and the respective roles of local and state governments. Major issues for the future are identified, inparticular the importance of establishing standards and costings of human services, the role of local government, the significance of funding issues and the need to explore alternative sources of financing.     

New Socio-ecological Imperatives for Cities: Possibilities and Dilemmas for Australian Metropolitan Governance

This review examines two new socio-ecological imperatives that have the potential to reshape planning practice and policy: urban climate governance and governance for resilience. The roots of the new imperatives lie in international city collaborative networks funded by philanthropy organisations that operate at city scale. City networks operating at the metropolitan scale raise issues for Australian cities with distributed governance. This practice review considers the early manifestation of both imperatives in what might be termed ‘policy experiments’ in Australia’s two largest cities: the new climate governance framework emerging through the City of Sydney’s collaboration with the C40 network and the resilience regime being shaped by the City of Melbourne’s partnership with Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient 100 program. Whilst our early analysis has accentuated the positive to some degree, pointing to different, if preliminary, forms of success in both Sydney and Melbourne, the limits and frustrations that present in both contexts cannot be discounted. Urban planners in many world cities and regions will need to consider and possibly absorb these new agendas of urban climate governance and governing for resilience driven by international city collaborative networks.     

‘The Report of My Death is an Exaggeration’: Central City Retailing in Melbourne Since 1900

In most North American cities, the Central Business District has declined as a retail centre, from a historical position of absolute dominance. In many US metropolitan areas, the CBD is no longer the largest single retail centre; in most others, it is merely primus inter pares. It is generally assumed that a similar process has been at work in Melbourne and other Australian cities, as suburban sprawl and the rise of the motor car have reduced the relative accessibility of the centre. This proposition is evaluated by analysing historical and statistical sources of information about the distribution of the retail trade in Melbourne. The evidence appears to be that Melbourne's CBD was relatively weak at the turn of the century, but steadily increased in importance, eclipsing suburban rivals, until World War II or shortly afterwards. Since that time, there has been a relative decline, but Melbourne's CBD retains a greater significance in the metropolitan retail trade than is the case in other Australian and North American cities.     

Income Differentials and Housing Costs in Cities and Suburban Areas

Abstract

The first part of this paper examines housing expenditure and income variations in Australia's mainland capital cities. Housing costs are then related to spatial variations in average household income within the Perth metropolitan area using data from the 1986 census.     

An argument for metropolitan government in Australia

The federal government of Australia seeks to determine the selection and forms of financing of infrastructure projects in cities, and to prescribe how cities are planned and managed. This role is rationalised through reference to the UK City Deals model and is made possible by vertical fiscal imbalance (the tax revenue it raises considerably exceeds its expenditure responsibilities). Referring to the Constitution, this role is assigned to state governments that are responsible for planning, infrastructure investment and service delivery in the cities. The cities themselves comprise multiple local governments that are ‘creatures’ of state government legislation. State government metropolitan strategic plans and projects inevitably serve the interests of the constituencies needed to win the next state elections. There is no recognition of a metropolitan constituency. Documenting the economic and social disadvantages arising from Australia's form of metropolitan governance, and providing an example for expensive infrastructure mishaps arising from federal and state governments prioritising different transport modes and projects, the paper argues for the creation of representative, accountable and fiscally autonomous metropolitan governments.     

Implementing Metropolitan Strategies: Lessons from Melbourne

In 2002, the state government of Victoria, Australia, introduced a new 30-year metropolitan planning strategy for Melbourne. However, its implementation was problematic, at times ineffectual and at others the cause of community conflict. When a new government was elected in 2010 it announced the strategy's abandonment. This article evaluates the Melbourne strategy to examine its shortcomings. It concludes that it lacked the critical components of a clear purpose and vision, ownership, or at least acceptance, by all metropolitan stakeholders, including opposing politicians; and clear guidelines, actions (including expenditure) and regulation for implementation. These findings have relevance for metropolitan strategic planning in cities beyond Australia, as some of the underlying reasons, such as the neoliberal influence on policy, also exist in other city regions around the world.