Integrated planning (1990s-present) of Australia

Metropolitan planning takes place in a social understanding and organization of the possibilities of planning. In broad outline there are 3 major planning periods in the post-WWII era:

1. Town and country planning (1940s-1970s).

http://plannerview.blogspot.com/2014/02/town-and-country-planning-1940s-1970s.html

2. Environmental planning (1970s-1990s).

http://plannerview.blogspot.com/2014/02/environmental-planning-1970s-1990s-of.html

3. Integrated planning (1990s-present).

3. INTEGRATED PLANNING 1990S – PRESENT

Deregulation and Economic Development

For most of the 1990s there was a heightened emphasis on the deregulation of development control systems and on the use of planning to facilitate rather than shape economic development. Most State and Territory governments were politically conservative1 and did not favor intervention in urban development. Commitment to metropolitan strategy declined markedly. One important countervailing development, however, was the formulation of the South East Queensland regional growth management framework by the Goss Government. The SEQ framework remains in place today and represents one of the more robust attempts by a State administration to set urban growth management (Brisbane) in a supra-metropolitan context (South East Queensland’s 18 local authorities).

The deregulatory thread of the period was given federal stimulus with the election of the Howard government in 1996. The Prime Minister’s  ‘More Time for Business’ policy added institutional weight to the development industry lobby for deregulation and harmonization in State and Territory planning systems. The collaborative Development Assessment Forum continues to be a focal point for discussion around this federal policy object.

To the extent that planning and metropolitan strategy making continued, it reflected a laissez-faire view of the city as an inherently complex system whose future course of development was largely unknowable. Planning’s role was not to try and shape the broad course of unpredictable change but to manage the externalities of development at the micro-level, via performance based local controls.

The same conservative administrations that took this restrictive view of environmental planning were, nevertheless, committed to massive scale transport planning and expensive new infrastructure - largely new toll ways to be built with public (including Federal) subsidies and operated by private companies. The revival of road planning saw the re-emergence of rational technocratic forms of planning rooted in the practice of road engineering. After years of gathering dust major freeway plans were revived. ‘Connectivity’ – largely for private motorcars and for commercial traffic – was the royal road to metropolitan competitiveness in the global market.

The Rise of Sustainability

As the millennium approached cross currents abounded in a very complex time for planning debate, if not practice. The rise of the ‘sustainability’ rubric in the early 1990s flowed against the tide of deregulatory conservatism. The Federal Government’s (largely rhetorical) advocacy of ‘ecologically sustainable development’ helped to sustain strong public interest in the ideal.

Paradoxical, not to say oxymoronic, claims emerged in official urban policy. In Victoria, for example, new motorways – including the massive City link project – were promoted as consistent with the principle of sustainability because they would reduce vehicle journey times and, thereby, emissions. Similar ‘sustainability’ claims were made for certain consolidation policies that encouraged the unmanaged dispersion of higher density development, even though the resultant settlement pattern was often detrimental to structural planning objectives - such as a district centre program.

By the late 1990s, new urban social movements – frequently under the ‘Save our Suburbs’ banner – had emerged in several cities to oppose the policy of unmanaged dispersion. The political defeat of some administrations that had promoted this policy, marked transition to managed dispersion policy. Some critics have argued, however, that such managed dispersion has reinforced unsustainable structural patterns, for example by focusing new higher density residential development on car-based district centers.

It is clear the achievement of sustainability in metropolitan planning will require a greater and more concerted effort than has hitherto been the case. In this context combining sustainability with integrated planning is essential.

The Integration Agenda

Probably the most important thread of reform in the fabric of recent planning has been the advocacy of, and in some cases shift towards, integrated models of administration and policy development. Emerging from general public administration debates and political shifts that are too complex to survey here, the integration imperative in planning has taken several key Forms.

By the early 1990s, the integration imperative was well embedded in governance debates and, to some extent, in public administration practice. The Federal Government helped to promote the debate with its Integrated Local Area Planning program.

Conservative administrations pursued integration with uneven enthusiasm. Its potential to reduce the mass and cost of public administration was welcome. Less attention was placed on integrated policy and regulation to enhance planning outcomes. New integrated planning administrations, such as the Victorian Department of Infrastructure, were formed in a number of States and in the ACT. Critics charge such integrated structures weaken planning by combining its administration with powerful road building agencies. In this setting the detail of institutional design, including the nature of senior appointments and the mechanism of budget allocation is determinate.

In the new millennium, enthusiasm for integrated policy systems remains strong among expert commentators. However, political and bureaucratic support for integrated administration appears to have waned. Much authoritative commentary concludes there is no necessary relation between the administrative integration of different policy functions and the capacity of governments to achieve ‘joined up’ policy outcomes.

Reference:

Glesson, B., Darbas, T., Johnson, L. and Lawson, S. (2004) “What is Metropolitan Planning?", in Dr Stephen Horton (eds.) Urban Policy Program, Research Monograph 1, Griffith University: Brisbane