Metropolitan planning in Australia : the instruments of planning - regulation

Abstract

This paper was a contribution to a two-day seminar on Metropolitan Planning in Australia organised by the Urban Research Unit in February 1988. Regulation of land use and development within metropolitan areas and elsewhere has been the primary basis for and justification of town planning as an activity in Australia, and remains so. Statutory planning is the basic activity of town planners throughout Australia, and is almost the sole basis for contact between most of the community and the town planning profession. Equally, statutory planning processes and the administration of regulations forming the core of those processes are the primary tools available to town planners and the organisations which employ them, to exert any continuing influence on the form, structure and nature of metropolitan development. This paper seeks to address some of these realities, to examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of statutory processes and regulations, and to analyse the administration of them in achieving the policy objectives which underlie the participation of governments in the management of metropolitan development. Show more