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As recently as fifty years ago, Melbourne's new suburban communities were constructed with unpaved roads and lacked many basic services. Today they often come not just with roads but virtually complete with most of the facilities and amenities needed on a daily basis. Yet architectural, planning and design professionals remain uneasy about the design and the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the newest suburbs built in some instances up to 60 kilometres from the central business district. We locate this unease in the systemic nature of the planning and building of these new communities by an enormous public–private industry complex. Melbourne's outer suburbs could be thought to be administered rather than planned.

This paper argues that the capacity for metropolitan wide integrated planning coupled with underpinning governance ideology, not an independent planning authority, is most important for successful ...

Unprecedented urbanisation poses the greatest threat to green belts in their history. In a vast literature, surprisingly few books review international and even national policy and practice on urba...

Peri-urban landscapes are some of the world’s most vulnerable areas. Although they are often thought of simply as land awaiting development, these landscapes retain important natural resources and make valuable contributions to agriculture, water use, biodiversity conservation, landscape preservation and human well-being. Billions of people use them and enjoy their natural values. Their continuing loss threatens to alter our relationships with nature and have a negative impact on the environment. The Future of the Fringe first explores the history of peri-urban areas, international peri-urban policy and practice, and related concepts. It analyses internationally relevant issues such as green belts and urban growth boundaries, regional policy, land supply and price, and the concepts of liveability, attractiveness, well-being and rural amenity. It then examines a range of Australian peri-urban issues, as an extended case study. The book argues for a precautionary approach so that we retain the greatest number of options to adapt during rapid and unprecedented change.

International audience; Decisions about future land use are complex and involve a wide range of factors. The perceptions, intentions, and interests of the stakeholders involved are usually unpredictable. Different stakeholders manage land by choosing different future options and revealing different expectations. Greater proximity to built-up areas confronts farmers with challenges about future land use and land cover change (LUCC).This study aims to identify how external drivers can affect farmers’ future LUCC intentions focusing on conversion of agricultural land to urban development. We explore two scenarios projected for the time horizon of 2025 based on farmers’ LUCC intentions: A0 – current social and economic trend; and B0 – increasing demand for urban development. We selected the Torres Vedras municipality (Portugal) as case study, an area predominantly agricultural but with a progressively urban intensification in the past two decades. We conducted interviews to capture the farmers’ LUCC intentions and modelled an artificial neural network – a multilayered perception to allocate the potential areas for urban development. Parishes with the highest urban pressure were identified using a cluster analysis. These were compared with areas expected to be urbanized (defined in the master plan). Results suggest an increasing farming intensity in the A0 scenario, and an urban growth increase of more than 40% in the B0 scenario, with negative impacts on farming expansion. The outcomes can be applied to spatial planning instruments in order to assist planners to define land transformation priorities and adjust them to spatial trends.

International airports make significant contributions to state economies but can detract from local and regional amenity. Australian studies have examined the growth and management of major Austral...

Building on the scientific literature, this article first summarises the socio-environmental impacts of land-use change expected to occur in high amenity Australian peri-urban areas, involving in particular, the effects of land development on agriculture, biodiversity, landscape character, bushfire risk and social factors. Second, the current spatial planning framework and its distribution in seven municipalities in Victoria, Australia, is critically analysed, and records of approved planning permits are related to this framework to assess the challenges posed by peri-urban growth. We argue that the current planning framework supports a static approach which does not address foreseen challenges and lacks strategic power. Both the strategic framework and the development approval process lead to unanticipated, cumulative impacts and contestation. A more coordinated, less urban-centric approach to planning and the introduction of rural land-use plans would substantially address some of the issues encountered.

Victorian governments have redesigned the Victorian land use planning system progressively since 1996. The main features are the imposition of centralised, statewide enabling provisions designed to deregulate the planning approvals system coupled with substantial increases in ministerial power. A first stage of system deregulation, introduced in 1996–1999, proved to be counterproductive, causing higher costs, delays, uncertainty and increased complexity because of increased discretion over development approvals and complex layered provisions. A second stage, introduced in 2013, reduces discretion and prohibitions by increasing the number of uses and developments not requiring planning approval. This second stage has been strongly influenced by a national planning reform agenda being implemented in Australian states. The Victorian neoliberal planning system renders metropolitan strategy redundant with important implications for future city functioning, spatial and social division and environmental quality.

Peri-urban agricultural production remains important globally and its value will increase as the impacts of climate change, energy costs, rising world population and changing patterns of food consumption are felt. Maintaining the natural resource base for food production around cities will become an increasingly important part of city planning. Yet peri-urban areas continue to undergo radical change over much of the world, displacing traditional agriculture and reducing the capacity of cities to adapt to non-linear change. Urban resilience is best maintained through a regional approach which connects urban and peri-urban systems. Such system relationships are examined in a case study focused on the city of Melbourne in South-East Australia. Peri-urban Melbourne produces a significant proportion of the fruit and vegetables grown in the state of Victoria, but agricultural production on the city’s outer fringe is under pressure from rapid urban development. This case study examines three scenarios which relate rural and urban land supply and demand, and explore land use planning techniques for limiting rural land development and transferring demand for rural land to regional settlements. It argues that stronger statutory planning measures are required to stem the loss of peri-urban agricultural land and that these will need to be accompanied in future by a range of other strategies to strengthen the resilience of city food systems.

For more than a decade, Melbourne has had the fastest-growing population of any Australian capital city. It is expanding outward while also growing upward through vast new high-rise developments in the inner suburbs. With an estimated 1.6 million additional homes needed by 2050, planners and policymakers need to address current and emerging issues of amenity, function, productive capacity and social cohesion today. Planning Melbourne reflects on planning since the post-war era, but focuses in particular on the past two decades and the ways that key government policies and influential individuals and groups have shaped the city during this time. The book examines past debates and policies, the choices planners have faced and the mistakes and sound decisions that have been made. Current issues are also addressed, including housing affordability, transport choices, protection of green areas and heritage and urban consolidation. If Melbourne’s identity is to be shaped as a prospering, socially integrated and environmentally sustainable city, a new approach to governance and spatial planning is needed and this book provides a call to action.

This article examines the relationships between regulatory urban policy and land prices concentrating on the claimed impacts of urban growth boundaries (UGBs) using Melbourne, Australia, as a case study. Claims about these relationships have influenced the development of urban strategic policy internationally. The article finds no clear evidence that the introduction of a legislated UGB in Melbourne in 2003 has led to price increases of urban or rural land on the metropolitan fringe and evaluates factors which complicate claims about UGB policy influences on land price.

The 7 February 2009 bushfires in the peri-urban region to the north of metropolitan Melbourne heralded what many have called an entirely new epoch in terms of weather-related disasters in Australia. A total of 173 people and 2000 properties were destroyed and, as with the 1939 fires in Victoria, a Royal Commission was subsequently instituted to inquire into the causes and responses to the fire. The Royal Commission has heard much evidence about alleged failings of fire response, communication and administration. It also considered land use planning issues and the associated regulatory framework. Using the Shire of Murrindindi as a case study, this paper argues that the location of population growth, and associated regulatory failure, are contributory, yet under-researched, factors associated with life and property losses. The adoption of more robust planning tools which incorporate climate change considerations, we argue, is essential to anticipate and minimise the impacts of disastrous natural events such as bushfires. In the latter part of the paper, attention is drawn to a recent Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision which is groundbreaking in its use of the precautionary principle to prevent dwelling construction in an 'inappropriate' location as well as to some major inconsistencies between planning for flood and bushfire threats.

Since European arrival (1788), statist developmentalism 1 has driven natural resource use in Australia. Despite evidence of a systematic decline in the quality of Australia's ecosystems, policy-making still reflects the exploitative paradigm upon which statist developmentalism relies. This paper will draw on recent policy changes within the water sector in Australia as a case study, allowing the authors to consider the types of social, economic and ecological consequences that can come from statist developmentalism. Fuelled by climate change, water availability is looming as an extremely serious problem for Australia. Despite this, recent policy changes within the water sector are not likely to achieve sustainable water use in the short-term, and may do little to subvert statist developmentalism as the dominant paradigm within natural resource use in Australia in the foreseeable future.

The issue of residential density is again an important issue in strategic land use planning in Australia. For decades, Australian planners generally have accepted the conventional position that increasing the density of urban settlement on the urban fringe will achieve negligible land savings because the amount of land required for non-residential purposes remains constant. This position continues to affect government policy and practice. This article analyses the role of residential density in debates about urban form, and shows the potential for land savings from different scenarios of increased residential density and urban design. The article demonstrates the capacity for increased residential densities in new outer suburbs of cities to significantly contain outward urban growth.

Sustainable development in the Mekong River basin is dependent upon the design and implementation of policies and procedures that support environment protection and social and economic development. Integrated river basin management promotes regional governance to deal with complex economic, social and environmental issues by facilitating relationship building, information exchange and policy development among the countries that depend upon the river and its tributaries for their livelihood.

This article describes the changing nature and extent of urban consolidation in Melbourne in the context of government policy. It also compares, for two periods, 1997–98 and 2002–2003, the amount of medium density development categorised by development size, approved in four municipalities (Boroondara, Stonnington, Port Phillip and Yarra) and its location particularly in relation to public transport. The article draws conclusions from these trends for the operation of medium density codes in Melbourne, and for the new metropolitan strategy.

In 1996, the Victorian Liberal Kennett Government embarked on an ambitious experiment on the State's land use planning system by introducing the Victoria Planning Provisions (VPP). Since then, seven official reports have been made on aspects of this system. All have referred to operational inadequacies but none has proposed major changes. The Whitney Committee (2002), for example, argued that the system was inefficient and uncertain but concluded that the system was experiencing "teething problems" and was not in crisis. Better Decisions Faster (DSE 2003) recommended 18 measures to reduce the volume of permits and processing delays, and increase consistency in decision making. But despite promises by both the former Victorian Liberal (Maclellan 1996) and the current Labor (Thwaites 1999) governments, the system is not properly monitored and no comprehensive review of its performance by a state government has been carried out.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how the ecosystem concept can be applied to small businesses and how the Internet and e-commerce can help SMEs harness the required resources to enhance their competitive performance in\ud the marketplace. The chapter will investigate the wide variety of e-commerce applications that are available to small businesses to help address the issue of limited resources. It will provide an ecosystem map illustrating how each functional area of a small business can utilise Internet e-commerce applications to enhance their resource base. The chapter also explores the opportunities and\ud threats that the e-commerce ecosystem model poses for small, medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is based upon empirical research consisting of three focus group interviews undertaken with small and medium-sized retail service firms located in the Herefordshire and Worcestershire regions of the United Kingdom in January–February 2014.

The resources of peripheral urban areas are under unprecedented threat because of the rapid conversion of rural land for urban purposes. Yet these resources offer significant long-term advantages to cities by increasing their resilience in times of rapid change. Cities which retain the values of their hinterlands may be those which survive best this century. The fate of the peri-urban area of Melbourne, Australia, and associated decision making processes, provide a case study of the pressures on peri-urban regions and the common inadequacy of government responses. Australian cities are characterised by two co-existing city types. Dense, nineteenth century mixed use inner urban areas characteristic of European cities are becoming denser. Yet new outer urban development continues the detached housing model and separated land uses typical of North America and adopted in Australia early in the twentieth century at some of the world’s lowest housing and population densities. Spatial difference is matched to social inequity. Higher income, tertiary educated, professionally employed households are concentrated in service rich inner and middle ring suburbs and selected outer urban areas, while lower income households without tertiary qualifications are concentrated primarily in service poor outer urban areas. Australian cities consume land at one of the world’s highest per capita rates, continually transforming nearby rural areas with high natural resource values to urban uses. These cities also affect broader non-urban areas. People are attracted to semi-rural lifestyles within commuting distance of metropolitan areas. Unless governments intervene, land is subdivided into rural-residential lots and agricultural pursuits relocate further from cities. Tourism and recreational developments are constructed on rural land and a range of other urban related land uses gradually emerge until the rural nature of these areas is irrevocably altered. Every Australian capital city adopted a metropolitan strategic spatial plan after 2000 which attempted to limit further outer growth into urban hinterlands through a range of urban containment policies. However, none of these plans succeeded in containing the urban sprawl or in radically changing the dominant model of outer urban development from detached housing with little variation in lot size or house types, large average lot sizes and separated land uses. Every State strategic plan has been substantially modified or abandoned. This chapter describes the impacts of metropolitan centres on peripheral urban areas, examines development pressures on these areas, why they are important to cities and why Australian cities continue to spread despite stated policies to the contrary. The city of Melbourne, Australia, is used as a case study, but broader conclusions are drawn for other cities.

Each of our three contributors feels that the 1990s Kennett government massively changed the way that planning is performed within Victoria. Michael Buxton argues that the planning system we have had since this era is worse than the system it replaced. Trevor Budge then shows how the Kennett initiatives damaged the rural electorate's trust of conservative parties, driving regional Victoria closer towards alternative parties and independent members. Finally, Ray Boyle explains how the sacking of so many local government planners caused a huge loss of corporate memory within the sector. These are important lessons that all readers should at least consider.

Australian peri-urban agriculture is highly significant and makes a major contribution to state and national agricultural production. However, peri-urban areas on the fringes of metropolitan and regional urban centres in Australia have witnessed unprecedented rapid urban growth during the last three decades. Attempts to manage the outward expansion of our cities and the resultant loss of good quality agricultural land and landscape fragmentation through conventional urban planning and growth management strategies have essentially failed. In examining the complex relationships between land use planning and peri-urban agriculture, the chapter focuses on the contribution of peri-urban agriculture and the role of planning systems in assisting its retention or displacement. It reports the findings of a scenario planning exercise centred on Australia’s two fastest growing metropolitan regions—South East Queensland and the greater Melbourne region and examines the adequacy of conventional land use and natural resource management planning processes. The chapter then focuses on the Melbourne Metropolitan region to provide a post-scenario planning review of that region’s peri-urban agricultural viability and the adequacy of its associated planning policies.