Home

An Australian Backlash Against Planning?

Posted by: Chris Steins

6 September 2006 - 1:00pm

"Now the fists are shaking at planning from the federal watchtower. Planning is cast as the principal villain in a simple tale of Aussie battlers betrayed; of the great Australian home-ownership dream shattered by grasping, interfering state governments, egged on by tree-hugging home wreckers and crypto-Stalinist planners. By slowing the stampede into the paddocks, planning has ended the glorious suburban gold rush that promised wealth for all.

Sponsored Advertisement
Advertise on Planetizen

...The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have joined a children's crusade against planning launched by sections of the development industry. Perhaps they're seeking to deflect attention from the fact commonwealth taxes and policies (including immigration) are a large part of the present housing affordability pressures in cities (another inconvenient truth).

The anti-planning push is high-risk politics. Do its proponents know how much they are gambling? The intoxicating simplicity of its rationale and crudeness of its ambition suggest a mug punt.

The attack threatens to unravel the near consensus among most planners, developers and environmentalists, who support a compact city model as a guiding vision for our cities."

Australian urban planning critics are casting planning as the 'villain' in destroying the rapid suburbanization that has fueled a home-ownership dream. But this is a dangerous view, writes urban management professor Brendan Gleeson.

"Now the fists are shaking at planning from the federal watchtower. Planning is cast as the principal villain in a simple tale of Aussie battlers betrayed; of the great Australian home-ownership dream shattered by grasping, interfering state governments, egged on by tree-hugging home wreckers and crypto-Stalinist planners. By slowing the stampede into the paddocks, planning has ended the glorious suburban gold rush that promised wealth for all.

...The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have joined a children's crusade against planning launched by sections of the development industry. Perhaps they're seeking to deflect attention from the fact commonwealth taxes and policies (including immigration) are a large part of the present housing affordability pressures in cities (another inconvenient truth).

The anti-planning push is high-risk politics. Do its proponents know how much they are gambling? The intoxicating simplicity of its rationale and crudeness of its ambition suggest a mug punt.

The attack threatens to unravel the near consensus among most planners, developers and environmentalists, who support a compact city model as a guiding vision for our cities."

Source: The Australian, Sep 06, 2006
Full Story: Urban sprawl pushed to the limits
»