Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Urban policy
Metropolitan plans tend to share a commitment to urban consolidation, seeking
compact cities by restricting new land released for development on the urban fringe
and implementing plans for densification within the existing built environment,
based around centres providing jobs and services and corridors of public transport.
High-rise apartments are increasingly evident in the inner city. But metropolitan
plans have generally failed to provide affordable housing. Plans do not meet their
goals of higher public transport use due to inadequate investment in infrastructure.
Where public transport use has increased, this has mostly involved radial journeys to
the CBD or within the better-served inner suburbs. Employment in middle and outer
suburbs remains sparse. Poor access to job opportunities in these areas has generally
added to labour market inequalities. 33 Clive Forster describes:
the existence of parallel urban universes: one occupied by metropolitan planning
authorities and their containment-consolidation-centres consensus; the other by
the realities of the increasingly complex, dispersed, residentially differentiated
suburban metropolitan areas most Australians live in. 34
Reasons cited for the relative failure of metropolitan plans relate to their
frequent revision due to changes in state government, leading to a lack of policy
certaintyandconsistency.Theprocessisalsooftencaptivetoprivateproperty,
infrastructure and financial interests. Strong representation from the property
industry has led to the perception of urban consolidation policies as raising land
and housing costs, to the detriment of housing affordability, which encourages
release of new land for development on the urban fringe. 35 Calls for the
deregulation of planning to ‘streamline’ the system are also common, 36 heightening
concerns about the downgrading of planning as a profession with ‘a weakening
of the influence of planning agencies in shaping metropolitan policy’. 37 This is
combined with the lack of accountability in privately financed infrastructure
schemes, such as road tunnels in Sydney. 38 Though the need for more affordable
housing is recognised in policy debates, policy change has not occurred to redress
inequalities. In considering why this is the case, Nicole Gurran and Peter Phibbs
conclude that the ‘busy work’ of policy discussion and review acts to defer any
substantial change. They describe this as an ‘expedient strategy for politicians
beholden to home-owning electorates, industry sponsors, or ideological interests’. 39
It is also a ready tactic to shift blame to another level of government. 40
33 Hamnett and Freestone 2017.
34 Forster 2006, 180.
35 Bunker 2015.
36 Ruming and Gurran 2014.
37 Dodson 2009, 110.
38 Haughton and McManus 2012.
39 Gurran and Phibbs 2015, 718.
40 Milligan and Tiernan 2012.
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