Metropolitan governance for the Australian city: The case for reform

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Urban Research Program
Issues Paper 12
March 2010
Metropolitan governance
for the Australian city:
The case for reform
Brendan Gleeson, Jago Dodson and Marcus Spiller

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Metropolitan governance for the Australian city:
The case for reform
Brendan Gleeson
Jago Dodson
Marcus Spiller
Urban Research Program
Issues Paper 12
March 2010

The Urban Research Program acknowledges the generous support
provided by
Brisbane City Council
in the production of the Urban
Research Program publication series.
ISBN 978-1-921760-00-6
© Brendan Gleeson, Jago Dodson
and Marcus Spiller
Urban Research Program
Griffith University
Brisbane, QLD 4111
www.griffith.edu.au/urp
Copyright protects this material. Except as permitted by the Copyright Act, reproduction by any means (photocopying, electronic,
mechanical, recording or otherwise), making available online, electronic transmission or other publication of this material is
prohibited without the prior written permission of the Urban Research Program.

About the Urban Research Program
The Urban Research Program (URP) was established in 2003 as strategic research and
community engagement initiative of Griffith University. The strategic foci of the Urban Research
Program are research and advocacy in an urban regional context.
The Urban Research Program seeks to improve understanding of, and develop innovative
responses to Australia’s urban challenges and opportunities by conducting and disseminating
research, advocating new policy directions, and by providing training assistance. We aim to make
the results of our research and advocacy work available as freely and widely as possible.
Urban Research Program publication series
URP Issues Papers tackle current problems and challenges, and advocate potential new directions
in Australian urban policy. URP Research Papers impart findings and conclusions from our
research program.
The Issues Papers and Research Papers are edited by Stephen Horton, Centre Manager and Adjunct
Research Fellow in the Urban Research Program. Email: s.horton@griffith.edu.au.
All URP publications and can be downloaded from our website free of charge:
www.griffith.edu.au/urp
Hard copies are available for purchase. Contact via email, urp@griffith.edu.au.
About the Authors
Brendan Gleeson is Director of the Urban Research Program.
Jago Dodson is Senior Research Fellow in the Urban Research Program.
Marcus Spiller is Director of SGS Economics and Planning.
Email: brendan.gleeson@griffith.edu.au
j.dodson@griffith.edu.au
mspiller@sgsep.com.au
Acknowledgements
The authors and the Urban Research Program gratefully acknowledge the assistance provided by
the Queensland Government during the preparation of this Issues Paper. Note that the views
presented in this paper are entirely our own and not those of the Queensland Government. On
this basis the paper is not an endorsed work by the Queensland Government. The Queensland
Government supports the continued work of Griffith University in exploring these important
matters.

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Table of Contents
Introduction: The case for reform ........................................................................................1
Planning deficit.....................................................................................................................1
Democratic deficit ................................................................................................................6
Compromise and risk .............................................................................................................................6
Metropolitan disenfranchisement.........................................................................................7
Case study 1: The Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (1891-1991) .....................8
Case study 2: The Brisbane City Council (1924- ) & SEQ Regional Plan (2004- ) ............10
A vision for change .............................................................................................................12
Renewing planning governance in Australia.....................................................................................12
Establishing metropolitan commissions............................................................................................13
Staged transition....................................................................................................................................14
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 15
References........................................................................................................................... 16
List of Tables
Table 1: Subsidiarity and planning governance......................................................................................14
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Introduction: The case for reform
This issues paper raises and addresses the question of governance and management for
Australia’s principal urban regions. The paper reviews the planning and urban policy challenges
facing Australia’s major cities and argues the case for major reform of metropolitan governance.
The paper does not present a comprehensive research base in support of its arguments, but we
are confident that its main assertions can be verified in the scholarly and policy literatures. It is
intended to provoke thought and debate about urban governance amongst scholars,
policymakers, urban professionals and the general public.
Our premise is that serious urban governance failings will inhibit responses to manifest threats to
national sustainability and security, especially global economic instability, climate change,
resource insecurity and social inequity. A shift to stronger and more explicit metropolitan
governance is no simple panacea for these complex threats, but we see it as a precondition for
comprehensive policy response. As one of the world’s most urbanised nations, Australia’s well-
being is closely tied to the functioning of its major cities and to the quality of their governance.
Our focus is the five largest capital cities that accommodate approximately two-thirds of
Australia’s national population. These capital cities have evolved in recent decades into large
metropolitan regions with complex, overlapping and often haphazard governance arrangements.
All suffer to varying degrees what might be termed a ‘governance deficit’, meaning an absence of
clear and effective institutional arrangements for the planning of urban development and the
coordination of urban services, including infrastructure.
This deficit takes two principal forms, both of which inhibit and erode the productivity,
sustainability and liveability of Australia’s cities. The first is a lack of planning insight and
responsibility at the most appropriate governance level, the metropolitan region. To the extent
that it exists (with episodic enthusiasm), metropolitan planning is undertaken in a fragmented way
by a range of state agencies. It is further influenced by the activities of the many large private
sector interests that now own and operate key elements of the urban system.
The second is a democratic deficit, meaning that there exists no responsible forum for the
expression of collective planning will in metropolitan regions and that existing political oversight
is too often marked by role confusion. For instance, there are times where state planning
ministers find themselves involved in land development processes better left to local
governments (especially development applications) and in metropolitan strategic issues that have
little direct purchase on statewide portfolio responsibilities.
In the remainder of this issues paper we outline and review these two deficits before considering
the prospects for an alternative metropolitan scale of governance for the Australian city.
Planning deficit
The planning deficit in our cities is revealed in the complexity, fragmentation and
underdevelopment of the mechanisms that guide urban development. As a result there are
serious shortcomings in the conception, focus and ambition of urban management systems. The
complex, multi-dimensional morphology (make-up) of cities is not fully recognised and addressed
in planning strategies or, more generally, within urban services and infrastructure provision.
Most importantly, urban planning is failing to acknowledge and rectify the structural problems
that have steadily worsened in our cities. Here we draw a distinction between the two principal
dimensions of urban morphology: urban form, meaning the density and appearance of cities;

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and urban structure, being the arrangement and functioning of land uses, infrastructure and
major facilities. Matters of form can be broadly influenced through current governance
mechanisms such as state planning policies, local residential codes and design guidelines. On the
other hand, structural imperatives, such as the functioning and relationship of sub-regional
centres, require integrated planning frameworks that apply at the metropolitan scale and which
are buttressed by strong financing mechanisms.
There are few means for effecting structural planning in the contemporary Australian city. The
South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan 2009-26 is an exception. The Plan is innovative in that it
outlines a strategy for metropolitan scale infrastructure enhancement that is closely linked to the
land development blueprint for the same region (South East Queensland Regional Plan 2009-31). Its
purchase and influence on the structure of urbanised southeast Queensland is weakened,
however, by ‘institutional distance’. By this we mean, the plan’s disconnection from the
patchwork of local authorities that govern urban development in the region.
The plan is also distanced from the many state and private sector agencies that design and deliver
urban services and infrastructure. This institutional complexity and detachment will be increased
when key elements of the state’s urban responsibilities (ports and motorways) are privatised in
the near future. A great exception to this observation and prospect has been the significant
improvements to coordination and planning of transport services in southeast Queensland
through the establishment of the Translink Transit Authority. The Authority, established in 2004
and reorganized in 2008, has significantly improved network planning and service delivery
through integrated governance of transport services. Its work and its accomplishments are
suggestive of the wider prospects for effective metropolitan governance in southeast Queensland.
The Southeast Queensland Regional Plan (and its infrastructure corollary) is a ‘creature’ of state
administration, not metropolitan governance. The one potential benefit of this is its ability to
coordinate state spending generally in the southeast. And yet the patchy realisation of this
potential strength is mirrored by the Plan’s need to compete for financing with other, usually
dominant state fiscal responsibilities, especially health, education and policing. This is probably a
difficult situation to change permanently given:
1. The overwhelming importance and difficulty of these portfolios which must absorb most
of the focus and energy of state governments; and
2. The highly specified and spatially confined nature of metropolitan responsibilities and
imperatives.
Some tension is apparent between land-use planning tasks and infrastructure planning. State
governments face considerable political pressure to manage the rapid and convulsive growth
faced by many Australian cities. In this context the provision of infrastructure organised around
problem-oriented monumental engineering projects may offer a concrete alternative to the often
incremental, messy and negotiated process of land-use allocation and urban structuring. This
uneven relationship can be observed in South East Queensland between the regional land-use
and infrastructure plans and in Melbourne between the metropolitan strategy and extraordinary
transport infrastructure schemes, where until the recent (2009) release of the Victoria Transport
Plan, there had been an entrenched pattern of separate plan making for transport (especially
highways and freeways) and land use at the metropolitan level. Infrastructure delivery, however,
is not in itself a solution to planning problems, especially those of institutional fragmentation,
incomplete implementation and long-term urban re-structuring.
Such infrastructure plans may therefore improve the coordination of state spending in
metropolitan areas, but they will very often fail to generate the consistent, strategically oriented
long-term funding needed to address rapidly mounting structural problems, such as

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inaccessibility, congestion, excessive energy use (and greenhouse emissions) and service shortfalls.
State infrastructure plans for urban areas cannot easily mobilise the sorts of financing facilities
that are available to metropolitan scale institutions, including special rates, bond issues and levies.
These finance forms, if economically and financially viable, may form part of a broader
development and funding strategy to improve both the funding of infrastructure and other
structural improvements. They can also be used to send powerful economic signals in pursuit of
more efficient and equitable development.
State infrastructure plans are also no substitute for comprehensive structural planning which
must include the other spatial strategies that are needed to rationalise metropolitan development
and functioning. These include, for example:
 A centres policy with supporting powers, such as land assembly;
 An economic strategy including employment and service planning;
 Funding/revenue/cost supplementation strategies and concessions to discourage/
encourage different development forms; and
 Research and training to continuously inform and improve spatial strategy making.
Why is the inability of current urban governance mechanisms to effect structural planning an
issue of great concern? The simplest answer is that our cities all display worsening structural
imbalances that are compromising their basic functioning and sustainability. The most dynamic
imbalance arises from the simultaneous overcentralisation of employment, civic opportunity and
public investment and continuing haphazard dispersal of housing, commercial activity, and
motorised travel. Overlain on this structural paradox are the highly centralised transport systems
of Australian metropolitan regions. Their inability to provide for cross-metropolitan travel,
including non-employment related trips, has for some decades been recognised as a serious
defect in metropolitan structure.
These contrary trends largely explain the rising stresses, dislocations and inefficiencies
experienced in Australian cities. Their depressive influence on urban efficiency surely also
explains the growing stresses on resource systems (water, energy especially). The structural
paradox also worsens urban social inequity and social stress. The continuing dislocation of
housing and labour submarkets, together with the deepening inaccessibility of suburban areas by
modes other than the motor car, is placing ever greater financial and lifestyle strains on many
urban residents. The situation is especially acute in outer suburban zones which lack services and
amenities, including public transport.
There is a stark social gradient to this mounting stress and vulnerability. Poorer and modest
income communities are overrepresented in the metropolitan areas suffering locational
disadvantage. The ‘VAMPIRE’ and ‘VIPER’ spatial analyses of the Urban Research Program
demonstrate this inequity of urban vulnerability for all Australian cities (Dodson & Sipe, 2008).
In this way, the failing structural make up of our cities emerges as a major issue for social equity
and inclusion at the national scale.
The solution for this structural imbalance is closely managed dispersal of our metropolitan
regions, based on the planning principle of decentralised concentration. This principle has
long been advocated in Australian planning but rarely implemented with any will and therefore
effectiveness. It guided the historical development of Canberra and has informed the planning of
cities during periods of active metropolitan planning. ‘Corridor planning’ – exemplified in the
1968 Sydney Regional Outline Plan – provided a sound structural vision for metropolitan
development during the 1970s that improved the functioning and equity of our capital cities. This
planning legacy has, arguably, been squandered in many of our cities.

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From the 1980s, structural planning gave way to an emphasis on urban form, notably density, in
the context of deregulatory fervour, with deleterious consequences for metropolitan development
and functioning. The long run market forces driving urban dispersal continued, but were largely
unmanaged, whilst the centralisation of public investment and employment was maintained or
even strengthened. As part of a vision for polycentric urbanism, the principle of decentralised
concentration was restated in metropolitan plans during the 1990s and into the new millennium,
but with little or no supporting policies or programs to capture new development in or shift
activity to subregional centres.
Many of these plans have been criticised by commentators as resembling glossy marketing or
public relations documents rather than serious exercises in metropolitan planning. Few if any of
the plans emerging since the early-1990s have articulated substantive arguments for or against
their policy programs. Contemporary approaches contrast with the lengthy and considered
discussion presented in earlier Australian schemes such as the 1971 planning policies document
prepared by the erstwhile Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW), or the National
Capital Development Commission’s measured articulation of Tomorrow’s Canberra in 1970. A
comprehensive corridor plan for metropolitan Perth was produced in 1970 by the Metropolitan
Regional Planning Authority, a rare and arguably effective example of dedicated metropolitan
governance in the Australian planning experience. This cursory observation indicates the need for
dedicated independent planning authorities with permanent analytical capacity tend towards a
more substantial treatment of planning problems and their solutions.
The result of these embedded yet contradictory urban trends is what the Australian scholar Clive
Forster terms a ‘parallel universe’ problem, separating planning ambition (or rhetoric) from urban
reality. On the one hand, there is a broad consensus amongst the current metropolitan plans on
the nature of strategic ambition, which Forster summarises as the triumvirate: ‘Containment,
Consolidation and Centres’. He neatly captures the compact city vision that now informs all
metropolitan strategies in Australia:
In 20-30 years time, if the plans come to fruition, our major cities will be characterised by
limited suburban expansion, a strong multi-nuclear structure with high density housing
around centres and transport corridors, and infill and densification throughout the current
inner and middle suburbs. Residents will live closer to their work in largely self-contained
suburban labour sheds, and will inhabit smaller, more energy efficient houses. The
percentage of trips using public transport, walking or cycling will have doubled. Regeneration
programs will have broken up large concentrations of disadvantage, and a diminished public
housing sector will only house welfare dependent households in acute need. Other low-
income households will be able to find affordable dwellings in accessible locations within
consolidation developments (2006: 179).
The problem, to put it mildly, is that the reality of urban development and motivation contrasts
starkly with this vision. Forster makes the point that this well intentioned vision of metropolitan
sustainability is both:
1. Contested, by a range of commentators and interests who doubt its worth, its efficacy, or
both; and
2. Challenged, even negated, by the structures of our cities which remain differentiated and
dispersed rather than neatly multi-nucleated.
To this should be added a third failing: there exists few comprehensive policy or program
mechanisms for the implementation of the compact city model, especially its structural features.
Forster describes “two parallel urban universes: one occupied by metropolitan planning
authorities and their containment-consolidation-centres consensus; the other by the realities of

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the increasingly complex, dispersed, residentially differentiated suburban metropolitan areas most
Australians live in” (2006: 180).
The closest any recent Australian metropolitan plan has come to a serious revisiting of
decentralised concentration has been the recent Melbourne@5Million update to the 2001
Melbourne 2030 metropolitan strategy. A highlight of the updated scheme was the designation of
six sites for new CBD-scale developments within the city’s middle and outer suburbs. Yet the
update contains almost no analysis justifying the selection of centres or their functional linkages
to surrounding sub-regions and transport links. There is little published evidence of any serious
implementation program accompanying the updated scheme, save for the continuing $290
million State Government commitment to the regeneration of one Central Activity District,
Dandenong.
The planning deficit we describe above arises we believe from the lack of sustained and
accountable metropolitan governance frameworks which have responsibility for creating and
implementing workable strategies for urban development. It also reflects a relentless weakening
of the knowledge and professional bases for planning and for the urban professions generally
which has reduced their analytical scope and confidence. From the 1980s there has been a
progressive withering of the influence of spatial and social scientific disciplines (notably urban
economics and urban geography) on planning education and practice. Generations of planners
and urban professionals have emerged with little comprehension of the significance of urban
structure to basic city functioning and well-being. Moreover, as the community and governments
have become more participative in planning processes, the scope of professional practice has
tended to narrow, with far greater emphasis now being placed on negotiation, dispute resolution,
development control and administrative process. These are morbid not healthy developments in
professional practice and priority.
Road agencies have provided the only confident, but seriously flawed, structural ambition for
cities. The prioritisation of mobility over accessibility has driven the development of costly new
road infrastructure that has intensified dispersion, and therefore the urban structural imbalance,
whilst also worsening car dependency and greenhouse emissions. Planning, which has long
accepted the need to reprioritise accessibility over mobility, as well as the need to reduce car
dependency, has stood somewhat helplessly on the sidelines of urban development. More
recently, ‘infrastructure planning’ has supplanted to some extent the exclusive focus on road
planning. This has improved prospects for a renewed focus on urban structure. Comprehensive
urban planning, however, remains an aspiration in our cities.
The metropolitan governance deficit has profoundly reinforced the intellectual and professional
narrowing of urban professions. Metropolitan regions are urban systems comprised of
interlocking sub-markets, jurisdictions, programs, service networks and regulatory overlays. We
cannot anticipate a comprehensive metropolitan planning approach when no governance or
institutional responsibility exists at the system scale. Local governments have neither the coverage
nor the scale needed to carry this responsibility, or to support the evidence based, comprehensive
planning it necessitates.
State agencies – departments of planning, transport and community development – have
fragmented responsibilities, limited powers and resources and extensive, statewide jurisdictions.
Even if they had the needed qualities, it would be very difficult to make individual agencies
accountable for effective planning and servicing at the metropolitan scale. State agencies are also
subject to regular and often disruptive re-structuring that mitigates against the stability needed to
support the steady long-term implementation of detailed plans. The occasional instances of
innovation within state planning departments can often be lost in the next departmental reshuffle

6
or portfolio realignment. The problems with Sydney’s transport system, now pressing matters of
public concern, are emblematic of this institutional failure.
The governance shortfall we describe also reflects and reinforces a deepening democratic deficit
in our cities. This manifests as:
 A conflicted political culture, characterised by strategic uncertainty and polarity;
 Administrative confusion (especially between strategic and statutory planning);
 Popular anxiety about growth and change;
 Defensive localism (‘NIMBY-ism’); and
 Those limited but unfortunate circumstances of corruption and maladministration of land
development and regulation.
Democratic deficit
The democratic inadequacies of our current metropolitan governance systems (using that term
advisedly) can be broadly grouped into two areas:
1. Compromised and risky governance structures; and
2. Disenfranchisement of the metropolitan community.
Compromise and risk
Ideally, State Ministers for Planning and other urban functions should set the policies that guide
the development of state-wide urban areas and of the settlement system generally. It is generally
recognised that State Ministers for Planning should not be involved in the everyday development
assessment or decision making processes that guide infrastructure development and the delivery
of urban services (hydraulic services and also social and environmental programs). This
detachment is necessary to avoid conflict of roles and to safeguard against more egregious
governance failures, including corruption, nepotism and ad-hoc, reactive decision making that
compromises policy objectives. Arguably, the unhealthy melding of urban development ambition
with state political intent has brought planning into conflict and disrepute on a number of
occasions.
Too often, however, the reverse situation characterises state political and administrative
involvement in the cities. State policy frameworks remain underdeveloped, especially, but not
only, on the issue of settlement system planning. Each Australian jurisdiction is marked by high
degrees of metropolitan primacy, meaning metropolitan regions account for a dominant share of
state populations and activity. In many states this imbalance is now producing stresses and
contradictions that necessitate the need for thoroughgoing settlement system planning, possibly
including a commitment to decentralisation as a policy setting. Arguably, however, state
politicians and administrations have been diverted from these larger policy development tasks by
their involvement in regulatory planning that is properly the task of responsible local and regional
planning authorities.
There have been a number of occasions where State Ministers for Planning have exercised their
legislative powers to intervene in development assessment processes that may better be left to
independent authorities. This intervention helps to supercharge development debates at the
metropolitan and local levels with unhelpful results for policy making and for policy consistency.
It is becoming more common for communities to mobilise to organise demonstrations and
advertising campaigns to vent their dismay with proposed changes to their neighbourhoods. In
this politically charged environment, opposition parties obviously see opportunities to

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differentiate themselves from the Government of the day, score points and build constituencies.
Consequently, what should be a long term and consistent process of policy building for our cities
can become subject to the erratic swings of the short term political cycle. Metropolitan planning
should not be driven by reactive state political debate and ambition.
Metropolitan disenfranchisement
Cities are human systems first, and built environments second. Too often the ‘built environment’
rubric is used inappropriately to describe and lead urban discussion and planning. This discussion
should begin from the premise that our urban areas are social systems with a discernable and
unique need for democratic recognition. Contemplation of the built environment is surely critical
but should flow from and not precede this appreciation.
Our metropolitan regions are extensive but closely linked communities of mutual interest. The
proper planning of urban regions requires complex allocation decisions that guide the pattern of
private and public investment and service delivery. State and local government agencies must
decide resource shares within and between the communities that comprise our metropolitan
regions. All communities are linked by the imperative of regional allocation and planning.
And yet this compelling community of interest has no status or voice in the Australian
government system. The closest moment of recognition is perhaps the episodic and highly
differentiated attempts of state planning agencies to consult publicly during periods of
metropolitan plan making. This in no way substitutes for adequate recognition and expression of
the metropolitan democratic interest.
With the challenge of global warming, energy conservation and transformation of our spatial
economies is now back at the top of the agenda. In the major cities stories and news items about
planning are commonly on the front pages of daily papers. Melbourne has witnessed an especially
vigorous debate about planning in recent years. The metropolitan strategy Melbourne 2030 and its
successor, Melbourne@5Million, are the focus of political debate. And yet, at a time of rising
community interest in – indeed, anxiety about – urban development there are no institutions at
the metropolitan level that can lead, capture and translate these debates to democratically
supported planning.
It must tell us something that Australia’s major cities are amongst the few in the developed world
without metropolitan governments. It is a major limitation of policy that a ‘nation of cities’ grants
city regions no voice, no means for collective expression of content about planning, resource
allocation and major strategic issues, such as population growth, economic development and
sustainability targets. It is considered that the subordination of democratic expression explains
the increasingly polarised and anguished debates that increasingly afflict our cities. The highly
polarised debate around urban consolidation is a key example of the consequences of this failing.
State ambition for residential growth and compaction in metropolitan regions does not articulate
well with local government politics. The situation is clearly worsened by a lack of regional level
mechanisms for the implementation of the ideals expressed in the compact city model. The result
is too often uncoordinated and highly differentiated responses to housing targets at the local
level, with many failings of quality that antagonise local communities. Communities sense the
ambiguity of leadership and responsibility at the regional level and the absence of implementation
mechanisms. Disenchantment and cynicism regarding metropolitan planning thrive in this
context.

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What is missing is an intervening layer for the negotiation of state and local development
ambitions at the regional level. And yet there exists no mechanism for consultation, clarification
and leadership at the regional level. These critical ends cannot be met within the confines of
municipal politics and government. Urban local government amalgamations in jurisdictions such
as Queensland and Victoria have increased the scale and competencies of municipalities but not
to the extent required by regional coordination. This means that urban frustration too often plays
out at the state political level with deleterious consequences for planning and policy making at
this level, as outlined earlier.
We turn now to two case studies of historical and contemporary governance in Australian
metropolitan regions. These examinations aim to expose and reinforce the arguments made
above as well as provide the context for our final discussion of a possible model for metropolitan
governance in Australia.
Case study 1: The Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (1891-1991)
Melbourne shares with Perth the rare experience of dedicated metropolitan planning governance.
Perth’s Metropolitan Regional Planning Authority has evolved into the Western Australian
Planning Commission; whilst Melbourne’s planning body was largely dismantled in the mid-
1980s.
Before 1991, Melbourne had a metropolitan governance structure that may be judged in
hindsight imperfect, but which provided both a participatory forum for planning (based on
municipal representation) and a strong basis for comprehensive planning. This structure no
longer exists. Institutionally, Melbourne is now in a weaker position to forge a sustainable future
than it was three decades ago.
Prior to the election of the Cain Labor Government in 1982, planning governance in Melbourne
was dominated by a quasi independent authority, the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of
Works (MMBW). This body traced its origins to the Gold Rush period in the city’s development.
The MMBW had something of a democratic mandate in its own right; until 1978, the Board
comprised fifty four Commissioners, all delegated Councillors from the municipalities making up
the metropolis at the time. After an Inquiry in 1977, the Board was restructured to comprise a
full time Chair and six part-time members, four elected by Area Commissions or groupings of
municipalities within the city and two State Government appointees.
The Board developed metropolitan strategy and an overarching development control scheme for
Melbourne. In performing these functions, it operated at arm’s length from the Government,
though the State Minister (and Parliament more generally) ratified these documents with advice
from other independent authorities such as the Town and Country Planning Board. The MMBW
delegated some planning scheme powers to its constituent municipalities but retained
development assessment responsibilities for matters of ‘metropolitan significance’, for example,
land release at the urban fringe, key employment locations and the major waterway corridors.
The Planning Minister of the day was ‘above the fray’; s/he was seen as the custodian of the
processes set out in the Town and Country Planning Act and was rarely drawn into resolving
individual development assessment issues. The state political reporters of the day had to look
elsewhere for their stories.
Importantly, the MMBW also had responsibility for planning, financing and delivering ‘city
shaping’ infrastructure, particularly trunk sewers, which determined where and when land could

9
be opened up for growth, and highways, which affected accessibility patterns and therefore
location choices across the metropolis. In pursuing these responsibilities, the Board had its own
rating powers and could issue infrastructure bonds.
The Board had many of the hallmarks of a ‘metropolitan government’ not unlike the current
Greater London Authority (GLA). Just as the GLA made great strides in sustainability policy for
London under the leadership of its mayor, Ken Livingstone, the Board established strong
planning credentials during its tenure. While some might have been frustrated by the then
seemingly slow response of planning authorities to the global energy crisis, hindsight tells us that
some of Melbourne’s best planning was delivered under the auspices of the MMBW. These
include protection of the Melbourne CBD as the metropolis’s pre-eminent social, economic and
cultural hub, enforcement of a corridor structure in outward urban growth to define communities
and maintain access to food production and recreational resources and development of an
excellent network of metropolitan parks.
The Cain Government’s move to strip the MMBW of its planning powers and relocate these into
a state department of planning seemed like a good idea at the time. It was intended to make
‘planning more accountable’. In part, it was a reforming government’s decisive response to then
recent land scandals involving the Housing Commission and efforts by some developers to
convince the Board to approve a self-contained new town on Melbourne’s northern fringe, in a
location at odds with the corridor plan.
This move set in train a polarisation in planning governance in Melbourne which now threatens
to seriously compromise capacity to deliver the sustainable metropolis envisioned in metropolitan
strategies. On the one hand, there has been an inexorable centralisation of planning power and
influence in the state department of planning and therefore the Minister. For example, the
formation of the Priority Development Panel enables the Minister to ‘call in’ a wide range of
development applications, with advice from independent experts but with the Minister making
the decisions. The Growth Areas Authority (GAA) was established in 2006. The GAA, ostensibly
an independent and coordinating body, reports directly to the State Minister for Planning.
Arguably, through the GAA, the Minister now effectively directs land release and infrastructure
funding policy on Melbourne’s fringe. The GAA may not be effecting the widescale
improvements to metropolitan governance we see as necessary.
At the same time, the last three decades have seen a strong thrust to establish councils as
independent planning authorities, with power to create and maintain their own development
control schemes in keeping with local community preferences. This was given particular
emphasis during the Kennett Government’s incumbency (1992-99).
In short, metropolitan governance was abolished, the instrumental role of the Minister was
increased, and councils were, in one sense, invited to act with greater autonomy in planning
matters. This proved to be a recipe for institutional paralysis. Upon its release in 2003, the
technical content of Melbourne 2030 strategy was lauded as leading practice by some observers.
But it was not embraced by the metropolitan community as something born of its own
democratic processes. Thus it was seen as an edict from ‘Spring Street’ (the geographic seat of the
State Government in Melbourne) – something handed down by a remote sphere of governance
which had no affinity with community aspirations.
When local councils with clear mandates to represent local interests were asked to make policies
and decisions in line with the regional interests set out in Melbourne 2030, resistance was
inevitable. Outright revolt was forestalled by protracted local planning processes supported by
the State Government including the preparation of activity centre structure plans and urban
design frameworks. But these merely papered over the inherent weakness in governance

10
arrangements; local governments were being asked to perform metropolitan functions. The
result, as indicated by the Melbourne 2030 Expert Audit Group, is much slower progress on
urban consolidation than what we need and what the Government had hoped for.
Case study 2: The Brisbane City Council (1924- ) & SEQ Regional Plan
(2004- )
At first inspection the recent case of Brisbane and South East Queensland (SEQ) appears to
offer a positive governance narrative involving a new and widely supported spatial and
infrastructure framework at the regional scale. This was developed from 2003 in response to the
ever evident fragmentary pressures assailing Australia’s fastest growing urban region, and public
support for stronger planning coordination at the regional level. But there are some important
weaknesses with the current model that bear contemplation. These include:
1. The Brisbane City Council’s extraordinary institutional scale offering it unusual influence
over wider regional development patterns and policy priorities, demonstrated most clearly
in transport planning;
2. The growing tendency to resort to ‘project led planning’, meaning the increasing
dominance of infrastructure schemes over planning schemes; and
3. The continuing absence of mechanisms to deliver the State Government’s structural
planning objectives, including its regional centres policy.
Metro-regional planning in SEQ is a recent phenomenon. In 2004 the Queensland government
established a State Office of Urban Management tasked with preparing a regional plan to knit
together the fraying development paths of the region’s 18 local government authorities.
The SEQ Regional Planning process is partly reflective of an earlier phase in the region’s history
dating from 1924 when the Brisbane City Council (BCC) was established by a state
administration to provide an overarching unitary authority for the then metropolitan region. It
was formed through the amalgamation of two cities, six towns, and various parts of ten shires.
The Brisbane model comprised 20 councillors (now 26) plus a directly elected Lord Mayor with a
mix of formal and ceremonial powers. This unitary model contrasts with the Melbourne
Metropolitan Board of Works framework which instituted a new tier of urban governance
between the state and local governments. The MMBW did, not, however introduce a new
electoral overlay, and is properly described as representational governance not government.
Through its various organs the BCC was initially responsible for town planning as well as water
and sewerage works, electricity generation and distribution and tramways. The competence
brought by this scale of government has been noted by some observers as producing a legacy of
‘remarkably stable’ government in Brisbane.
The BCC’s contemporary role in regional planning is problematised by two factors. First, the
scale of the BCC has enabled it to sometimes compete with and often lead state government
urban decision-making processes. This is apparent in the recent development of the city’s
transport system where state sponsored busways and toll tunnels have been constructed at the
instigation of the BCC. Second, the limits of the BCC’s coordinating powers were exposed and
intensified in the context of increasingly dispersed regional growth in the decades following
World War Two. By the 1980s significant urban development had escaped the confines of
Brisbane especially in the tourism and retirement zones of the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast,
the latter of which has outpaced Hobart and Canberra to become Australia’s sixth largest city.

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A voluntary regional growth management framework was instigated in 1990 in response both to
increased recognition of the need for regional coordination and widespread community concern
about development stresses. This produced a succession of regional growth management
schemes. This voluntary arrangement proved ineffective, however, and from the late 1990s public
anxieties were again voiced at the trajectory of the region’s growth patterns.
In 2004 the State Government responded to the growth management pressure, including
campaigns from media and public institutions, by establishing the OUM and initiating a process
for the development of a blueprint regional plan. This agency, which uniquely included officers
seconded from local government and from a variety of state functions, produced the 2005 South
East Queensland Regional Plan, with statutory weight, and the subsequent South East Queensland
Infrastructure Plan. State planning capacity was later relocated and concentrated within a
Department of Infrastructure and Planning. The new regional planning framework has proven
electorally popular although chronic growth pressure is again stirring civic disquiet. In 2010, the
Courier Mail newspaper responded to rising public anxiety about planning and growth by
reinitiating its earlier campaign series, Our Future, Your Say.
An equally substantive concern is the emerging tendency for infrastructure production to
dominate land-use planning. There is doubtless an element of political appeal behind this
tendency, which is not surprising given high and rising community expectations concerning the
quality of urban services and liveability. The immediacy, manageability and monumentality of
infrastructure provision offer tangible and timely results in contrast to the inevitably slower
process of regional planning. The focus on major projects also constitutes a meaningful response
to the infrastructure deficits that accumulated in the years preceding the current statutory growth
framework. The major project response, however, places increasing pressure on the now
accepted need to reduce the carbon intensity of urban development and to prioritise accessibility
over mobility as an urban ambition.
In contrast to this approach stands regional planning, the gradual but relentless reshaping of
land-use patterns which is essential to long term regional coherence and sustainability. Unlike a
major projects stream, regional planning provides much less visible and immediate results. With
large regional municipalities committed to major project solutions for chronic urban problems,
such as traffic congestion, the resort to infrastructure delivery over spatial planning has become
increasingly powerful and compelling. This may be attributable to the more nuanced and less
easily marketable measures, such as demand management in transport, being much more difficult
to implement as policy alternatives.
And yet, for all its superficial attractions, ‘project led planning’ threatens to worsen structural
imbalances, antagonise local communities and defer the hard but necessary work of reshaping the
land use pattern of SEQ to improve its basic functioning. The challenge of implementing the
State Government’s Transit Oriented Development program, a keystone of the regional plan,
exemplifies the difficulties facing structural land use planning in the region.
Major infrastructure projects which affect the pattern of accessibility across an urban area can be
deployed strategically to ‘reshape’ the pattern of urban development. This is one of the key
challenges for infrastructure enhancements in SEQ, which must be prioritised to further the
Government’s strategic planning goal of decentralised concentration. Examples of this
prioritisation being applied include the Springfield rail extension and the Gold Coast Rapid
Transit Project. Arguably, a continuation of project led planning is likely to contribute to the
overcentralisation of employment and transport networks in SEQ. Continuing central activity
concentration in Brisbane’s CBD for example, is generating further calls for the costly expansion
and duplication of radial transport links. Therefore a key focus must be improving the linking of

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public transport modes through coherent regional network planning, which will help to reduce
the demand for roads.
A vision for change
Renewing planning governance in Australia
In the face of the deficits we describe above and considering their harmful impacts on city
efficiency and equity, we believe the case for metropolitan governance is compelling. It is our
recommendation that state governments work with the Commonwealth and with local
governments to establish metropolitan governance frameworks that respond to and exploit the
unique physical, social and environmental qualities of our capital city regions.
The Commonwealth should consider funding transition to metropolitan governance through the
COAG framework, with incentive payments linked to progress benchmarked against a nationally
agreed reform model. The Commonwealth should remain an active metropolitan partner once
the Commissions are established. At the minimum it should commit to aligning its own
employment, investment and development policies and programs with the objectives of the
metropolitan Commissions.
Whilst it is necessary to fit governance structures to the particularities of each metropolitan
context, there are, we believe, a number of imperatives and features which all governance
structures must share. The most important universal imperative is the immediate need to improve
structural planning in Australia’s metropolitan regions and to urgently give meaningful effect to
the goal of decentralised concentration. Allied to this is the requirement to vastly improve the
planning and functioning of our long neglected public transport systems to ensure realisation of
the mutually reinforcing goals of urban accessibility and equity. It should not be neglected that
planned dispersion will create more economically efficient cities and provide a significant boost
to regional productivity. This underscores the national importance of the metropolitan
governance reform task.
Significant acceleration towards the vision of a compact city will require smarter approaches to
urban design, particularly at the precinct level, as well as a rethink about the distribution of high
density development at the level of urban structure. However, it is unlikely that we will simply
design our way to a more sustainable and efficient urban structure or, just as importantly, to
credibility with the metropolitan community. A precondition for meeting these objectives is a
thorough reconstruction of planning governance in Australian cities.
What are the governance features that should generally inform the development and operation of
metropolitan authorities? We believe that this question needs to be approached with the
subsidiarity principle firmly in mind. We summarise in Table 1 our view of how the principle
should be applied to the reorganisation of planning governance in Australia. In particular, it is
vital that a metropolitan sphere of governance be created (in Melbourne’s case reinstated), so that
the inevitable tensions between neighbourhood self-interest and regional sustainability can be
mediated in more constructive ways, without endangering sound long term plans for our
metropolis.
Moreover, the interests of the States are likely to be better served if their governments can be
freed to concentrate on the important state-wide issues, rather than being dragged into what are
essentially local or regional matters. These include education, health, policing, industry policy,
competitive taxation and regulatory regimes, national parks and Commonwealth-State relations.

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Establishing metropolitan commissions
A practical first step would be to establish in each city region a regional planning authority or
Commission with clear responsibility for those places and issues which are of metropolitan
significance, including:
 All the principal activity centres in the metropolis;
 All the public transport corridors which have major intensification potential;
 All the economic drivers including key employment nodes, including the CBD;
 The airport zone; and
 All development proposals above a threshold size or value.
Outside these areas and issues, local governments would have greater independent discretion
than they have today to pursue localised planning solutions.
It is essential that any such Commission be seen to have an independent, albeit subsidiary,
mandate to that of the State Government. The MMBW structure from Melbourne is worth
contemplating as a model for emulation. The MMBW’s board included a mix of some members
(a minority) appointed by the State and other members elected – directly or by electoral college –
from regional local governments. Municipal election of members was organised through
metropolitan sub-regions.
This governance model meets the tests of independence, accountability and representation
without going so far as to impose another electoral layer on the Australian multi-level
government system. There may not be sufficient community enthusiasm for another level of
government at this time. The representational governance model we propose shares broad
similarities with the structure and constitution of the Greater Vancouver Regional District
(GVRD). The GVRD has been closely associated by critical commentary with the successful
management of the Vancouver metropolitan region in recent years. This management has
balanced targeted compact and transit oriented development with regional public transport
planning and a high level of democratic legitimation. There is no immediate need for the
application of other overseas models, such as metropolitan regional governments with directly
elected mayors (e.g., London). The Commissions must work with local political leaders but will
ultimately have superior planning and service coordination powers for matters properly decided
at the regional level.
The Commissions would be staffed by professionals transferred from the current State
departments of planning and other relevant urban agencies. Secondment from local government
should also be contemplated. They could be funded by their own rate raising mechanisms. In
some metropolitan cases, notably Sydney and Melbourne, such rating devices are already in force;
for example, Melbourne’s Metropolitan Improvement Fund.
In due course, the Commission could become a fully fledged metropolitan governance institution
with responsibility for principal roads, public transport and major environmental assets, while
local councils continue to provide local services. The State Parliament and its executive would
remain the pre-eminent governance institution in each instance, retaining control of more than
two thirds of current budget programs.
Special attention must be given to the establishment of regional participatory forums to address
the democracy deficit identified earlier. The Commissions will nurture and lead popular debate at
the regional level, and work with local governments to enhance neighbourhood and locality
planning. Major urban stakeholders and partners, including environmental and social advocacy

14
groups, should be represented in Commissions structures, including its working and advisory
groups.
Finally, educational institutions will need to play their part in reinventing our planning
institutions. They will need to equip planners with the theoretical frameworks, analytical skills and
capacity to give them the imagination required to reinvigorate the profession’s original role as an
agent of visionary change. It is especially necessary that the profession’s capacity to comprehend
and effect metropolitan structural planning is re-established. By providing a professional and
institutional focal point for this ambition, the Commission’s will greatly aid the cause of
professional renewal in planning and in allied urban professions.
Staged transition
Finally, transition to metropolitan governance could be staged rather than instituted in one
reform package. With reference to Table 1 below, the suggested staged development approach
would comprise:
Stage 1: Metropolitan planning authority with jurisdiction over the matters set out in the
third row of Table 1, reporting to a forum or ‘board’ comprising delegates from councils
plus state appointed members.
Stage 2: Metropolitan planning authority plus responsibility for planning and financing
major roads, public transport, major open space, major water cycle infrastructure, and
urban regeneration functions. This would include the assumption of separate
taxing/bond raising powers.
Table 1: Subsidiarity and planning governance
Level Examples of activities or decisions for this level
National level  Improving national consistency of planning and building regulation
 Resolving cross-border issues such as water supply, ports and
transport connections
 Environment, heritage issues of national significance
State/Territory level  Maintaining state-wide land use and development regulation system
 Maintaining administrative and judicial review processes
 Overseeing planning institutions
 Development planning and development determinations for sites or
projects of state-wide significance
Regional/metropolitan level  Prioritising and investing in strategic infrastructure of metropolitan
significance
 Designating major activity centres and facilitating development in
these centres
 Designating and managing major transportation corridors
 Identifying and developing key economic strategies including
employment nodes
 Formulating land release schedules in growth areas
 Protecting environmental and cultural assets of regional significance
 Maintaining efficient land supply for housing
Local level  Neighbourhood structure planning
 Regulating housing development and redevelopment within
applicable State and regional guidelines
 Regulating development in all lower order activity centres

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Conclusion
Australian cities face immense challenges in meeting the demands placed upon them by rapid
population growth in the context of global economic ruptures and environmental stress.
Australia’s urban managers will need to act decisively to relieve the pressures and resolve the
paradoxes that will flow from these forces. There are manifold technical solutions available to
support the reshaping and restructuring of our cities. These tools and strategies will not, however,
produce solutions to urban problems in the absence of sound and decisive governance
arrangements. Good governance must guide and enact the planning of safe urban trajectories.
Our present urban governance mechanisms are deeply compromised and under resourced and
therefore cannot play this role. Cities are a lynchpin of the emerging national reform agenda. This
program must include reconsideration of city governance. We hope this paper has assisted
thinking and development in this crucial area of public policy.

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References
Dodson, J. and Sipe, N. (2008) Shocking the Suburbs: oil vulnerability in the Australian city,
Sydney, UNSW Press.
Forster, C. (2006) The Challenge of Change: Australian Cities and Urban Planning in the New
Millennium, Geographical Research, 44 (2), pp. 173-82.
National Capital Development Commission (1970) Tomorrow’s Canberra: planning for growth
and change, ANU Press, Canberra.

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Urban Research Program
Griffith University
Brisbane, QLD 4111
www.griffith.edu.au/urp