The Making and Unmaking of Planning Ideas: Reviewing, Interpreting and Learning from the Past

Abstract

In recent years the study of planning history in Australia has attracted an increasing number of adherents, but the agenda is still far from clear. Ironically, in view of our comparatively short and uneven history of government-backed urban planning and policy making, this relates partly to a rich lode for research. The contributions to this Forum are accordingly quite diverse. In responding to the central theme, they are united less in terms of subject matter and style than in how the past can be linked to the present-and the future.