Rethinking the Implementation of the Compact City: Factors Affecting Compact Activity Centre Policy Conformance in Greater Brisbane, 1996 to 2016

ABSTRACT

Australian planning authorities have struggled to develop more compact cities for decades, yet empirical explanations for this policy challenge are lacking. This is critical to inform future sustainable planning efforts. In response, we correlate 20 years of change in greater Brisbane’s activity centres against factors related to land use regulations, transport accessibility, property characteristics, and socio-economic status. We find activity centre implementation is most strongly associated with property-based factors and that land use regulations have the weakest relationship. Policymakers should therefore pursue alternative strategies that do not rely on planning mechanisms geared primarily towards creating a market for development.

几十年来，澳大利亚规划当局一直在努力发展更紧凑的城市，然而，对于这一政策挑战，缺乏实证解释. 这对未来可持续规划工作至关重要. 作为回应，我们将大布里斯班活动中心20年来的变化与土地使用法规、交通可达性、财产特征和社会经济地位相关的因素联系起来. 我们发现，活动中心的实施与房地产相关因素最为密切，而土地使用法规的关系最弱. 因此，政策制定者应寻求其他战略，而不是依赖主要旨在创造发展市场的规划机制.

KEYWORDS:

• Activity centres
• Brisbane
• Australia
• compact city
• urban planning

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Excluding the centres of Springfield, North Lakes and Ripley. These are greenfield development sites and are not directly comparable to the other centres. A total of 19 centres were therefore selected.

2. The subsequent correlations are two-way tests that do not differentiate between dependent and independent variables. The term of “quasi-dependent variable” refers to its role in being the target of the investigation and against which the other variables are compared.

3. Excluding the centres of Springfield, North Lakes and Ripley. These centres are greenfield development sites that are not directly comparable with the other centres in relative terms.

4. This method involves interpolating census data for customised extents (in this case the walkable catchment of each centre), weighted using point-based land use data to improve accuracy. Please see Limb et al. (2018); Limb et al., (2020a) for a detailed description of this approach.

5. Industrial land uses were scored inversely.

6. The only significant public transport infrastructure upgrade effecting the centres was the South East Busway which linked Upper Mount Gravatt in 2001. The rail line to Redcliffe was not completed until late 2016 which is outside the study’s timeframe.

7. IEO was selected from the four ABS socio-economic indices it was the only measure that was not directly composed of aspects related to the other variables. For example, the inclusion of dwelling size measures in the index would create a bias for detached housing.

8. However, we cannot say if the relationship is due to increasing unit prices making development more profitable or if new development results in higher unit prices. We therefore use only the initial unit price in the following partial correlations

9. Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Queensland University of Technology Civil Engineering and Built Environment Scholarship.