New Century Australian Spatial Planning: Recentralization under Labor

Abstract

This paper discusses a recentralization of spatial planning in Australia since 2000, during which Labor governments have been predominant. The new planning initiatives have primarily reflected an imperative to improve capital city competitiveness and development levels in general. A second driver has been a desire to make development more ecologically sustainable. The paper demonstrates this recentralization in state plans, state infrastructure strategies, metropolitan and regional strategies, new specific purpose authorities, development control system changes, and Commonwealth government intervention. While the fluid and dynamic nature of these changes resonate with UK planning characterized by ‘soft spaces and fuzzy boundaries’, they have not resulted in new multiple scales of governance but, rather, reassertion of state government primacy in spatial planning.