Understanding Master-Planned Estates in Australian Cities: A Framework for Research

Abstract

Master-planned estates (MPEs) are becoming increasingly important as a part of the urban residential fabric and have recently begun to attract significant research attention. Our purpose in this article is to engage critically with understandings of MPEs in the Australian context and to suggest the need for both empirical and theoretical expansion. We draw on research into MPEs in the greater metropolitan region of Sydney and demonstrate how their diverse form and character exceed the parameters of Blakely and Snyder's (Fortress America, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1997) influential and widely cited typology of MPEs. In a move towards grounded theory, we build from our findings to suggest three key analytical dimensions needed to equip us with more complex and theory-driven understandings of the dynamic forms and outcomes of MPE development: (i) the nature of governance mechanisms that produce MPEs and govern life within them; (ii) the influence of housing market context on the unfolding of urban social processes; and (iii) the dynamic and lived nature of neighbourhood and community. These dimensions are aimed to capture the empirical multiplicity of the MPE phenomenon and to broaden the scope of the theoretical and analytical frameworks that have characterised their Australian analysis. It is our hope that analysis framed by these expanded dimensions can contribute to the project of enhancing theoretical recognition of urban difference under distinct and unique Australian conditions.

Keywords:

• Master-planned estates
• typology
• Sydney metropolitan region
• diversity

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Helene Mountford and Natalie Moore for invaluable research assistance, Rowland Atkinson for assistance in development of the survey, Judy Davis for cartography, and participants in the State of Australian Cities conference (2005) City Structure session for productive suggestions. This research has been conducted with funds from the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University.

Notes

 1. Though, as Gleeson (2005) acknowledges and we argue, they are also increasingly to be found on sizeable urban renewal sites.

 2. This work included a survey of local government planning departments as well as an extensive search of media, land development and residential construction corporations and local government websites. It has so far not included any ethnographic detail.

 3. For instance, within state and local planning authorities the term master-plan refers to a loosely defined mechanism of planning regulation over an entire site which produces an overall vision to guide development. The level of detail in that vision can vary enormously as can the scale at which it operates, from an entire suburb to a site for a few dozen dwellings. When the State Government formed a Master-plan Review Taskforce, the Property Council of Australia's (2003, p. 3) submission complained that it was “not clear what a master-plan actually means as the definition in the regulations are broad and what is required of master-plans ranges for different sites and council areas on the whim of the Council”. The proliferation of local governments' deployment of master-plans in multiple ways resulted in the amendment of Environmental and Assessment Regulation 2000 as part of the 2005 reform of the NSW planning legislation to confine Councils' growing reliance on the use of master-plans.

 4. Our audit purposely excluded individual apartment blocks with shared facilities and did not include retirement villages.

 5. Community title is a method of parcelling land to allow people separate ownership of their primary land, while having a shared interest and responsibility over common land and facilities. Associations manage and govern the common land and facilities, with rights and responsibilities determined by legislation—in NSW the Community Land Development Act (see ACT Planning & Land Authority, 2003; New South Wales Office of Fair Trading, 2006).

 6. The 2005 reform of the NSW planning legislation restricts Councils from requiring master-plans to using DCPs or requiring Staged Development Approval process, their ability to intervene in what is commonly understood as a master-planning process remains strong.

 7. Likewise, Stanhope Gardens (a Landcom/Mirvac development) contains private, resident-only facilities like a club house and tennis courts, yet also houses Blacktown's newest and most modern swimming centre used by a much broader socio-economic group dispersed beyond the suburb's boundaries.

 8. Something that the new Growth Centres Commission, formed to coordinate the development of Sydney's new metropolitan fringe land releases, is likely to heighten.

 9. In the case of MPEs, land-use mix refers generally to whether the development is solely residential or contains additional residential services, for example, recreational facilities, retail, cafés, schools or broader commercial and employment functions.

10. The value of self-containment is questionable. On the one hand, it may be thought to produce benefits in the form of reduced travel needs; however, research thus far suggests that travel self-containment in MPEs, as in other forms of residential development, is shaped by levels of car-dependency and access to good public transport (Yigiticanlar et al., 2005). On the other hand, it can lead to residents developing ‘space-time trajectories’ (Atkinson & Flint, 2004) in which residential segregation is mirrored by segregation in work and consumption patterns.

11. Both the first and second dimensions—governance forms and housing market contexts—make clear that the specificities of MPEs' spatial and social outcomes are context-dependent. We note the potential of the structures of building provision approach (Ball, 1986, 1998) as one well suited to uncovering the institutional parameters that shape these contexts. This approach highlights the critical importance of the (dynamic) relationships between the organisations involved in the production of housing and neighbourhoods such as development and construction companies, financial institutions, state regulatory and development agencies (Ball, 1998; Knox & Pinch, 2006).

12. Robinson's (2006) argument is connected to a broader agenda of decolonising geographical knowledge production by means of highlighting the parochial bases of European- and American-derived theoretical knowledge which, contra its provincial derivation, claims universality.