Evaluating scenarios for twenty-first-century Australian settlement planning: a Delphi study with planning experts

ABSTRACT

This paper presents findings from a national survey of Australian planning experts examining future settlement patterns and locations at the continental scale. Collective judgement supported efforts to achieve population decentralisation and favoured three possible scenarios – Satellite Cities, Boosted Secondary Capital Cities, and East West Megaregions. The findings on preferred settlement pattern scenarios can inform future efforts to develop a national urban policy for Australia. This case study can also serve as a reference point to the over 160 countries worldwide that are developing, implementing, or evaluating national urban policies in support of global urban agendas.

KEYWORDS:

• ‌Australian cities
• national urban policy
• new cities

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the assistance of the Planning Institute of Australia who disseminated the Plan My Australia survey to their members.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 National urban policies are referred to variously as a ‘national urbanisation policy’, ‘national urban strategy’, ‘national urban development strategy’ or ‘National Urban Policy.’ We refer to the latter. (OECD, UN Habitat, & UNOPS 2021a).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council: [Grant Number DP190101093].