It's All About Growth: Peri-Urban Planning in 'The Bush'

The management of peri-urban space has been the subject of significant consideration in Australian planning for many decades. Local Government planning schemes have made attempts to provide balance and distinction between urban and non-urban lands (examples include Sydney's County of Cumberland Planning Scheme 1951, and Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundaries 1970). Since the late 1980s governments have moved increasingly towards new-right policies with less emphasis on publicly planned solutions to increasing emphasis on market-oriented competition (Allmendinger 2009). This shift is characterized by reduced government regulation, economic efficiency and increasing private sector investment. Land use planning appears to be about urban economic growth and that non-urban land, particularly peri-urban land, is mainly viewed in terms of the economic value it can provide to the nearby urban area, such as, land for urban expansion, materials for construction, energy provision (for example coal seam gas), waste disposal, water storage, and explicit environmental value. Further, increasing internationalization and globalization, such as markets and communication, means a move away from productivist approaches in what Beck (2000) refers to as 'first modernity', to an era of multi-functional, multi-faceted consumers (second modernity). This era of second modernity includes revising the way land is viewed.