How Green Was My City Region: The relevance of past open space planning experiences to contemporary planing for the Brisbane metropolitan region

Abstract

A region can be distinguished by the diversity of landscapes that make-up that region, its degree of liveability and the elements that contribute to its liveability. These positive attributes of open space within a region can only be realised through the coherent and integrated form of a regional landscape framework. There have been a number of attempts to achieve a consolidated landscape framework in the past for the Brisbane City metropolitan region as well as for the South East Queensland region. On all occasions these regional scale initiatives were in response to rapidly changing growth pressures but most met with limited success or failed. Hence, it would be informative to establish if the lessons from these past initiatives had any relevance for the recent SEQ Regional Planning initiatives of the Queensland State Government and the region's local governments. This paper has reviewed the principal attempts to address regional landscape and open space initiatives for the City and region in the past. The history of these attempts strongly demonstrates that community engagement through collaborative planning is the only feasible landscape management paradigm capable of successfully addressing the urban growth challenges facing South East Queensland and safeguarding its regional landscape values in their entirety. It has also been clearly demonstrated that it will be imperative to relate and address the regional landscape elements and values in the holistic context of a landscape framework. Additionally, this framework should be supported by collaborative institutional mechanisms in order to ensure the coordinated implementation of the concepts, policies and proposals. Whilst it appears that the new SEQ Regional Plan 2005-2026 and its implementation processes may provide a foundation for this to occur it is still by no means sure if the recently conferred statutory nature of the new Regional Plan will result in different outcomes to previous planning endeavours and whether these outcomes can take advantage of the lessons from the past.