Governance, sustainability and recent Australian metropolitan strategies: a socio-theoretic analysis

Abstract

This article examines the response of planning to the challenges highlighted by current governance and sustainability discourses. To this end, an archaeology of the contested and shifting aims and objects of planning is employed to inform the analytic interrogation of five Australian metropolitan planning strategies. Analysis of the conceptual heritage of planning along with the emergent preoccupations with the planning governance and urban sustainability yields five key themes: policy, space, planning governance, finance and democracy. We deploy these in a critical review of contemporary Australian metropolitan strategies. The resulting empirical analysis suggests that an integrated planning paradigm, centrally concerned with urban sustainability, is coalescing within contemporary strategic planning systems. We argue that this strategic reorientation of growth management around broad sustainability and democratic concerns has the potential to reanimate planning and resecure its socio-political footings.