Instruments of Planning Tensions and Challenges Fo... - (Part I Planning Challenges in A Context of Discontinuous Growth)

PART I
PLANNING CHALLENGES IN A
CONTEXT OF DISCONTINUOUS
GROWTH
Leonie Janssen-Jansen
Cities and urban regions stand at the brink of a new era. The structural
dynamics of socio-economic and demographic processes are accelerating.
Societal arrangements are constantly challenged and redefined due to
dominant neoliberal ideological drivers of market-infused ideas, limited
government and restricted public expenditure (Aalbers 2009; Engelen et al.
2011; Warner and Clifton 2014). The neoliberal urban agenda is – and has
been – focused around growth and investment, and plays an important role
in the urban ‘competitiveness’ discourse. While the urban neoliberal turn
has been recently described as having reinvented planning as a service to
property owners (Feindt 2010; Lovering 2010), earlier research has shown
that city governments have always faced the challenge of effectively resisting
the interests of developers that conflict with the wider public interest of
sustainable communities (Peterson 1981; Peiser 1990; Leo 1997). The pursuit
of growth has reinforced the pressure on local governments to lift barriers to
Copyright © 2015. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
allow for increased economic and urban development. The neoliberal models
of urban development, however, have been widely criticized for their hyper-
commodification of urban land and basic social amenities like public space
and housing (Harvey 1989; Brenner et al. 2009). Efforts to overcome barriers
to change and search for future opportunities to deliver more sustainable
urban futures are thus not about pursuing all types of growth. Instead these
efforts should consider the long-term needs of society. Due to transforming
contexts and discontinuous growth, planners across the world face different
challenges.
The Challenges of Transforming Contexts

Recently in some cities – particularly in Western Europe and North America
– the transformed financial-economic context resulted in disrupted urban
land and property markets, reinforced by increasingly tight and reregulated
Instruments of Planning : Tensions and challenges for more equitable and sustainable cities, edited by Rebecca Leshinsky, and
Crystal Legacy, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=2146234.
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12 Leonie Janssen-Jansen
public and private financial resources (Downs 2009; Feindt 2010; Lovering
2010; Lloyd and Janssen-Jansen 2013). In addition to these changing global
economic conditions, many cities in Europe face structural difficulties as a result
of demographic changes, often stagnating population growth in combination
with an ageing population (Janssen-Jansen 2013). Although these stabilising
and even non-growth scenarios seem unimaginable for countries with fast-
growing economies and urban populations like the BRIIC countries (Brazil,
Russia, India, Indonesia and China), but also, for example, Australia and
Canada, this transforming context is of considerable importance to future
urban planning and development because it counters the broad assumptions
of ‘growth’ that have contoured conventional forms of state activity and
intervention for decades (Jackson 2009). Growth has always formed the sine
qua non for public investments and interventions to secure a broad range of
planning goals. To list several: using urban renewal to intensify urban land
use; making innovations in affordable housing; stimulating public transit and
non-motorised mobility; building stronger urban and regional economies; and
preserving ecological values and public open space (Campbell 1996). Even
in societies that experience less growth, the need for planning increases to
accommodate the various spatial demands – economic, social and ecological
– in an efficient, effective and legitimate way. These short-term perspectives
must be combined with long-term perspectives such as adapting to climate
change.
Now, in more difficult times, city governments are pushed even further
to make urban development decisions based on political, competitive and
financially relevant considerations, instead of basing those decisions on
spatially and socially relevant issues (Punter 2010; Janssen-Jansen et al. 2012).
A jobless recovery, and the urge to avert urban decline as economic engines
stall, pushes national and local governments in Western Europe to search for
new growth models that embrace aggressive economic reform policies and
interventions to realise the potential of the national economy in general.
This results in challenges to contemporary practices in urban development
and regeneration in countries with stalled growth and begs questions such as:
how can affordable housing be provided without public funding? How can
facilities be maintained while budgets decline and societal demands grow, e.g.
due to the population ageing? How can quality urban environments be realised
and maintained within a changed context of state–market–civil relations?
Consequently, the remaking of the post-industrial city will fundamentally
differ from the remaking of the industrial city in economic, social and physical
arenas.
Urban planning in fast-growing economies and societies faces completely
different challenges associated with maintaining and/or realising sustainable
and liveable urban environments. Accelerating growth results in a transformed
Planning Challenges in a Context of Discontinuous Growth 13
context that demands the use of new planning instruments and a different
way of approaching urban management. Although the hegemonic idea of
growth still has profound influence on planning and urban development in
such contexts, urban planning ambitions to deliver sustainable urban futures
require policies and instruments that can manage urban growth instead
of only trying to boost it. The adoption of these smart growth policies,
motivated by the desire for long-term urban resiliency (social, economic and
environmental sustainability) is seen as a viable strategy for urban planning
in booming economies (Janssen-Jansen and Hutton 2011). Yet it is not
always clear how to implement such policies that aim to improve quality
of life. In particular, in fast-developing BRIIC-countries, the incredibly fast
urbanisation process does not seem to result in more attention to quality
of life. Equity issues emerge all over, combined with problems such as land
grabbing that may prevent more equitable development in the future due to
power relations.
Densification as the Next Great Urban Development Frontier

In all circumstances – fast growth, slow growth and no growth – stimulation
of urban redevelopment is perceived as a logical step and a contribution to
compact city policies. This inclination requires the regeneration of urban
neighbourhoods to create vibrant, walkable urban communities with access
to mass-transit, public facilities and jobs. Such development might also be
a response to changed housing preferences due to higher energy prices or
changing demand from the ‘creative class’ (Florida 2008). This densification,
which often revolves around redevelopment, is seen as one of the next great
urban development frontiers across the world. Yet, along with densification,
equity issues arise, often related to the lack of affordable housing and green
spaces within the city (Harvey 1989; Swyngedouw et al. 2002). The expectation
of dense development with subsequent high prices of land may also cause
increased land-grabbing problems in developing countries. Among planners,
however, relatively compact urban development is often perceived as essential
for long-term resilient urban development and legitimatised in terms of the
public interest.
Generally, land use planning and urban development interventions find
legitimation in this politically defined and socially constructed public interest.
This relational dimension includes normative components and ideas on how
urban environments should be developed. Consequently, urban development
regulation and policies are inherently normative in relation to the aim of
pursuing meaningful change and better quality urban environments. Both
the notion of public interest and normative ideas about what constitutes
development and change over time vary across space, affecting societal and
political expectations for planning. In these deliberative processes there will

always be elements of advocacy, conflict and capacity as pluralist and equity
goals conflict in planning and governance and among diverse stakeholders
(Sandercock 1975; Fainstein 2010). Transformation and restructuring is a
complex process involving many diverse stakeholders and high costs of land
acquisition, land rehabilitation and construction. Even with intensive housing
or office development plans, the units in urban redevelopment projects will
be relatively expensive and thus only affordable for higher income groups.
This results in two potential planning challenges, depending on the context.
In high-growth areas the housing prices will inflate and moderate-income
groups will be pushed out of the densification areas, while low-income groups
might even be excluded from the city. In low-growth areas – often with weak
demand in the higher end of the housing and business markets – trust in the
stable value of real estate may decrease. Moreover, the changed behaviour of
banks towards business investments and household mortgages may render the
return on investment in restructuring processes too uncertain for developers
and investors. Developers will thus avoid the more difficult urban sites in
their search for opportunities that maximise returns, thereby favouring
cheaper suburban land over expensive inner-city restructuring. The potential
burdening of low- and moderate-income groups with increasing transport
and energy costs may thus be overlooked.
Planning as a Core Government Function

In their pursuit of economic affluence and job growth, it is likely that city
governments all over the world will increasingly follow developers – with their
rent-seeking behaviour – and grant permits for possible developments, often
relegating statutory norms and procedures to a secondary and subordinate

place. Debates over reforming the planning system and modernising
government agendas often end by abolishing part of the planning system
in favour of further deregulation, as has recently occurred in the UK and in
the Netherlands (Allmendinger and Haughton 2010; Wenban-Smith 2011;
Lloyd and Janssen-Jansen 2013). Moreover, across the world, a trend towards
simplification and/or mergers of regulations to stimulate growth and decrease
bureaucracy is visible. The neoliberal turn in planning is characterised by
this push for increased flexibility of planning procedures. Although in
cases where regulation is deemed obsolete, unworkable or unnecessarily
bureaucratic, it may make sense to enable people to think, plan and develop
‘outside the box’, it is important to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath
water.
The path to further privatisation of planning might not be as linear as
assumed. The radically changed post-crisis urban development landscape will
have a dramatic impact on state–market relations, simultaneously attacking

and supporting the neoliberal planning paradigm (Allmendinger 2011;
Janssen-Jansen et al. 2012). These processes seem to have triggered a chain of
events that fundamentally changes thinking around deregulation, privatisation
and private investment in urban development. In Europe, the limitations
of market-based governance and planning as a means to achieve economic,
social and environmental progress have become increasingly evident (Garcia
2010). Davy (2011) argues this might result in a re-evaluation of planning
and regulation, and prompt a search for post-crisis public leadership in urban
development arenas. Some lessons on how this set of problems stretches
across planning, urban governance and policy capacities in Europe and how
it forces difficult choices and complex trade-offs about appropriate forms of
intervention, policies and expenditures could be learned from planners –
particularly in countries that have to deal with issues around accommodating
growth and designing effective systems to manage this growth in an equitable
and sustainable way.
In both circumstances, the key focus in urban planning will be the need
to balance values surrounding the public good with short-term investment
opportunities of the market (Geddes 2011; Mazzucato 2013). Planning is –
and will continue to be – a core government function and important public
intervention process for debating the politics of land use. It should ensure equity
in decision-making processes to achieve equitable outcomes. Furthermore,
urban planning is the key to managing risk and societal expectations, as well
as enhancing adaptive capacity to cope with socio-environmental change
(Alterman 2002; Tewdwr-Jones 2012; Fratini et al. 2012; Lloyd et al. 2013).
To assess whether overcoming a barrier is indeed an opportunity, planning
and planners should keep focusing on delivering politically defined, long-term
policy aims for the built and yet-to-be-built urban environment in an effective
and legitimate way, as evidenced by the research presented in the remainder
of this section.
About the Next Three Chapters

This part of the book – ‘Barriers to change and future opportunities’ – consists
of three chapters. In Chapter 2, Glen Searle discusses the notion of fairness
in planning in relation to decisions to produce intensified use of space. He
argues that such planning decisions are typified by assumed widely distributed
positive public outcomes, yet with the costs – such as loss of privacy and views
– borne by only a few. Moreover, he points out the risk of potential rent-seeking
behaviour of developers that deliberately pursue windfall profits, without fair
compensation to the public. In his chapter, Searle proposes three actions to
overcome these barriers.
In Chapter 3, Wendy Steele continues with a critical exploration

into increased calls for red and green tape reduction in growth-led urban
development contexts. She refers to examples across the world of the red/green
tape reduction agenda in planning reform, following the neoliberal emphasis
on efficiency and effectiveness. The case of South East Queensland is explored
in detail. Based on her research Steele warns planners that reducing red and
green tape could easily be at odds with ecologically sustainable and just urban
outcomes. She argues that red tape is not necessarily a barrier to change, but
can also be seen as a future opportunity to provide important environmental
and community benefits.
This first part of the book concludes with a chapter by Sophie Sturup on the
problem/solution nexus and its effects on public consultation. Using findings
from the Melbourne City Link mega urban transport project, she shows that
consultation processes are often perceived as a barrier to change, while the
constitution of the consultation process itself is wrong. The public is never
engaged in the problem definition (why should this project be developed?), but
only in the ‘how are we going to develop this project’ phase of consultation’.
The subsequent lack of a type of ownership among the public that results
in the non-acceptance of the project is more logical than a barrier. Sturup
concludes her chapter with the statement that consultation processes need to
be improved at the project planning stage of planning in a manner that gives
voice to the public. Only then can public consultation on the question of how
urban intensification may be implemented equitably offer a real opportunity
for change.
References
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financial crisis’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(2), pp. 281–90.
Allmendinger, P 2011, New Labour and Planning: From New Right to New Left, London:
Routledge.
Allmendinger, P and Haughton, G 2010, ‘Spatial planning, devolution, and new planning
spaces’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 28(5), pp. 803–18.
Alterman, R 2002, Planning in the Face of Crisis: Land Use, Housing and Mass Immigration in
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2
Towards Equitable Intensification
Restricting Developer Gain and Compensating
Planning Costs
Glen Searle
Introduction
The notion of fairness in planning is a complex issue that is often lost within
the wider notion of the public good. Decisions that are justified by reference to
the public good can fail to ensure that those who bear the costs of generating
community benefits are properly compensated or to ensure that the benefits
are fairly shared. This is nowhere more apparent than in planning decisions
aimed at promoting urban intensification (development that increases
population and/or dwelling supply in an urban area). Such decisions typify,
first, a wider class of planning processes in which public good outcomes are
widely distributed but where the costs of producing such outcomes are borne
by only a few. Decisions to produce intensification are also, secondly, part of a
wider group of planning processes that can produce rent-seeking behaviour by
developers whereby asymmetries in information and bargaining power lead to
payments to landowners or for wider public benefits that fail to properly reflect
expected profits from eventual development outcomes.
This chapter focuses on these two dimensions of urban intensification that
can produce inequitable outcomes, using the Sydney experience in particular to
illustrate the issues. Discussion of the first dimension centres on intensification
that imposes costs on neighbours (such as loss of privacy) that is not controlled
by relevant plans, and carries no compensation. This is an equity issue that
relates to compact city policies everywhere, and the related perspectives in
this chapter are thus widely applicable. The second dimension is illustrated
by situations where developers buy land on which existing planning controls
generate a certain maximum yield, in the expectation that they can gain
development approval for a yield that is beyond this maximum. This is a
practice in Australia that is enabled by a lack of clarity in defining property
development rights, with wider implications for the importance of clear norms
and processes relating to such rights in producing fair urban intensification.
20 Glen Searle
The chapter then proposes three actions to control inequities arising from
these situations. These involve strict enforcement of planning controls over
intensification, publication of indicative longer term planning outcomes for
sites with intensification potential, and a requirement for compensation of
neighbouring property losses arising from intensification development.
Intensification, the Public Interest and Fairness

Intensification is justified as being in the public interest (see next section).
However, this raises a number of issues that are central to the appropriateness
of planning decisions that encourage it. A central issue here is competition
between different property rights, and the means by which the planning system
reconciles clashes in rights. The basic issue is one of balancing individual rights
and the public interest (March 2003, 276). Such a balance is needed because
the unconstrained exercise of individuals’ rights to the use of their property can
diminish the freedom of others to use their properties (via loss of privacy, etc.)
and be contrary to the collective public interest by diminishing the quality
of life in general (such as by creating pollution). Australian planning systems
have traditionally been based on principles influenced by natural rights and
utilitarianism (‘progress’) rationales (March 2003, 277). The application of
these means that non-utilitarian public interest constraints on development
set by communities, such as local scale, should be able to be challenged. As a
result, planning in Australia has tended to favour rights to development over
rights to not have amenity reduced by development.
The rationale for the general reluctance of courts in the EU to override
developments causing some harm to neighbours but otherwise in the public
interest is set out by the UK group Planning Sanity (2006):
Irrespective of the merits of a case if the planning regime has fully

considered the case, it is unlikely that the courts would overturn a case
due to a mere infringement of the rights under Article 8 of the European
Convention on Human Rights (right to enjoyment of property), due in
the main also for the need of the courts to protect the interests of the land
owner to be free to develop his land, least those same Article 8 rights are
breached.
This highlights the central difficulty in planning for urban intensification

and associated issues of compensation for third-party costs. That is, there are
potentially inherent conflicts between the rights of a landowner to develop
their property, whether circumscribed by planning controls or not, and the
rights of neighbours to enjoy their property free from negative impacts imposed
by nearby development. As Webster and Lai (2003, 150) point out, relative
Towards Equitable Intensification 21
as well as absolute values are involved in debates about externality solutions.

They note that Buchanan (1968) proposed that existing property rights over
a contested public domain resource (such as privacy or sunlight) should have
pre-eminence. This suggests that those who bought dwellings before the
introduction of intensification controls allowing loss of sunlight or privacy
should be compensated for any such losses from intensification.
In the UK, the Lands Tribunal can assess losses in property value that
may be compensated as a result of public authority development proposals
(Planning Sanity 2006). Similar provisions apply in Australian jurisdictions.
However, compensation for losses to neighbours and other third parties from
development in general is not standard practice, presumably assuming that
planning controls adequately limit such externalities. Indeed writers such as
Day (2005) have refuted the idea that ‘worsenment’ can be compensated.
This leads to a second issue concerning third-party impacts from
intensification. It relates to the extent to which planning controls and planning
decisions in general accurately reflect the public interest. In theory, planning
regulation should be such that it equates the marginal private revenue of
development with the marginal social cost to the community (Webster and
Lai 2003, 152). In practice, it can be difficult to know whether planning
controls are of the right kind or of the right degree to achieve this balance.
Many ecological and social impacts, for example, can be highly complex and/
or subjective, or not able to be adequately controlled through planning. In this
situation, planning systems in Australia have recognised that development
controls and related approval decisions involve an element of judgement that
can usually be appealed or otherwise influenced by developers. In turn, this
can lead to development approvals that do not properly reflect underlying
public interest because of self-seeking developer behaviour. While the specific
types of behaviour involved vary contextually, the general conditions for

such behaviour to produce adverse public interest outcomes can be argued
to be rooted in various ways in which developer power, and related control
over knowledge, is exercised (cf. Flyvbjerg 1998). Overall, outcomes from
intensified development in planning systems such as Australia and the UK
can be distorted as a result of ambiguities in property rights allocation and
asymmetries in power (cf. Lee et al. 2013, 1478).
Uncompensated Losses from Intensification

Urban intensification is a primary planning policy across much of the world.
It is seen to address a range of planning issues associated with lower density
urban expansion including infrastructure costs, take-up of farmland and
areas of natural vegetation, higher use of automobiles and resulting increased
greenhouse gas emissions, less vibrancy and more social polarisation, and less
22 Glen Searle
walkability and more obesity (e.g. see Newman and Kenworthy 1999). To
encourage intensification, planning ordinances are set to allow higher density
development in appropriate areas, while at the same time controlling to a
greater or lesser extent potentially significant negative environmental impacts
such as traffic generation and overshadowing.
Such controls do not prevent all possible negative impacts associated with
higher density developments. There are a number of reasons for this. In the first
place, excessive planning limitations on development could be construed as
failing to adequately protect landowners’ basic property rights, as per Article 8 of
the European Convention on Human Rights for example. Next, the transaction
costs of implementing controls to prevent all possible negative effects is likely
to outweigh the benefits of preventing less significant effects, some of which
might apply to only one or two properties within a particular land-use zone. In
this regard, Fischel (1978) has demonstrated that land-use regulations in such
contexts can be inadequate because they do not completely assign property
rights over local externalities. A further issue is that an excessive number of
development controls might prevent most or all developments from proceeding,
including higher density development that might otherwise have produced net
public benefits. Such prevention of development might also mean that local and
higher level governments fail to enlarge their revenue base to the extent that it
depends on property transactions or land taxes based on improved capital value,
which could otherwise (amongst other things) be used to help offset resulting
externalities (cf. Webster and Lai 2003, 173–4). More generally, local losses
resulting from rezoning for urban consolidation can be justified where there are
wider regional benefits such as infrastructure savings.
Nevertheless the failure to prevent localised negative impacts from higher
density development can result in significant personal losses of amenity and
lifestyle to those living close by. Recent comments by Brisbane residents about
the effects of local high-density development illustrate their perceived extent.
One resident wrote:
The multi-storey unit tower shadows over our yard so we have no sun in
the back yard all winter. Another multi-unit complex has been built just
one door up, and again it will cast shadows over our yard in the afternoons.
Added to these impositions is the extra car parking in the short street.
(Hughes 2013)
Another resident, speaking about a proposed development of 23 storeys (in a

zone that has a ten-storey maximum height limit), claimed:
This development will reduce the valuation of adjoining properties by

millions of dollars by reducing public amenity, increasing vehicular and
foot traffic, taking away sight lines currently enjoyed by some and building
single room apartments on the boundary line of [an] adjoining four-
bedroom apartment.
(Ranke 2013)
One argument against requiring high-density developers to provide

compensation (or reduce their developments to the point where negative
impacts were insignificant) is that rezoning to allow greater intensification will
increase general property prices within such zones, thus balancing negative
effects for property owners who choose not to have their land redeveloped.
This assumes parity between negative effects and property value increases,
which might or might not be valid. Even if it were true, it ignores the ‘consumer
surplus’ value that residents place on their properties above market values. For
example, residents can increase their attachment to a locality as their residency
lengthens, to the point where valuation based on their place utility exceeds the
market value of their dwelling (Wolpert 1965). This reflects use-value interests
that conflict with exchange-value interests when new development threatens
pre-existing emotional attachments and place identity processes (Healey et
al. 1988; Logan and Molotch 2007; Devine-Wright 2009). A critical issue
here, however, is the extent to which use values should be protected against
the wider regional public interest in higher density development: in theory,
density controls should be set at the point where the marginal social (regional)
benefit of higher density are equal to the marginal social (regional) cost, but
in practice developer power and pro-growth ideology can generate densities
beyond the social optimum (Lee et al. 2013). There is also a need to consider
the related problem of those residents who are just outside up-zoned precincts
and who do not benefit from increased property values, but who still suffer
negative impacts from intensified development.

While acknowledging that increased property prices might provide some
offset against local negative externalities of higher density development, issues
of fairness still remain. Landowners in up-zoned precincts who choose to sell
to developers receive windfall property value gains at the potential expense
of long-term residents with a high level of local place attachment who do
not wish to move and at the expense of nearby residents who are outside
the higher density precincts but close enough to bear negative impacts from
intensification in those precincts. This is the essence of NIMBY opposition
to high-density development in many Western cities. If intensification
is producing public benefits, then some of those benefits should be used to
compensate those bearing its costs – for example, by paying compensation
from regional infrastructure cost savings. But in many countries, there are
institutional problems in applying this solution. In particular, while planning
controls for intensification are usually made at the local government level,
24 Glen Searle
any resulting savings from a reduction in urban sprawl are usually captured
by regional infrastructure authorities or by national governments via taxation
from increased productivity and the like. Thus the institutional problem
essentially arises from vertical fiscal imbalance (cf. Dahlby 2005; Rattso 2003),
in which there is no necessary compunction for higher levels of government
that benefit to compensate lower levels of government that bear the costs.
These issues raise even deeper questions of justice and fairness in the case
of those who rent, rather than own, dwellings in intensification areas. Where
these dwellings are replaced by higher income apartments, existing lower
income residents are forced out from financial necessity, as is the case in inner
Sydney, regardless of their place attachment (Searle and Byrne 2002).
Unearned Developer Gains from Intensification

Higher density development does not always keep within limits set by planning
controls. Development approvals in planning systems such as those of New
South Wales and Queensland can allow development to exceed statutory
limits for several reasons, including the fact that the proposal meets the
objectives of the local plan. The NSW State Environmental Planning Policy
1 (SEPP 1) allowed variations from a development standard control where the
objective of the standard is met by the development (SEPP 1 powers are now
incorporated into local plans, but the effect is the same). An issue of fairness
arises, inter alia, in situations where land has been bought by a developer at a
price that reflects the development potential set by the prevailing controls.
If the developer is able to obtain development that exceeds this potential, it
means that the previous owner of the land has not received a just price for
their property (assuming the planning controls concerned were in place at the
time the land was purchased). In essence, property development rights in this
case are imperfectly specified, essentially because planning authorities consider
they do not have enough knowledge and/or resources to produce controls that
equate marginal social cost with marginal social benefit (cf. Webster and Lai
2003, 84). This issue is less common internationally, where property rights are
commonly fully specified via controls and are rigorously enforced (as in Paris
and other European cities); alternatively, developers can be required to pay
cash for higher density development. Where the public interest is negotiated
on a case-by-case basis, as in the UK, development rights explicitly trade off
against developer contributions.
The Australian developer behaviour in a planning context of imperfectly
specified property rights can be considered a type of ‘rent-seeking’. This
occurs in situations where resources are used to increase one’s share of existing
wealth, rather than creating wealth (Tullock 1967; Krueger 1974). Rent-
seeking may be seen as arising from ‘high transaction costs of information
where the price mechanism is suppressed’ (Webster and Lai 2003, 68). In this
case, rent-seeking becomes possible because it is too costly for the previous
owner of the land to find the information that would allow them to estimate
the probabilities of developers exceeding the planning controls: wealthier
agents such as developers have more capacity to gain from rent-seeking in
such cases (cf. Sonin 2003). Alternatively, such rent-seeking can be seen to
occur because planning controls effectively ration the supply of higher density
dwellings (cf. Bulow and Klemperer 2012). Following this, it could be argued
that extra development gained beyond planning code limits does in fact create
extra benefits for society. But if planning controls have accurately reflected
externalities, equity and other aspects of the public interest, then development
beyond the limits set by those controls carries the presumption that any
development benefits are more than offset by costs to society.
An issue here concerns the extent to which council or court permission
for development in excess of existing planning codes, such as allowed in
Sydney under SEPP 1, reflects the public benefits to be gained from greater
intensification. Sydney’s experience suggests that in many cases such
permission is given because councils lack the resources to fight developers,
who can appeal to the court under SEPP 1 against council refusals of such
development applications. Much of the last two decades have been marked by
shortages of council planning staff, felt most acutely in development control
activity (Hamnett and Norman 2003). Thus, yielding to developers under
SEPP 1 becomes a way out for councils lacking resources to change plans so
that development refusals are less necessary, or lacking staff to negotiate with
developers for amended applications (Harris et al. 2000). This problem is not
unique to Australia: in the UK, concern with long delays by local government
in processing applications has led to the government proposing to allow
planning applications to be submitted directly to the Planning Inspectorate

(Department for Communities and Local Government 2012). The extent
of rent-seeking in such cases where development involves up-zoning, after
developer purchase of a site, to higher density residential use from industrial
or community use, for example, has not always been clear-cut in Sydney’s case.
There have been several significant cases of this on old industrial sites on
Sydney Harbour, involving former town gas sites for instance. To the extent
that resulting intensification generates more rent, the development could be
regarded as wealth creating. But a central planning issue here involves due
process. In Sydney, the rezoning and setting of development controls over old
industrial precincts for intensification has most often been carried out by the
state government with little opportunity for local communities to have any
effective influence. The government has used state development corporations,
state planning policies that mandate council approvals and powers to dismiss
councils as its weapons (Searle 2007).
26 Glen Searle
The wider issue here, as in the previous section, concerns the degree
to which governments are justified in ignoring NIMBY-style community
opposition to intensification in the interests of a more sustainable city
structure (Huxley 2002). However, where local communities have effectively
‘signed off’ on development of a certain scale via a local plan adopted after
proper community consultation, there is a question mark over the extent to
which fairness and justice in relation to community interests are being ignored
when developers gain extra floor area beyond such plans. There is also the
issue of how the benefits of extra development should be shared. In Sydney,
such benefits have accrued as developer profits. But if this development
exceeds existing planning limits, or is negotiated to levels that would exceed
controls that would apply if the public interest were fully reflected (as could
be argued about major intensification in Sydney’s Pyrmont-Ultimo – see
Searle and Byrne 2002), there is a strong case for the value of those benefits
to be captured by governments and used to offset the excess social and
environmental costs of that development – for example, by improving public
transport. The failure to achieve such outcomes in the Australian case is
the result of a planning system that does not explicitly capture some or most
developer gain for the public benefit because the generalised expression of
the objectives of most local plans mean offsets for excessive development
cannot usually be legally enforced.
Explicitly defined public capture of value uplift from excess intensification
is, however, common internationally. In Spain, planning law specifically allows
pure betterment value to be redistributed back to the state (Lee et al. 2013,
1482). But in practice the potential for such betterment in Spain is created by
a plan that compels the landowner to realise the private and social betterment
thus created, underlining the need for prior identification of intensification
gains, which is absent in Australia’s case (Lee et al. 2013, 1485). In Ecuador,
development rights for up to two extra storeys beyond the limits set by the zoning
plan can be purchased, with sale revenue going to the government (Jaramillo
2013). More generally, the specification of property rights via building volume
and dimension controls in municipal zoning by-laws enables compensation for
excess development to be legally required in the form of affordable housing,
green roofs, local park restoration and so forth, as is the case in Toronto and
Vancouver, Canada, and cities within certain European countries (Newman
2010). In the American planning system, bonus Floor Air Ratios are given in
return for public amenities offered by developers, such as affordable housing
(Spaans et al. 2011). In 37 cases in Sao Paulo, 1m2 of social housing was
provided to the municipality for each 2.44m2 of residential space provided as
an additional development right (Acioly 2000, 133). Overall, the Australian
case illustrates the way in which defining property rights for intensification
through a mix of specific zoning-related controls and generalised statements
of public benefit allows developers to extract gains beyond those envisaged in

zoning-based plans prepared with transparent and inclusive processes.
Towards Fairer Intensification

The above discussion has identified several ways in which planning for
intensification can lack justice and fairness. The rest of this chapter suggests
actions that might strengthen such planning in this regard.
The first equity issue identified in this chapter concerns costs borne by those
living nearby when higher density development takes place. While putting
a money value on costs such as reduced enjoyment of private open space
is difficult at best, these costs all result in a decline in property value. This
provides a possible way forward.
To the extent that neighbourhood externalities of intensification are
reflected in the loss of property value, such losses could be used to benchmark
compensation for intensification losses. Measurement of the change in property
values would require ex ante and ex post valuations from two or more qualified
land valuers. Compensation should, in theory, be paid by those benefiting from
intensification. Since the gains from intensification are largely mooted to be
shared by the region or taxpayers as a whole, compensation funding should be
levied on the wider community. In practice, this could include infrastructure
authorities that financially benefit or which have lower outlays as a result of
intensification (via higher rateable values and economies compact service
provision, for example). Developer levies are also a possible method, especially
where developments exceed existing planning controls. The application of
such measures will be theoretically much easier in countries such as Britain and
Japan where there is little presumption in favour of development because the
state effectively controls development rights (Cherry 1988; Millward 2006). In

the UK, the Community Infrastructure Levy introduced in 2010 grants power
to charge landowners and developers for social costs arising from development
(Lee et al. 2013).
The second set of equity issues discussed in this chapter concerns unearned
developer benefits arising from intensification. Addressing this seems to
warrant several responses. In the first place, there is a need to ensure that
planning controls fully reflect the social and environmental costs and benefits of
higher density development. This would help reduce public benefit arguments
in favour of development that exceeded planning limits. For example, there
have been a number of cases in Sydney and Brisbane where high-density
development exceeded planning code limits but were approved because it
was argued by proponents to support a metropolitan planning goal for a more
compact city. If the planning controls had been formulated so they properly
reflected costs and benefits of higher density development in those localities,
28 Glen Searle
such an argument would not have been valid. This would also remove any
rationale for developers to proactively push for buildings that exceed limits set
by planning controls. Such a policy would necessitate the removal of planning
policies that allow developments to bypass local controls, and instead require
planning authorities to strictly enforce such controls. The merits of such an
approach are illustrated by the very positive built form outcomes in Paris of
strict enforcement of building height controls. Alternatively, a mechanism
such as the UK’s Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) can in principle
remove a developer’s opportunity for ‘free riding’ from flouting existing
development controls, though whether it may be actually used for this purpose
is still ambiguous (Lee et al. 2013).
Next, there is a need to ensure that the processes needed to achieve
this situation are properly resourced and inclusive. Setting the appropriate
controls needs to involve the community in ways that allow its information,
ideas, hopes and concerns to be central to the plan-making process, as set out
by Healey (1997, 2010) and others (see also McAfee and Legacy in Chapter
5 of this volume). This also needs to be properly resourced by planning
authorities, including providing adequate planning staff to keep controls up
to date as circumstances change. Finally, planning needs to address situations
where non-residential sites, including old industrial and other kinds of
development sites, retain their longer term potential for intensification.
Recent experiences in Sydney suggest that in such cases major developers
have negotiated higher and higher building height maxima with state and
local government as controls are worked out in the early stages of site rezoning
(Searle and Byrne 2002; Searle 2013). Given the state government’s strong
drive for urban intensification, this has generated development that has been
seen as excessive, which is the product of essentially rent-seeking behaviour
by developers. These situations have arisen significantly because there has

been no prior guidance from the state government in particular about what
maximum densities would meet the public interest test. They have also arisen
for some significant sites, owned by the state government, where the state has
been able to increase its leasehold income with excessive development, and
arguably, this is not in the public interest. Private landowners of large sites
also have a financial incentive to be complicit in, if not actively support,
codes that inflate development, though developers may prefer to restrict
information about their intentions in order to extract a lower price from
owners. If well-crafted indicative planning outcomes were produced for sites
that have the medium-term potential to be redeveloped to different and more
intensive uses, the potential for rent-seeking behaviour by developers and the
state (and perhaps landowners) would be greatly reduced.
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3
Freedom’s Prospect?
Rethinking Red and Green Tape Reform as a
Planning Instrument
Wendy Steele
Time-consuming, resource-draining procedures – also known as red tape – are a foe of

any business.
(EU Commission 2013, 1)
Introduction
How does planning ensure an equitable approach to social, environmental and
economic outcomes in the face of development, growth and the specialised
demands of an increasingly diverse community? Caught within a neoliberal
agenda focused on market development and investment, urban planners have
struggled to find ways to effectively respond to the pace of transformation within
complex and contested city environments and governance frameworks (Hall
2002; Hillier 2007; Tewdwr-Jones 1999). The capacity for planning systems in
the global North to deliver on sustainability principles is compromised by a
regulatory emphasis on planning instruments that seek to maximise financial
and operational efficiency. This chapter focuses on one such macro planning
instrument that has gained recent momentum and traction – red and green
tape regulatory reform.
Within governance and planning reform a discursive shift has occurred
which conflates two previously related but separate planning concepts into
one. Planning ‘regulation’, or the rules and directives made by an institutional
or state authority, and ‘red tape’, which refers to excessive and unnecessary
administration or bureaucracy, are demonstrably not the same. Yet increasingly
they are being mobilised together as part of a raft of neoliberal reform agendas
in response to the current ‘global economic imperative’. Under the mantra
of red tape reduction, what are deemed to be unnecessary regulatory burdens
are being pruned back or streamlined to create a more cost-effective, market-
32 Wendy Steele
friendly and flexible business environment. This is a significant shift which

has extended to environmental regulation and reform calls for ‘green tape
reduction’, with implications for social and environmental planning.
In the past the term ‘red tape’ referred largely to individual or organisational
frustrations with institutional or bureaucratic paperwork (i.e. filling in
duplicate forms for development approval or dealing with delays in planning
process and procedures). However the reduction of red tape in planning now
often refers to deregulation by another name – the reduction of ‘regulatory’ red
tape, which is the removal or streamlining of the regulation itself, and not
just the bureaucratic forms or processes used to achieve agreed regulatory ends
(i.e. institutional rules or directives). The emphasis of green tape reduction
is on resolving market inefficiencies through the removal of environmental
regulations seen to inhibit entrepreneurial growth and development. Concerns
expressed by environmental groups focus on the vulnerability of environmental
regulations as ‘much-cherished and long-fought-for environmental safeguards
now threatened’ (Carrington 2012, 1).
This neoliberal push to weaken or block new legislation and scrap existing
rules, especially environmental and social protection laws, under the
misleading banner of tackling ‘red tape’, promoting ‘better regulation’ or
safeguarding ‘competitiveness’ appears likely to expand.
(Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth Europe 2014, 1)
The focus of this chapter is a critical exploration into increased calls for red
and green tape reduction and the implications of this for planning reform that
seeks to support and promote sustainability. The first section of the chapter
highlights the neoliberal emphasis on deregulation and market efficiency that
underpins notions of regulatory fitness and the red and green tape planning
reform agenda. The second section focuses on the similarities between the
regulatory red tape reform rhetoric and ambition within the European Union,
the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia despite the different national
contexts. The third section highlights an Australian case study of attempts
at integrated planning reform through red and green tape reduction in the
high-growth state of South East Queensland. Finally the chapter concludes
by emphasising the conflation of regulation reduction and red tape reduction
under neoliberal reform and the implications of this instrument for achieving
equitable outcomes in planning.
Freedom’s Prospect? Neoliberal Reform as a Planning Instrument

Since the 1980s urban planning in the global North has been closely
identified with an agenda of micro-economic reform. This has been led by a
Freedom’s Prospect? 33
succession of governments focused not on ecologically and socially sustainable

development, but instead ‘obsessed with short-term economic priorities and
ideologically committed to market-based approaches’ (Lowe 2006, 58; see also
Searle in Chapter 2 of this volume). Central to calls for regulatory reform and
the reduction of red and green tape are notions of a lack of freedom through
unnecessary constraints and inefficiencies resulting in costly market delays.
Much of the rhetoric around freedom from constraints is closely linked to
government regulations and bureaucratic administration (and associated rules,
regulations and policies).
For David Harvey (2005), these calls form part of what he describes as the
‘neoliberal turn’, which advocates free market and free trade underpinned by
the assumption that individual freedom is best guaranteed by these conditions,
rather than the public commons. As Harvey argues, the neoliberal state
fundamentally differs from post-Second World War state-led planning, the
construction of welfare systems (e.g. health care and education) and ownership
of key sectors (e.g. ports, roads and telecommunications). These initiatives were
underpinned by a philosophy that seeks to embed safeguards to entrepreneurial
activity though a regulatory environment that serves to leverage strategic
direction and opportunity as well as operate as a mechanism of social and
environmental safeguard and constraint. By contrast, the neoliberal project
seeks to fundamentally ‘dismember capital from these constraints’ (Harvey
2005, 11) and in doing so, notions of freedom tend to largely ‘reflect the
interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations
and financial capital’ (Harvey 2005, 7).
The neoliberal period ushered in a transformative time of change for planning
as the perceived ‘obsolescence of the old order’ was replaced by new ideas (Kelly
1992, 1). A culture of aggressive reform around deregulation, privatisation and
commercialisation of government activities was actively encouraged in pursuit

of national progress and a more prosperous quality of life. The acceleration of
privatisation schemes in particular witnessed the increased sale of public assets,
with a greater number of public goods and services contracted out to the private
sector – a reform agenda described as ‘creative destruction’ (see Harvey 2007).
A ‘new right’ faith in free market capitalism was the driver behind reform
predicated on a need to expand consumer choice by removing restrictions
on the market, yet paradoxically also imposed on the basis that ‘there is no
alternative’ (Quiggin 1998, 225). Intense and rapid structural change in
terms of capital, labour and the state were made in order to make the flexible
economic ‘adjustments’ necessary to remain competitive within a global
economy. This was coupled with a reorientation of policy and institutional
frameworks in order to open the economy to global forces through a greater
emphasis on market mechanisms and a reduced role for the state to enhance
speed and efficiency.
34 Wendy Steele
The quest for flexibility, speed and efficiency led to increased calls for the
reduction of ‘red tape’ and more recently ‘green tape’; within the planning
context, the focus was specifically on the regulatory rules, guidelines and
standards that might unnecessarily restrict development and cause delays.
Rosenfeld (1984), for example, describes ‘red tape’ as the sum of government
guidelines, procedures and forms that are excessive, unwieldy or pointless in
relation to decisions and policy. It is the public sector that is therefore largely
the target for reform in order to reduce bureaucratic waste and constraints and
increase flexibility and entrepreneurial freedom.
These tensions have been raised particularly in relation to the micro-
economic agenda of New Public Sector Management (NPSM), which has
achieved ascendancy within the neoliberalised governance model. The NPSM
approach embraces the three Es of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and
these mechanisms are linked to ‘corporatist governance that is associated
with advancing private sector interests and keeping bureaucratic regulation
to a minimum’ (England 2004, 25). Paradoxically, increasing privatisation
often results in the need to introduce new regulation and regulatory systems
that replace and extend older regulatory systems and frameworks; these jostle
uneasily with calls to reduce or remove existing regulation as part of the broader
neoliberal reform process (Braithwaite 2005; Jordana and Levi-Faur 2004).
McGuirk (2005) cautions against viewing the neoliberal governance
framework as an impenetrable force field or unified coherent project, but
as a series of complex and overlapping strategies that offer the potential for
multiple, albeit often contradictory, political projects. She suggests there is
a need for increased sensitivity to the hybrid nature of planning roles and
practice in order to reveal the opportunities for what she describes as an ‘after-
neoliberalist’ state-based role. This potential can be used to ‘enact new and
different spatial and social distributional outcomes than those framed by a

neoliberal imagination’ (McGuirk 2005, 62).
The need to find new ways of imagining and balancing the tripartite concerns of
economic development, environmentalism, and social justice gained momentum
following the release of the Brundtland Report in 1987. Although largely separate
from the debates around political reform and economic restructuring, the
impact of this international agenda was strongly felt to the point that it began
to exert political leverage over national and sub-national government policies
and processes. The National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development
(ESD) in Australia, for example, represented a substantive attempt to integrate
competing national agendas and expand the conceptualisation of terms such
as ‘progress’ and ‘development’ beyond economic considerations to include
ecological dimensions and social improvements. The strategy makes a number
of recommendations in relation to planning: incorporating ESD principles as
a fundamental objective of relevant government authorities; improving the
efficiency and effectiveness of the development, implementation and integration

of ESD-related policies; and voiding the duplication of functions to establish
effective processes for cooperation between governments (see also Leshinsky in
Chapter 7 of this volume).
However, despite a common desire to transform the system, there were key
differences between the two planning reform drivers: whilst the new right
agenda sought the reduction of red tape, increased efficiencies and a greater
role for the market sector, the environmental agenda pursued greater controls
on development and a more devolved participatory democratic process (Buhrs
and Bartlett 1993; Memon and Gleeson 1995). As the next section highlights,
calls for twenty-first-century planning reform and the emphasis on reducing red
and green tape have an eerily similar discourse and agenda that is underpinned
by ‘a belief in the superiority of the market over the state’ (Dupont 2003, 16).
Loosening the Ties that Bind? International Examples of Red and

Green Tape Reduction
In the global North the role of planning has shifted to promoting, rather than
restricting, entrepreneurial activity and development by streamlining planning
decisions and seeking outcomes that aid market-led prosperity (Booth 2003;
Hall 2002; Steele 2011). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD 2007, 1) outlines in its policy platform that for most
countries ‘cutting red tape is a priority on the political agenda’. Similar red and
green tape reduction initiatives and deregulatory reform ethos can be found across
the global North planning context in Canada, the UK, the EU and Australia.
A key part of Canada’s economic action plan of 2014, for example, is reducing
red tape. The Red Tape Reduction Plan reinforces the Government’s ‘ongoing
commitment to eliminating unnecessary red tape from Canada’s regulatory

system’, and focuses strategic energy around ‘bringing a new level of discipline
to how the Government regulates and creates a more predictable environment
for businesses’ (Government of Canada 2014, 1). The links between red tape
and growth are clear as articulated by the Minister of State:
Cutting red tape and ensuring that the regulatory process is transparent
and responsive is one of the most important initiatives government can
undertake to help businesses thrive. These reforms set a higher standard for
reducing regulatory burden and cement Canada’s international reputation
as one of the best places in the world to do business.
(Bernier 2014)
Prior to this, in December 2012, the European Union (EU) initiated the
Regulatory Fitness and Performance Program (REFIT) to ensure EU laws are
36 Wendy Steele
‘fit for purpose’, to make EU law ‘lighter, simpler and less costly’ (European
Commission 2014, 1). By October 2013, the EU Commission announced 100
REFIT actions, including: 46 laws to simplify; 7 laws to repeal; 9 proposals
for new regulation to withdraw; and 47 evaluations (fitness checks in REFIT
language) to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of existing and planned
legislation and its shift from reducing administrative burdens that create
bureaucracy to removing regulatory burdens on the market. The Commission
welcomed the business community support that REFIT is ‘necessary and
important’, whilst arguing that it doesn’t ‘come at the expense of the health
and safety of citizens, consumers, workers or of the environment’ (European
Commission, 2014, 4). As the European Commission (2013, 1) outlined:
Of course companies should comply with local, national and EU regulation.

However … the Commission is making a concerted effort to streamline
legislation and improve – or withdraw – certain EU laws.
Using similar language, since 2011 the United Kingdom (UK) has had
in place the Red Tape Challenge (RTC). This is an initiative launched by
the national government that focuses on ‘making UK regulation (including
planning) better’ (Cameron 2014, 1). The achievements of the challenge to
date include ‘scrapping or improving over 3,000 regulations’.
Within the UK, the RTC is part of a broader deregulation reform agenda
that claims to be, ‘a process whose goal is not about removing regulation per
se, but about questioning what is the purpose of the particular regulation under
review and about discovering whether there are better solutions to the issues
the regulations tackle’ (Cameron 2014, 1). However, the rhetoric as articulated
by Prime Minister David Cameron links the reduction of red tape to long-
term national security, employment and economic growth development, and

regulatory removal (scrapping) is clearly on the agenda:
This will make it easier to grow, to create jobs and to help give this country
the long-term security we are working towards … And I know many of you
want to grow further – but have been put off or held back by red tape. …
So we have trawled through thousands of pieces of regulation – from the
serious to the ridiculous, and we will be scrapping or amending over 3,000
regulations – saving business well over £850 million every single year.
(Cameron 2014, 1)
The RTC also includes green tape reductions which affect existing
environmental regulations that are, according to the UK Environment
Secretary, to be ‘made simpler and more effective while remaining as strong
as ever’ (Spelman 2012, 1). This involves 53 regulations to be repealed and
132 regulations to be ‘improved, merged or simplified’. In the words of the

Environment Secretary:
I want to be very clear that this is not about rolling back environmental
safeguards, nor is it just about cutting regulation to stimulate growth. We’ve
always said that we were going to keep the vitally important protection our
environment needs. This was about getting better rules, not weaker ones.
The results of the Red Tape Challenge will be good for the environment
and good for business, because as well as upholding environmental
protection, we will remove unnecessary bureaucracy to allow businesses
to free up resources to invest in growth. We’re making it easier for people
to do the right thing, by making rules clearer and getting rid of old,
unworkable regulations. This is a prime example of how we can help grow
a green economy whilst looking after our natural resources.
(Spelman 2012, 1)
Similar concerns are expressed in Australia at the national level where

the Abbott Coalition government policy is unequivocal in its support for
deregulation to support a ‘robust economy’ and the need to cut red and green
tape in order to improve productivity and economic growth. The discourse
supporting red and green regulatory tape reduction is similar to the EU,
UK and Canada, for example: (i) ‘the Coalition is committed to reducing
the regulatory burden that is strangling Australia’s economic prosperity and
development’; (ii) ‘the Coalition’s commitment is to reduce the red and green
tape cost burden imposed on the Australian economy’; and (iii) ‘we will repeal
or amend costly and excessive regulations from the existing stock and we will
implement sensible whole-of-government initiatives that will assist in reducing
red and green tape’ (Liberal Party of Australia 2014, 1).

Within the Australian national context, key initiatives of the red/green
tape reduction policy include:
v incentives such as linking the pay increases and bonuses of Senior

Executive Service public servants to drive the public service to cut red
and green tape;
v a minimum of two parliamentary sitting days each year for the express
purpose of repealing counterproductive, unnecessary or redundant
legislation and regulations;
v a new unit within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet,
within which reducing red and green tape will be part of a whole of
government approach;
v making red tape reduction a standing agenda item at Council of Australian
Government (COAG) meetings;
38 Wendy Steele
v developing efficiency performance standards against which government

cost recovery agencies will be assessed; and
v establishing a one-stop shop for environmental approvals, including
an audit of all environmental legislation and regulation to identify
unworkable, contradictory or incompatible green tape.
In line with this, the Abbott national government has also initiated a
House of Representatives Environment Committee and Inquiry specifically to
investigate the impact of ‘green tape’ related to environmental regulation with
particular regard to: jurisdictional arrangements, regulatory requirements and
the potential for deregulation; the balance between regulatory burdens and
environmental benefits; areas for improved efficiency and effectiveness of the
regulatory framework; legislation governing environmental regulation, and the
potential for deregulation.
The 2014 Green Tape Inquiry focused on streamlining environmental
regulations and the development of the ‘one-stop shop’ (a single point of
assessment) for environmental approvals while continuing to deliver good
environmental outcomes. As the coalition government is keen to point
out, the Commonwealth responsibility for regulation, particularly around
environmental matters, has increased including responsibility for international
obligations, treaties and in matters of national significance as outlined under
the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act).
Under the EPBC Act, the streamlined regulatory ‘one-stop shop’ has been
advocated as a way to accredit and streamline state and territory processes
to meet Commonwealth standards by streamlining regulatory responsibilities
into a single point of approval. The premise is that this will ‘improve economic
efficiency by facilitating swifter consideration of development applications’
as well as facilitate ‘a careful consideration of how to achieve the best

environmental outcomes that are possible in the context of the economic
development … we think they are a very useful tool’ (Dripps 2014, 1).
Key concerns outlined by the Australian network of Environmental
Defenders Offices (Australia’s peak planning and environment community
legal network) are that the ‘balance’ is tipped too far in the direction of growth
and development at the cost of environmental and socially just outcomes.
Specifically that:
v Moves to reduce environmental regulation are merely to ease perceived

pressure on business and fast-track major development.
v Fast approvals that deliver poor-quality, high-risk or unsustainable
development are not in the public interest.
v Hasty bilateral agreements to delegate Commonwealth government
powers to State and Territories, as proposed by the Federal
government’s ‘one-stop shop’ approach, may, in fact, create complexity

and fragmentation.
v The failings of State and Territory laws to effectively avoid and
mitigate impacts on threatened species is most apparent in relation to
‘fast-tracking’ of environmental impact assessment for major projects.
Project refusals on the basis of threatened species are extremely rare.
(ANEDO 2014, 1)
The message is clear: that increased environmental effectiveness is

required, not deregulation, and that ‘environmental laws seek to safeguard
important values, assets and opportunities for future generations’ (ANENDO
2014, 1). Through the lens of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD)
the planning ‘balancing act’ includes an emphasis on principles such as
intergenerational equity, biodiversity and ecological integrity, which can be
better supported by planning tools which are in turn supported by initiatives
such as the precautionary principle and the polluter-pays system. Thus, while
some benefits can be gained from an efficient, streamlined regulatory regime,
there is a need for more fundamental regulatory reform for planning rather than
the overriding emphasis on red and green tape reduction – i.e. deregulation –
in Australia and beyond.
Integrating Planning Reform Instruments: Red and Green Tape

Reduction in Queensland, Australia
In Queensland, Australia’s fastest growing state over the past 20 years, the
Government has not been coy about staking out an ambitious and competitive
economic reform agenda at the state metro-regional or statutory levels, with
a strong procedural emphasis on red and green tape reduction and the one-
stop shop. The most recent reform initiatives in the state promote economic
development through ‘planning for prosperity’ and the building of ‘a superior
planning framework’ as a way of consolidating and promoting state interests
(Steele and Dodson 2014).
The reform ambition is clearly stated as ‘ensuring the state’s continued
growth and prosperity … facilitating the economic growth and prosperity
of Queensland through an efficient, effective, integrated, transparent and
accountable system’ (Queensland Government 2013a, 1). A system that will:
Drive prosperity through a four-pillar economy, including development and

construction; reduce red tape for business and industry; and reform for the
states planning and development system to empower local governments to
better plan for communities.
(Queensland Government 2013a, 1)
40 Wendy Steele
In 2012, the Sustainable Planning Act 2009 (SPA) was amended to

give effect to a streamlined whole of government approach to development
assessment including: ‘a single agency lodgment and assessment point for
development applications where the state has jurisdiction as final decision
maker to ensure no “unreasonable” requirements are imposed on applicants’
(Queensland Government 2013b, 1). The single planning approval point is
designed to help streamline assessment and approval processes and remove
unnecessary red tape, thereby increasing efficiencies. For the Queensland
Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning, these initiatives
combine to progress reform of Queensland’s planning system:
The purpose of the new legislation will be to enable development … We

need to drive a major transformation of the state’s planning system and
culture from its current approach, which is actually stifling development.
(Seeney 2013, 1)
The precursor to these reforms was the introduction of the Integrated Planning
Act 1997 (IPA) when state planning legislation in Queensland underwent radical
change with the introduction of economic reform policies focused on market
enhancement, and the minimisation of government interference in decision-
making. England (2010) describes the IPA as ‘death by a thousand cuts’ in
terms of the difficulties faced by the new legislation in responding to the reform
agenda, including: the procedural quagmire that was the one-stop shop Integrated
Development Assessment System (IDAS); the cost and complexity of IPA
planning schemes; and the status of environmental protection under the Act.
The ambition of the IPA was for an improved and streamlined planning and
development framework with reduced costs, improved development timeframes
and greater efficiency, clarity, flexibility and responsiveness (Meurling 2009).

An integral component of the performance-based IPA reform agenda was
the idea of ‘integration’ both procedurally and substantively as a prerequisite
for the achievement of more ecologically sustainable development outcomes
(England 2004). For proponents of sustainability, an integrated approach to
land-use planning is essential for more holistic environmental and development
decision-making (Margerum and Born 1995).
However, the quest for more integrated approval processes is also the
hallmark of the neoliberal reform agenda around increasing efficiency, red tape
reduction and streamlined fast-tracked approval processes. The point about
the blurred agenda of ‘integration’ was strongly argued at the time by Brown
and Nitz (2000, 98) who noted that under the IPA:
the emphasis on ‘integration’ is process-oriented – cutting red tape

and increasing efficiency of the development process. To achieve
the sustainability element of the Act, the emphasis has to shift away
from process integration towards content integration – integrating
environmental, social and economic dimensions through planning.
Conclusion
Nobody wants to defend red tape, which tends to be associated with the worst
aspects of paperwork and bureaucracy, ‘gargantuan, cynically impersonal,
bound up in meaningless paperwork and beset by excessive, duplicative
and unnecessary procedures’ (Bozeman and Feeney 2011, 5). The notion of
green tape further leverages this idea but applies it specifically to the realm
of environmental regulations and processes. A powerful coalition of business
lobbyists and stakeholders promote the need to ‘free’ planning of unnecessary
regulatory and administrative burdens to market processes. However as Arnold
(cited in Williams 1958, 118) observed, ‘freedom is a very good horse to ride,
but to ride somewhere’.
If planning for ecologically sustainable outcomes is the ambition, then
red and green tape regulation removal, as a key instrument, is no panacea.
Internationally, community and green groups argue that, underneath the
rhetoric of reducing administrative burdens and enhancing global market
efficiency, much of the ‘red tape’ that has been cut has been environmental and
social regulations. They highlight, for example, the withdrawal of the proposal
on access to environmental justice required to implement the third pillar of
the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in
Decision-making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters is a ‘denial
of the rights the EU is supposed to guarantee its citizens under international
law’ (WWF 2013, 1). As the Australian Network of Environmental
Defenders Offices (Australia’s peak community legal network) identifies, ‘it is

disappointing that the focus appears to be around deregulation – that is, the
rollback of environmental and social regulations as a priority’ (ANEDO 2014,
1).
The capacity to be both efficient and prudent in the use of resources, as well as
to have the flexibility to think outside the box, underpins transformative practices
in a climate of change. However, finding the appropriate balance between rules,
regulations and procedures that are wasteful and those that provide important
environmental and community benefits is the key to ecological sustainability. As
Harvey (2007) highlights, analysis around neoliberal practices in areas such as
planning reform reveal glaring contradictions and gaps ‘between the rhetoric (for
the benefit of all) and the realisation (but only for the privileged few) increasing
over space and time’ (p. 42).
So how do planners ensure appropriate checks and balances are undertaken
within a neoliberal reform environment? How can planning be both fair and
42 Wendy Steele
efficient in the delivery of ecologically sustainable development outcomes?

Enacting and delivering change for cities and regions is about better bridging this
gap between the rhetoric (the ‘ought’) and the realisation (the ‘is’) of planning
reform. This involves improving the quality of planning by strengthening both
the strategic and plan-making processes in urban and regional areas. At the
heart of progressive planning this involves the development of a planning vision
and related instruments that are fundamentally underpinned by democratically
founded principles and sustainability-led ethics that permeate through policy,
pedagogy and practice.
The lessons from this chapter are that planning instruments such as calls
for red and green tape reform, removal and/or reduction, have emerged as a
double-edged sword – often deregulation by another name – which does not
necessarily seek to further democratic and environmentally just aims. The
challenge for planners is to work out, as part of a broader polity, what regulation
can be removed and what needs to be defended and saved. This is no easy task
with proliferating calls for increased market speed and efficiency in this current
climate of neoliberal reform-led change.
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4
The Problem/Solution Nexus and its Effect
on Public Consultation
Sophie Sturup
Introduction
Proponents of deliberative models of planning and new public management
recommend community consultation as the best way to generate greater
acceptance of planning proposals ranging in scope from single projects to
strategic plans. However, ‘not in my backyard’ responses to planning proposals
remain a significant problem. This is despite the claim that better educated
and consulted publics can overcome these tendencies, a claim supported by
Innes and Booher (2010). With respect to community consultation, planning
proposals appear to be experiencing a similar situation to that encountered
in mega urban transport projects – namely, that the consultation appears
inauthentic. ‘Community consultation’ is used here to describe the process a
project (or policy) proponent conducts in order to involve the public in the
project or decision. The term distinguishes the linear and procedural activity
used by planners to engage the public, from activity by various publics to

engage themselves in planning (or other policy) activity known as ‘community
engagement’ (Leino 2012).
Findings from research into mega projects in Australia (Sturup 2010)
indicate that part of the reason for the aura of inauthenticity in consultation
processes arises because the rationale for the proposal is not really open for
discussion. Any specified project arises from an understanding of the project as
the solution to a particularly identified problem. This problem/solution nexus
occurs at the point where the rationalities around the problem and the project
coalesce, so the problem posed is defined with the project as its solution. This
problem/solution nexus is an a priori understanding; therefore it is not really
open to negotiation. This nexus stunts the consultation process, robbing it
of efficacy in generating the kind of ownership and agreement desired and
preventing it from operating as a tool for transparent and equitable participation
in decisions. This chapter posits that, like mega projects, one reason for the
46 Sophie Sturup
failure of consultation around planning proposals is that it occurs after the

logic of the development or strategy as the solution to a specific problem has
been developed.
In mega projects, consultation occurs only once the project has been defined.
This is a result of a well-accepted reality that due to the difficulty of attracting
community attention, consultation can only occur once projects are sufficiently
developed that they can be mapped, and their impacts detailed (Kalowski
2008). A consequence of this positioning is that the public never gains an
opportunity to engage in the development of the problem/solution nexus.
Planning proposals experience a problem because the problem/solution nexus
is generated in academic discourse and between planning professionals who
develop planning proposals or approve developers’ proposals as a consequence
of this understanding. With some significant exceptions, such as Vancouver
where as a result of years of consultation on the problem/solution nexus, a kind
of community ownership of the strategic plan was achieved (see McAfee and
Legacy in Chapter 5 of this volume), planning generally has also accepted the
‘reality’ that consultation on specific projects will need to replicate any done in
strategic planning because, at the point a project is presented, a new, directly
affected public will emerge. It is therefore logical to put off consultation until a
specific project arises so the consultation does not have to occur twice (Innes
and Booher 2010). Even at the level of strategic planning the effect of the
problem/solution nexus is in evidence as planners seek to conduct ‘authentic’
consultation while acknowledging the difficulty of putting aside their role as
‘expert’ long enough to allow genuine community input.
This chapter discusses first the role envisaged for consultation, itself
constituted as a solution to the problem of a lack of public acceptance of
planning proposals. It then explores the findings from research into mega
projects, demonstrating how the process of problem/solution nexus formation

occurs and its impact on consultation. The findings from this research are then
mapped back into wider planning proposals to consider their impact on the use
of consultation as a tool for improving transparency and equity in planning.
On the Purpose of Consultation – Generating Ownership of

Projects and Visions
In simple terms, consultation, about anything at any time, is the process of
one person or group asking another person or group what they think about
something and/or to make some sort of contribution to the development
of that thing. In so doing, consultation fulfils two possible objectives.
First, consultation can improve the object of the consultation through the
contribution of the consulted. Secondly, by allowing the contribution of the
consulted, consultation can create a relationship of ownership between the
The Problem/Solution Nexus and its Effect on Public Consultation 47
object of consultation and the consulted and thus acceptance of it. The depth
of the level of ownership generated between the consulted and the object
of consultation is proportional to genuine ability to impact the object of
consultation.
Strategic planning has experienced a ‘communicative turn’ and considerable
attention has been paid to the idea that better consultation will lead both to
better outcomes in terms of strategic plans, and importantly, better acceptance
by the community of those plans (Albrechts and Mandelbaum 2005). A
variety of planning establishments have advocated the use of consultation to
increase acceptance of urban planning proposals, and indeed a wide variety of
public policies. Insufficient consultation has been claimed as a possible source
of the phenomena where particular affected publics take the attitude of ‘not
in my backyard’ (Woodcock et al. 2011; see also Woodcock et al. in Chapter 9
of this volume). Similar concerns have been raised in regard to mega projects
generally and mega urban transport projects in particular (Flyvbjerg et al. 2003).
From the level of strategic planning, right down to implementation of specific
developments, planning proposals have many similarities with mega projects.
Mega projects are large in scale and in impact. Their construction absorbs
massive amounts of resources, not just in budgets, but also in management
time. They are an interruption in their location environmentally, socially
and politically. Under this definition, planning proposals which constitute a
significant restructuring of a region, city, suburb or neighbourhood could be
considered mega projects or in the case of strategic plans perhaps clusters of
projects (mega and otherwise). Examples of such proposals range from strategic
plans such as Melbourne 2030 (DPI 2002) to the proposed development of
Williamstown wool mills which proposes significantly higher density and
changes to height limits in the suburb of Williamstown in the Australian state
of Victoria. Indeed, when considering public reaction, the scale of impact can
loom large even in small projects if they represent a significant departure from
local appreciation of ‘the way things are’. Studies of the role of consultation in
mega projects find that community acceptance of single projects is necessary
to build and maintain sufficient public confidence to allow subsequent projects
to be taken up (Allen 2004). This is similarly a concern for planning proposals.
In strategic planning, if cities are to be radically reshaped, through effective
integration of land use and transport planning, then public acceptance must be
fostered in order to ‘build the active support that policy needs for its effective
implementation and long term success’ (Friedman 2006, 2).
Many studies have suggested ways that consultation in mega projects could
be improved. De Bruijn and Leijten (2007), for instance, have advocated
strategies for better integration of projects in the community through more
and earlier consultation, as well as generation and dissemination of better
information. However, the question of better consultation also reaches
48 Sophie Sturup
into suggested solutions around development of more complex cost-benefit

analysis to include more insubstantial elements (Hayes and Hayes 2004), and
strategies to encourage better strategic selection of projects. In some respects
this literature is pushing back on Habermasian ideas that the best solutions
come from diverse opinion moulded into common understandings through
consultation, and returns to a rational planning model where ‘best’ can be
normatively described by analysis of the facts. In either case despite these
developments, mega project consultation processes continue to share with
participatory planning processes a criticism that they are ‘merely tokenistic
attempts by politicians and the bureaucracy to include a broader range of
stakeholders’ (Sarkissian et al. 2003, 6).
The suggestion in this chapter is that one source of the continuing failure
of consultation to live up to expectations is built into the development of
the problem/solution nexus. Because the community is not involved in the
process that defines the problem as soluble by a particular project or proposal,
the consultation is necessarily limited. Planning proposals at all levels from
strategic planning down to specific developments, whether mega or not, have
a similar nexus built into them. Planning proposals occur as the solution to
problems or sets of problems that have been defined so that the proposal solves
them. The next sections of the chapter discuss how problems and solutions
arise in mega projects, debunking the idea that solutions are generated in
response to a priori problems.
The Source of These Findings

The data for this research come from OMEGA Project 2, a study of 31
mega urban transport projects (MUTPs) in ten countries undertaken by the
OMEGA Centre at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College

London. The dataset used in this chapter is limited to three of the case studies;
Melbourne’s City Link, the Perth to Mandurah Railway line, and Sydney’s
Cross City Tunnel. The case studies were developed from approximately 60
interviews, and three case study profiles developed from a comprehensive
review of secondary sources about the projects. Half the interviews were
conducted as ‘pre-hypothesis’ interviews designed to elicit anecdotes, or
storytelling, about the case study, the other interviews were conducted as
‘hypothesis-led’ interviews. Following the concept of narrative analysis, the pre-
hypothesis interviewees were asked for stories about pivotal events; moments
of stagnation or breakthrough; moments of rescue or sabotage; and times of
community suffering or inspiration. The hypothesis-led interviews included
questions concerning project success; appraisal and evaluation; sustainability;
decision-making processes; management of risk uncertainty and complexity;
and context.
Interviewees included a broad range of stakeholders who had worked

on or been involved with the project, especially at the conception stage.
They included public sector employees, politicians, private sector advisers,
contractors, financiers and community members. Interviewees were identified
following a review of the structure of each project and identification of key
players from both the private and public sectors, and subsequently through a
snowballing process.
The discussion which follows is based on data triangulated from all three
case studies. For reasons of space, only a truncated version of ‘Melbourne City
Link’ is provided in this chapter as an example. Similar findings can be found
in all three case studies and have been documented in Sturup (2010).
How Problem and Solution Combine

How are mega projects selected? One could imagine that MUTPs occur as a
result of a rationally identified need, and a rational selection between viable
alternatives which could meet that need. That there is a problem that has been
identified and the project is established to resolve that problem. The literature
and the research on which this chapter is based demonstrate that it is not the
case. Policy researchers have found that problems are in fact constructed in
order to justify solutions (Parsons 1995, 180). Priemus et al. (2008) argue that
projects are solutions in search of a problem. This means that not only are
the problems we choose to address not determined through careful analysis of
competing priorities, but the solution applied is never considered against other
possible alternatives.
Li’s (2007) study identified that this relationship between problems and
solutions (the problem/solution nexus) is in part due to the nature of project
development. Projects are developed in response to problems identified in

terms which allow for their solution by the project. This means that projects
move rapidly from ‘something that could be done’ to ‘something that must
be done’ in order to solve some particular problem. Once this transformation
has occurred, any question of ignoring the problem ceases to be a legitimate
political act.
Miller and Lessard (2008) put forward the proposition that projects are not
so much managed in the sense of strategic vision statements, Gantt charts
and project plans, but rather they are shaped through a process of coalition
building. So the inception of projects is not based on a normative needs
analysis but rather, projects develop over time in a combined emergence of
an alliance of people who want to undertake the task, and development of the
project in terms that create a sufficiently acceptable risk management strategy.
Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully consider the way these
findings apply to planning proposals more generally, there are without doubt
50 Sophie Sturup
similarities which occur as planning systems are developed around coalitions

of developers, government, academics, practitioners and the public which
shift and influence both the system design and the way it is implemented and
understood.
The problem/solution nexus is quite common. In many situations, until
there is at least the promise for a solution, problems are simply accepted. An
example might be the colour of the sky. At present it remains uncontroversial
and blue, however if it became possible to change the colour (perhaps in
response to climate change mitigation) the question of the colour of the sky
would become a problem. So projects are solutions in search of a problem.
Consequently, in most cases any reasonable criteria for determining whether
a project is actually worth doing – the question should we do it, in the sense
of whether society wants or needs it – is largely bypassed. MUTP advocates
go straight to the question ‘can we do this thing?’ The question of ‘should we
do it?’ is subsumed by the fact that we can. The same dynamic is in play with
development proposals. Vacant land, or current land uses become a problem
when someone is ready to develop and/or change that land use.
The data from the three case studies introduced above support the idea of
a problem/solution nexus. In each case study, the problem and the solution
to it were articulated and rearticulated until a mega urban transport project
emerged. The generation of the problem and solution together produced the
rationality for the project. The rationality given for the problem is bounded by
and bounds the rationality of the solution and subsequently the design of the
project. Once this process is complete the solution proposed (the mega urban
transport project) occurs as the only rational solution. This is what Miller and
Lessard (2008) call ‘the ramp up phase’, during which the logic of the problem
and the solution is embedded in the project. Public consultation begins once
this phase is complete. This is critical for our discussion of consultation.

Because the logic of the problem and solution are embedded in the decision of
what to do, they become unquestionable.
The next section presents the evolution of the Melbourne City Link to
demonstrate how this process occurs. Similar processes occur in the Perth
to Mandurah Railway and Sydney Cross City Tunnel, which are analysed in
Sturup (2010).
On the Problem ‘Linking’ and the Solution City Link

City Link is a 22km tollway in Melbourne Victoria (see Figure 4.1). It was built
under a Concession Deed granted to a consortium of Transfield/Obayashi to
design, build, finance, operate, levy tolls and maintain it for 34 years until 14
June 2034. The freeway involves two parts: a western link (shown on the map
heading north) and a southern link. A timeline of the early development of
Figure 4.1 Map of City Link reproduced with permission from Transurban City Link Ltd
(2008)
the idea of City Link from its initial conception as two separate projects until
completion is provided in Figure 4.2.
The construction of the problem City Link was designed to solve reflects
both localised factors and broader discourses. The strongest line of argument,
found in more than half the interviews conducted was that there was a strong
project need, created by the irrationality of the road system as it was laid out.
As one former Minister put it, ‘the problem was … without those links you’ve
got these radial roads just driving traffic into the city and stopping’ (interview
statement). This perception of the irrationality of the previous road network
is clearly related to an older dialogue which perceives cities as circulatory
systems, and concurrently, congestion as bad (Heynen et al. 2006). However,
it was a perception which for many years had been interrupted by a different
political logic.
The 1969 plans for the freeway road network in Melbourne had provided
for a linked freeway network, without lower grade roads between each
freeway, but protests against urban freeways during the 1970s prevented its
realisation (Stone 2014). The Victorian Labor Party’s support was a key factor
in the success of these protests, which were based on the negative effects of
pollution, negative impacts on urban amenity, the separation of communities
because of the need for grade-separated interchanges, and the high speed of
traffic. By 1982 the protests against urban freeways had been forgotten and
52 Sophie Sturup
1969 – State government proposes freeway

network for Melbourne.
1970s – Mass protest, and green bans by builders

union prevent inner urban freeway.
1982 – Labor state government softens stand on

freeways and commences building outer ring
freeway (Western Ring Road).
1984 – Initial proposal to extend Tullamarine

Freeway, consultation conducted (Western Link).
1987 – Westgate freeway extended to within 500m

of central business district. New strategy
advocates Southern and Western links.
1989 – Environmental Effects Statement on

proposal to extend Tullamarine Freeway to
Westgate Freeway prepared (Western Link).
1991 – Labor State government seeks expression

of interest from private sector in projects to
invigorate economy.
1992 – Liberal (Kennett) party wins state election.
1992 – State government commences bid process

with private sector for CityLink (Western and
Southern Links).
1994 – Environmental effects statement process for

Citylink conducted.
1995 – Concession deed signed and legislation

passed. Construction commenced.
2000 – Project completed.

Figure 4.2 Timeline of City Link project development
there was movement in the Labor Party towards softening their traditional
stance against urban freeways. Part of this softening came about because of
the rearticulation of the problem back to a more technocratic footing. The
very factors that previous protests about freeways had used became arguments
for the freeway. Congestion was recast as an environmental problem because
stop/start traffic creates more pollution. Truck traffic on inner-city roads was
now significant, unavoidable and negatively affecting urban amenity and
safety. Thus, grade-separated interchanges that would remove trucks from
city roads and protect the community were now considered desirable. The
shift in thinking about freeways was reflected in a proposal to extend the
Tullamarine Freeway south in 1984, and extend the Westgate Freeway to
join Kingsway via an elevated road through Port Melbourne, which was
completed in 1987.
The first consultation conceptualising a freeway linking project involving

the Tullamarine, Westgate and Monash Freeways was brought about by a state
Minister seeking advice about the congestion experienced as a result of the new
‘end’ of the Westgate Freeway some 500m from the central business district.
The Minister sought advice from the road authority of the State of Victoria and
was advised that a simple short tunnel at the location of the congestion would
simply move the problem to the end of the tunnel. Instead they proposed a
solution that was ‘a bit bigger than you thought’ (VicRoads Engineer). The
new project linked the three freeways (Monash, Westgate and Tullamarine) on
the south side of the city. This first consultation embedded into City Link the
idea of the project as the solution to the problem of traffic congestion due to
freeways that just ‘ended’. It was invented at the outset by experts.
The reason that a bypass had not been built was also recast as a physical-
technical problem. As one interviewee involved in road building in Melbourne
put it, ‘it was this idea that you couldn’t get around Melbourne because there
was no southern way around Melbourne, and the (Port Phillip) Bay was too
close to build one’. Public opposition could be conveniently forgotten because
the project was no longer a matter of politics. Getting the project built was
a matter of solving the technical issues. Any bridge was going to be huge
and built on unstable ground, tunnelling was technically difficult because of
geological conditions and an above-ground option was unacceptable due to
amenity impacts on the Yarra River just south of the central business district.
This rearticulation of the problem and why it had not been resolved opened
the door to provision of the links, provided the appropriate technological
solution could be found.
Another element in the perception of the problem, which City Link was
built to solve, was economic. As one of the key government bureaucrats put
it, ‘here we are in Melbourne coming from a position of, you know we had
that economic uncertainty, we had been labelled the “rust bucket economy”’.
This ‘rust bucket economy’ referred to the fact that the economy had been
at zero growth for some time, with low population growth and a threatened
downgrading of the state’s credit rating. In May 1991, the Victorian Government
issued guidelines seeking private sector investment in infrastructure generally
and the proposed bypasses in particular. Considerable interest was obtained.
As one government interviewee put it, ‘we got two very excited bidders, people
prepared to put large amounts of money up, a billion dollars, to do a project
which was bigger than any of us thought we could do’. This consultation was
a second element in the construction of the problem and the identification
of the solution. The private sector arrived with a project they wanted to do,
not in response to a discussion about what needed doing. In March 1992, the
Victorian Government announced that the private sector would be invited to
be involved in the bypasses.
54 Sophie Sturup
The project thus presented itself both as an opportunity to demonstrate a

new model of provision of infrastructure, the public private partnership (PPP),
and as a project required to stimulate the economy. There was thus a strong
relationship between the project that was designed and the problems that it
was designed to solve: a road that would resolve congestion through linking
‘three high capacity freeways which are presently disconnected’, a project
that would stimulate the economy (Allen Consulting Group et al. 1996), and
one that would demonstrate the ability of the private sector to deliver vital
infrastructure to a cash-strapped state. Physically, the road does in fact link
three of the city’s freeways, allowing traffic to flow around Melbourne despite
Port Phillip Bay being in the way, and the project was designed as a PPP.
The Effect of Problem/Solution Nexus on Public Consultation

The preceding description of the development of the problem/solution nexus
demonstrates that this process takes place without what could be described as
public consultation. This is not to say, however, that it takes place without
any consultation. Indeed the formation of the problem and solution occurs
in close consultation with experts and decision-makers. Figure 4.3 outlines
three phases of projects in which consultation occurs. The development of the
problem/solution nexus occurs in the first phase as an extension of the process
of deciding what to do. The central question in this phase is ‘what should be
done’? This is a question that is answered by the design of the project as the
solution to the problem of ‘what should be done’? This limits the eventual
consultation with the public in later project phases because by the time they
are brought into the process in the second phase of Figure 4.3, the question of
what should be done is tightly embedded in the fact that it has been decided to
do something. Obviously this also precludes any discussion of doing something
Overarching Consultation Questions and Purpose by Project Phase
Problem and Solution Project Planning Phase Project Delivery Phase

Construction Phase (domain of EIS including experts (domain of community limited to
(domain of experts and decision and community) those physically impacted by
makers) construction)
How can we
What is wrong
Should we do How will you be build this with
and how do we
this? affected? minimal
fix it?
disruption?
Maximising
Minimising
Deciding what Allocating project benefits
construction
to do resources reducing
impact
project costs
Figure 4.3 Overarching consultation questions and purpose by project phase (Source:
Sturup 2010)
else, or doing nothing. Logically then, discussion in the project planning phase
is limited to how the proposed project will affect the community and how
to improve it, questions which are quite different than whether the project
should go ahead.
In City Link, the project planning phase commenced on 18 June 1992
when the Minister directed that an Environmental Effects Statement (EES)
be prepared. The October 1992 election brought a change of government. The
new government commenced an internal review of the financial and economic
aspects of the project and continued the EES process. The internal review was
run entirely by government experts and consultants and was not open to public
consultation. The government viewed the 1992 EES process as being one in
which significant issues were identified, or as one government interviewee
put it, ‘which enabled a … better direction of thought on those issues, and
ultimately better solutions’. The process was definitely not established to
question whether the project should go ahead. The experience described by
one of those interviewed, who was also on the consultative committee, was
that key administrators were unwilling to question the project and that the
process was in effect being used to absorb protest which could have been more
effectively applied elsewhere.
Following their appointment, which came via a tendering process, another
round of consultations was undertaken by the project engineers (the third
phase in Figure 4.3). This round of consultation was solely about the impact
of the project as it was now designed on the ground. Fierce resistance was
encountered in the south eastern suburb of Richmond over the sites for the
tunnel entrances. Residents of Richmond feared an increase in pollution due
to substantial increases in road capacity of the South Eastern Arterial (SEA)
and the location of the ventilation stacks. The protesters were infuriated but
understood that protests to stop the project were futile. As an interviewee

explained, it was understood by the protesters that this phase of consultation
was not about ‘should we do this’, but rather on what needed to be done to
improve the design. This approach was met with success on some issues, such as
the bike path width and siting of the tunnel stacks. This set of consultations was
set firmly in the context of reducing impact, particularly that of construction
impact.
Conclusion: The Problem/Solution Nexus and Planning Decisions

As noted at the start of this chapter, the objective of consultation is to create
a relationship between the consulted and the object of consultation. This
objective is theoretically realisable in all three project phases, but the depth of
the relationship which can be created, and the contribution which can be made,
becomes progressively more constrained. After the point where the problem/
56 Sophie Sturup
solution nexus is generated, contributions that attempt to fundamentally alter

either of these elements can no longer be heard. By the time the community
is involved it is not possible to enter a discussion over whether the project
should occur, nor is it possible to discuss undertaking alternative projects. It is
only possible to talk about how to deal with the project’s effects. Those who do
not agree that the project should occur are left without a voice in the process.
Those who remain in the process unwittingly validate the project simply by
working to improve it.
Clearly this same issue occurs around planning decisions more generally.
The theoretical underpinnings of planning decisions develop in universities
and between planning practitioners. The public is not consulted and does
not participate. This provides an explanation for the frequent failure of
planning consultation to bring about the type of ownership of decisions which
consultation is supposed to create. In terms of equity and transparency, successful
and authentic consultation is a necessary but not sufficient requirement. A
process of authentic participation in planning is central to a just society in
the terms supplied by Nussbaum (2011). In generating ownership of projects
and planning proposals, participation enables the key human capability
of control over one’s environment, especially being able to participate
effectively in political choices. However, a further consequence of the impact
of the problem/solution nexus is that consultation processes made after the
problem/solution nexus is complete cannot be used to create agreement in the
community that the proposal should go ahead. The question of what should
happen is bypassed by considerations that something can be done. Authentic
community participation in the sense of determining and owning a strategic
vision for the built environment is impossible.
Problem/solution construction is not simply a matter for the consultation
which occurs around the project itself. Much of the understanding of the
problem is in fact provided by older dialogues and how they have been used in
the past. This suggests that strategic visions, which are widely held, can and
do have an impact. Even though consultation in the problem/solution nexus
generation tends to be limited to experts and decision-makers, there is room
for the voice of the community in the way that voice has been articulated
in previous debates and taken up in the knowledge that experts are working
from. This is particularly true in democratic societies where conceptions of the
boundaries of public expectation often limit expert rationalities. For planning
more generally this would indicate that there is a need for the planning
profession to generalise knowledge from other planning debates and to open
their theoretical discussions to a much wider audience, creating the conditions
for wider public agreement and understanding through participation in the
generation of general principles. This would bypass the inevitable issues
created by the problem/solution nexus in specific consultation processes.
References
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London: Routledge.
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delivery over the life of a transportation megaproject’, Public Roads, 68(1), pp. 34–40.
Allen Consulting Group Pty Ltd, Cox, JB and Centre of Policy Studies 1996, The Economic
Impact of Melbourne City Link Transurban Project, Melbourne: Melbourne City Link
Authority.
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Planning and Technology, 30(1), pp. 49–69.
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Australia.
Flyvbjerg, B, Bruzelius, N and Rothengatter, W 2003, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of
Ambition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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PART I

The Challenges of Transforming Contexts

Densification as the Next Great Urban Development Frontier

political expectations for planning. In these deliberative processes there will

Planning as a Core Government Function

relegating statutory norms and procedures to a secondary and subordinate

have a dramatic impact on state–market relations, simultaneously attacking

About the Next Three Chapters

In Chapter 3, Wendy Steele continues with a critical exploration

Engelen, E, Ertürk, I, Froud, J, Johal, S, Leaver, A, Moran, M, Nilsson, A and Williams,

Tewdwr-Jones, M 2012, Spatial Planning and Governance: Understanding UK Planning,

Intensification, the Public Interest and Fairness

Irrespective of the merits of a case if the planning regime has fully

This highlights the central difficulty in planning for urban intensification

as well as absolute values are involved in debates about externality solutions.

types of behaviour involved vary contextually, the general conditions for

Uncompensated Losses from Intensification

Another resident, speaking about a proposed development of 23 storeys (in a

This development will reduce the valuation of adjoining properties by

One argument against requiring high-density developers to provide

negative impacts from intensified development.

Unearned Developer Gains from Intensification

planning applications to be submitted directly to the Planning Inspectorate

of public benefit allows developers to extract gains beyond those envisaged in

Towards Fairer Intensification

state effectively controls development rights (Cherry 1988; Millward 2006). In

by developers. These situations have arisen significantly because there has

Time-consuming, resource-draining procedures – also known as red tape – are a foe of

friendly and flexible business environment. This is a significant shift which

Freedom’s Prospect? Neoliberal Reform as a Planning Instrument

succession of governments focused not on ecologically and socially sustainable

commercialisation of government activities was actively encouraged in pursuit

different spatial and social distributional outcomes than those framed by a

efficiency and effectiveness of the development, implementation and integration

Loosening the Ties that Bind? International Examples of Red and

commitment to eliminating unnecessary red tape from Canada’s regulatory

Of course companies should comply with local, national and EU regulation.

term national security, employment and economic growth development, and

132 regulations to be ‘improved, merged or simplified’. In the words of the

Similar concerns are expressed in Australia at the national level where

red and green tape’ (Liberal Party of Australia 2014, 1).

v incentives such as linking the pay increases and bonuses of Senior

v developing efficiency performance standards against which government

as well as facilitate ‘a careful consideration of how to achieve the best

v Moves to reduce environmental regulation are merely to ease perceived

government’s ‘one-stop shop’ approach, may, in fact, create complexity

The message is clear: that increased environmental effectiveness is

Integrating Planning Reform Instruments: Red and Green Tape

Drive prosperity through a four-pillar economy, including development and

In 2012, the Sustainable Planning Act 2009 (SPA) was amended to

The purpose of the new legislation will be to enable development … We

and greater efficiency, clarity, flexibility and responsiveness (Meurling 2009).

the emphasis on ‘integration’ is process-oriented – cutting red tape

Defenders Offices (Australia’s peak community legal network) identifies, ‘it is

efficient in the delivery of ecologically sustainable development outcomes?

used by planners to engage the public, from activity by various publics to

failure of consultation around planning proposals is that it occurs after the

projects, demonstrating how the process of problem/solution nexus formation

On the Purpose of Consultation – Generating Ownership of

into suggested solutions around development of more complex cost-benefit

The Source of These Findings

OMEGA Centre at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College

Interviewees included a broad range of stakeholders who had worked

v incentives such as linking the pay increases and bonuses of Senior

v developing efficiency performance standards against which government

v Moves to reduce environmental regulation are merely to ease perceived