Fringe benefits? Planning, building and the development of community in a neo-liberal landscape

In Australia, Melbourne has seen the largest population growth of all Australian capital cities, with the most significant growth occurring in its outer suburbs. A central concern for the state government is to ensure that planning policy creates social value by facilitating the provision of housing and services to accommodate this urban growth and establishing socially cohesive, sustainable, and economically viable communities. This task is more complex when greenfield development encroaches on hazardous buried infrastructure, such as high-pressure natural gas transmission pipelines that are a risk to public safety if they are damaged. Added to that, efforts to address population growth through urban consolidation or housing provision are complicated by a neo-liberal, deregulated planning system. This has seen a loosening of planning controls that have allowed developers, rather than government, to determine dwelling type and timing of the release of housing stock into the market. This paper explores whether the central features of the current planning framework, namely Growth Corridor and Precinct Structure Plans, support the goals of Melbourne’s most recent strategic plan, Plan Melbourne. The paper considers the efficacy of planning tools to address the risk, and thus community safety and amenity, associated with urban development in the vicinity of gas transmission pipelines. To address these issues, 22 interviews were conducted with infrastructure representatives, residential housing estate developers and state and local government planners. The results indicate that the competing objectives of diverse stakeholder groups in a context of increased deregulation of the planning system characterised by inflexible policy implementation mechanisms present a challenge to the creation of economically viable, sustainable and cohesive communities. These types of communities can only result from the interactions of a multiplicity of governing and influencing actors and a blurring of boundaries between and within, public and private sectors.