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Comment: 10 September
2009
The crisis of academic urban planning
A wide gulf has opened up between mainstream Australian values and
the prescriptions of our urban planning academics. So much so that
the latter are at risk of degenerating into a cult. While it’s
usually unfair to criticise a group in generalised terms, there are
ample grounds in this case. Anyone who doubts the existence of an
urban planning “establishment” in and around the Australian
university system, and that it’s in thrall to ultra-green
groupthink, should revisit some recent correspondence to our
newspapers.
A perfect example appeared in the Australian Financial Review
of 31 July 2009. On that day, the paper carried a joint missive
penned by no less than eight leading-lights from various urban and
planning related faculties, along with two others from like-minded
institutions.
Stirred by the perennial bugbear of residential development on the
urban fringe, the authors wrote to denounce the Victorian
Government’s plans to develop 40,000 hectares of new suburbs.
The signatories included the Dean and the Chair of Melbourne
University’s architecture faculty, leaders of the university’s
Nossal Institute for Global Health and Eco-Innovation Lab, the
Director of Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy Institute, a
Professor of Planning and the Dean of Global Studies at Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), and the Director of Urban
Research at Griffith University.
They were joined by two holders of non-academic posts, one in the
City of Melbourne’s Design and Urban Environment Department, the
other at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute.
Since they’re all attracted to some variant of the command economy,
let’s call them “the ten commandants”.
Their letter opens with the standard formula of green urbanism. The
Victorian Government’s plans are “unsustainable - environmentally,
economically and socially”. This highly abstract phrase, a mainstay
of the urban planning literature, implies a seamless and mutually
reinforcing compatibility amongst the three dimensions of
sustainability. In the real world things aren’t so simple.
The formula conceals far more than it reveals. It’s not at all clear
that environmental sustainability, as conceived by the commandants,
is compatible with economic sustainability. More than likely, it
isn’t. As most prescriptions for environmental sustainability
include measures to suppress economic activity, including
regulations and cost imposts, the more likely outcome is economic
stagnation.
Economic stagnation may well be compatible with environmental
sustainability, at least in the eyes of ultra-green academics, but
it’s hardly compatible with social sustainability. A society without
economic opportunities will descend into division and conflict.
In this regard the commandants’ agenda is ominous. “[W]e will have
these [new fringe suburbs] to deal with”, they complain, “when we
finally commit to a low carbon economy”.
This paternalistic tone pervades the whole letter, even when the
public are offered apparent choices. Having spilt a lot of ink on
how, in the sustainable future, “developments will be denser than
the surrounding suburbs”, the commandants still claim “we will live
with … more choice of housing type”. And the false choices keep
coming. Consider this intriguing paragraph: “Not everyone wants or
needs to live in an activity centre or on the tramline, but a
sustainable city is one where you can get there without a car”. You
can live wherever you like, as long as you don’t need a car. Plenty
of choice there.
“This is a future”, they say of their vision, “where we will be
fitter rather than fatter”. This is a future, more accurately, where
intellectuals treat people like laboratory rats.
What it all means, of course, is that the public won’t have a say,
let alone a choice. “The fear of a suburban backlash is unfounded”,
say the commandants, “and attitudes will become more supportive when
imaginative design visions and construction projects demonstrate
what is possible”. Behind the condescending verbiage lurks a
strategy of imposing a fait accompli. Indeed, they end up hoping
that the federal government will intervene.
There’s one good thing about the letter. It concedes that releasing
more land does improve housing affordability. Planners have tended
to argue that it doesn’t work, since nobody wants to live on the
fringe. Still, the commandants question the benefits, arguing these
are “short term” and “outweighed by the long-term costs in capital
expenditure and car-dependency”. Such criticisms underestimate the
substantial and positive ripple effects of affordable housing on
disposable incomes, consumer demand, job creation and ultimately
state revenues.
Green platitudes usually get a pass in the media, but on 3 August
the AFR published a valiant letter in reply from Alan Moran
of the Institute of Public Affairs, aptly titled “Planners’
patrician arrogance”.
Moran makes two powerful points. First, had the commandants bothered
to canvass public opinion, they would have discovered that
“consumers around the world overwhelmingly prefer [separate houses
to apartments] … One United Kingdom survey showed that only 2 per
cent of people prefer to live in apartments”. Second, despite all
the guff about the “sustainability” of denser development, the
Australian Conservation Foundation
found that “emissions from inner
city households are a third greater than those on the fringe”.
Leading up to the global financial crisis, demand for residential
property was subdued, especially in Sydney. Buyers baulked at the
combination of rising interest rates and developer costs, together
with inflated prices linked to stymied land supply. Commentators
speculated about a cultural shift away from outer suburbia. But
things changed.
Since the crisis, plummeting interest rates and government
incentives have unleashed a new wave of demand. Buyers, including a
substantial proportion of first home buyers, have flocked to new
fringe suburbs. According to one
report “[p]roject-home builders are
reporting a boom in new house sales in parts of Sydney that were
until recently green pasture.” NSW Department of Planning figures
show that in the current financial year building on Sydney’s fringe
made up just under 20 per cent of all construction, compared with 10
per cent in 2005-06.
Things are no different in Melbourne. The city’s fastest
growing
area is the outer western suburb of Werribee.
Where does that leave the commandants? They would agree that urban
planning should alleviate socio-economic disadvantage. If so, they
and the planning establishment need to acknowledge that most low to
middle income Australians reject their vision of a compact ecopolis.
These Australians cherish their lifestyle, and sense that the social
and economic costs of planning fetters will far outweigh the
environmental benefits.
The suburbs have spoken. Unless planners ditch their utopian dreams
and integrate academic research with social reality, they face
increasing alienation from the policymaking process.
This comment has been republished by the
American urbanist blog
New Geography.
