Sustainable Urban Planning

always the problem of how to get from ‘here’ (a patently unsustainable and

socially ailing urbanity), to ‘there’ (prosperous socio-environmental urban

harmony).

Scientific certainty is the anvil of generic sustainability on which the hammer-

head of empowerment (knowledge power and outcomes – chapter 2) beats out

policy guidelines and design actions. This is the essence of proactive sustainable

urban planning and the future way ahead for local government.

Balanced Urban Living

There has been much conflicting community-level analysis of the urban condition.

The information gap identified by Gerecke and Reid (1991) offers a view about

those who would style themselves to be planners as ‘Having no clearly defined

goals, and still working very much with a discredited methodology...[further

observing that they] are not handling the challenges of the city very well’. Cer-

tainly by most understandings of sustainability, cities and suburbs gaze across a

gap of incredulity following decades of reactive local government administration.

Yet it is the city, more particularly the suburbs, that the standard settler society

citizen is born into, lives within, and is usually cremated without. Suburbs are the

focus and intent of majority life, and all is far from well in terms of their fiscal and

energy drain, their social fragility, and for the suburbs themselves as physically

organized places of habitation. There is also the peri-urban threat of forest fires in

California and south-eastern Australia, earthquakes in central New Zealand and

260 Practice

clear intention that there will be a useful synergy. A
public-private joint venture can deliver outcomes of
benefit to the private sector developer (a useful ‘buddy’
relationship, generating certainty, priority treatment) and
to the public sector (good outcome, effective control,
environmental quality).

PRIVATE CONTROLS(also known as Covenants,
Deed Restrictions, and sometimes as Private Zoning) are
supplementations to the official regulation of develop-
ment, particularly during a project’s construction and
consolidation phases. Private Controls delimit the land-
use, landscaping, aesthetic and nuisance factors relating to
the development and occupancy of a project. Covenants
should run with the land title rather than a landowner.

JOINT OWNERSHIPis a style of co-ownership (as
with co-housing trusts and in condominia) allowing for

individual ownership in association with a multiplex of

other owners. Co-ownership arrangements usually

define ‘private’ ‘semi-public’ and ‘public’ spaces. To be

effective joint ownership projects and estates are con-

trolled by an overarching managing unit.

References

D. Abbott,Encyclopaedia of Real Estate Terms, 1987.

Davidson and Dolnick,Zoning Development and Planning Terms,

1999.

J. W. Reilly,The Language of Real Estate, 1982.

J. S. Gross,Webster’s New World Real Estate Dictionary,

1987.

For TDRs consult T. Daniels When City and Country Collide,

1999 (App. G).

For zoning options, see Flexible Zoning, Urban Land Institute,

1991 and M. Morris,Incentive Zoning, 2000.

OnThe Takings Issue, Meltz, Merriam, Frank (1999).

Box 5.6 Continued