Sustainable Urban Planning

5 Urban Growth Management

Cities and large towns are growth assets: ‘the engines of wealth-

creation in modern societies’^1 and the ‘building of houses consti-

tutes the major architectural work of any civilisation’.^2 These

urban places are resource-dependent upon the rest of the world,

particularly their own hinterland, for their existence. A further

consideration is that their outpourings of gaseous solid and

liquid wastes are metabolized, dumped or diluted outside urban

boundaries, in the open spaces beyond. Another organizational

complexity is that within the urbanized settler societies of Aus-

tralasia and North America planners have been positioned to do

little and have got involved too late to improve urban efficiency,

let alone induce self-sufficiency or enrich the liveability of cities

and towns to any marked useful extent. Choosing a strategic way,

and identifying a multiple-activity urbanism which is as sustain-

able as possible, is the challenge this chapter addresses, mainly

from the perspective of where most settler society people live –

suburbia.

Neomodern urban goals are relatively easy to explicate, to

acknowledge as policy enactments of government, and to accept

asAgenda 21protocols; but they are notoriously difficult for plan-

ners to lock onto as urban reforms. The ‘sustainable urban para-

digm’ urges a response, a deflection from much of what has gone

before, and seeks to attain a balanced relationship for society

within nature. This largely becomes a matter of choosing a strat-

egic way between urban achievements which have previously

The preceding chapters addressed big issues: the Charter laid out on a large ‘canvas’ in chapter 3, followed

by an examination of Growth Patterning problems and potentials in chapter 4. Attention now turns to matters

urban and suburban, concentrating on the home turf for Anglo settler societies. This is where most people

live, and suburban dwellers are the people for whom planners mostly plan. Yet a caution: glance at the depic-

tion of any land-use conflict in a community newspaper, or any development appeal ruling, and it will be

clear that no single writing can supply specific direction to individual conflicts. This chapter explores the

Sustainable Urban Planningpathway by attitude and ethical bearing, and through exemplars of practice.

‘The suburb was
instrumental in producing
the architectural form
of the bungalow, just as
the bungalow was
instrumental in producing
the spatial form of the
suburb. It was a process
that, in the early 20th
Century, was to be
repeated in the suburbs
of Anglophone colonial
and most post-colonial
countries worldwide: the
United States, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand.’
Anthony King in Visions
of Suburbia(edited by
Roger Silverstone) 1988.

For other urban
prognoses, together with
other kinds of
recommendation, refer
to David Satterthwaite
(1999).