Nicole Gurran

Suffer a Sea Change? Contrasting perspectives towards urban policy and migration in coastal Australia

Abstract Has the notion of ‘sea change’ and its considerable implications for non-metropolitan coastal Australia been exaggerated? In this article alternative perspectives of ‘sea change’ in Australia are reviewed, and the policy implications of each assessed. One perspective regards migration to coastal areas beyond the capital cities as incidental to continued metropolitan primacy and unlikely to affect or change Australias overall urban or economic structure. The other considers the movement as a significant and enduring process with major environmental and socio-economic repercussions. With reference to research conducted for the National Sea Change Taskforce, the article finds partial support for both positions, leading to a more revealing understanding of ‘sea change’ in Australia. A set of policy responses, sensitive to the particular qualities of Australian coastal environments and communities, are proposed for consideration by all three tiers of government.

Planning and Affordable Housing in Australia and the UK: A Comparative Perspective

Land use planning systems in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK) share a common history. In both nations, one objective of town planning has been to improve housing conditions for the urban poor and facilitate sufficient housing supply for growing post-war populations, with UK legislation serving as a model for Australia, at least until the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Since this time however, approaches have diverged. In the UK, housing assistance and the land use planning system have co-evolved, with planning an important tool for securing affordable housing, particularly in England. In contrast, a deep cleavage between urban planning and housing policy persists in Australia. Drawing on a series of studies undertaken separately by the authors over the past decade which concentrate on Australia and England, the paper compares urban and housing policy in both nations, and examines planning system performance in securing new affordable homes.

Governance Responses to Rapid Growth in Environmentally Sensitive Areas of Coastal Australia

The twin forces of rising affluence and population are altering coastal communities around the world. High amenity, environmentally sensitive areas—particularly attractive, non-metropolitan coastal environments—are witnessing a tidal wave of in migration from former urbanites. As a result, these communities are struggling to accommodate growing numbers of people with urban tastes and rural dreams in areas with governance structures and physical infrastructure designed for occasional tourists. This article looks at how governance frameworks in coastal Australia respond to the profound environmental, social, and cultural implications of this process. We offer a typology of non-metropolitan coastal growth settings—from exurban contexts to isolated coastal hamlets—and identify the main environmental, social, economic, and governance issues they face. We then outline the policy and legislative framework governing coastal areas in Australia and show how this framework is interpreted at the local level through an analysis of five local plans covering different coastal settings.

When Tourists Move In: How Should Urban Planners Respond to Airbnb?

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The online accommodation platform Airbnb has expanded globally, raising substantial planning and regulatory concerns. We ask whether Airbnb rentals generate significant neighborhood impacts like noise, congestion, and competition for parking; reduce the permanent rental housing supply and increase rental prices; or provide income opportunities that help “hosts” afford their own housing. We focus on Sydney, the largest region in Australia with 4.4 million people in 28 individual municipalities, which has experienced both rapidly rising housing costs and exponential growth in Airbnb listings since 2011. Airbnb’s growth has raised concerns serious enough to result in a formal Parliamentary Inquiry by the state of New South Wales. We analyze stakeholder submissions to this inquiry and review local planning regulations, Airbnb listings data, and housing market and census statistics. We find that online homesharing platforms for visitor accommodations blur traditional boundaries between residential and tourist areas so Airbnb listings may fall outside of existing land use regulations or evade detection until neighbors complain. Our findings are constrained by the difficulties of monitoring online operations and the rapid changes in the industry. Takeaway for practice: Planners and policymakers in cities with increasing numbers of Airbnb rentals need to review how well local planning controls manage the neighborhood nuisances, traffic, and parking problems that may be associated with them while acting to protect the permanent rental housing supply. Local planners need to ensure that zoning and residential development controls distinguish between different forms of short-term Airbnb accommodation listings and their potential impacts on neighborhoods and housing markets.

The Turning Tide: Amenity Migration in Coastal Australia

An enduring population movement led by alternative lifestylers, downshifters, economic migrants, and retirees continues to transform Australias non-metropolitan coastal landscape. Dubbed ‘sea change’ in Australia, the movement is an expression of the international phenomenon known as amenity migration. A defining quality of amenity migration is that migrants move for lifestyle, rather than jobs, choosing places with natural amenity, climate, recreation, and affordable housing. This article examines the social and environmental implications of this movement for fragile coastal landscapes in coastal Australia, drawing on population census data (1991–2006) for a sample of 67 affected communities.

Housing supply and urban planning reform: the recent Australian experience, 2003--2012

This paper examines the emergence in Australia of housing supply as a key consideration in urban policy and reform. Australia has experienced declining housing affordability over the past decade, and sluggish housing construction since the GFC. As in many other nations, there has been a growing emphasis on land use planning as the major supply constraint, resonating with theoretical debates about the legitimacy of planning and development control in the context of an ongoing neo-liberal campaign for deregulation across the Australian public sector. Through a detailed analysis of Australian government and industry discourse between 2003 and 2012, this paper finds the arguments for planning as the chief cause of housing market problems weak and contradictory, and heavily reflect the views of industry lobby groups. While not absolving planning as a potential supply side constraint, ongoing change to the planning system itself creates uncertainty and distracts from the range of positive policy levers that might be used to promote housing supply and affordable homes for low- and moderate-income groups.

Affordable Housing: A Dilemma for Metropolitan Planning?

Metropolitan planning in Australia is now overwhelmingly directed towards managing and limiting the outward growth of cities (Birrell et al., 2005; Forster, 2004). While cities are still expected to grow in terms of population and new households, the physical extent of this growth is to be contained by intensifying development in inner areas and limiting the conversion of rural land on the urban fringe. Commonly called ‘urban consolidation’ or ‘containment’, advocates claim that compact urban forms cause less air pollution, have lower energy and water demands, result in lower biodiversity loss, and promote a more efficient and equitable use of urban infrastructure. But others question the largely unexamined social and environmental impacts of higher density development (e.g. Holloway & Bunker, 2006; Randolph, 2006) particularly when this is interpreted solely in relation to apartments, rather than the broader mix of housing types that can achieve greater density without a significant shift in urban form. The other fundamental attack on urban containment policies in Australia and internationally is that containment makes housing less affordable by artificially restricting the supply of land (e.g. Demographia, 2007). If true, this would appear to present an irreconcilable dilemma for city planners as preserving and promoting affordable housing is also a primary objective of metropolitan strategies in Australia (Searle, 2006; Beer et al., 2007). This article considers this apparent dilemma, drawing on current research for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) on international approaches in planning for affordable housing (Gurran et al., 2007). Firstly, it reviews the argument that current metropolitan planning and the objectives of urban containment, or growth management, are fundamentally incompatible with affordable housing. It then compares the range of affordable housing strategies currently contained within metropolitan plans applying to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. Finally, it considers

Barriers to Municipal Climate Adaptation: Examples From Coastal Massachusetts' Smaller Cities and Towns

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Many global cities are making good progress on climate adaptation. There is less information, however, on climate adaptation among smaller cities and towns: Are their approaches similar when undertaking adaptation? Do the barriers they face mirror those of large cities? In this study, we undertake fine-grained empirical research on the perceptions of 18 municipal planners in 14 coastal cities and towns in Massachusetts; our findings are thus limited to planners’ perceptions of efforts and barriers in one region of the United States. These communities are very early in the uptake of climate adaptation policies and use a range of approaches when they do begin adaptation, including planning, mainstreaming, or addressing current hazards. The planners interviewed reported that barriers to adaptation actions tend to be interconnected; for example, the strength of private property interests often limits local political leadership on the issue. Without such leadership, it is difficult for planners to allocate time and/or money to adaptation activities. It is also challenging to gain support from local residents for climate adaptation action, while a lack of accepted technical data complicates efforts. Takeaway for practice: In coastal Massachusetts, and perhaps elsewhere, local residents, planners, and their municipal bodies, as well as the states, must act in multiple ways to encourage the development of meaningful climate adaptation action in smaller cities and towns.

Are Governments Really Interested in Fixing the Housing Problem? Policy Capture and Busy Work in Australia

This article applies theories of policy capture to explain why Australian governments appear unable to ameliorate the nations chronic affordability pressures, drawing on discourses produced by government, industry lobby groups and the media, between 2003 and 2013. We focus on key episodes of policy activity surrounding a series of national-level inquiries on housing affordability, and affordable housing and planning reforms in the state of NSW over this time, to highlight the political strategies and tactics that have enabled key interests and the status quo, to prevail.

Australian planning system reform

Anyone with even a passing engagement with planning systems across Australia will be aware that they have become the subject of sustained reform in recent years (Table 1). Planning system reform is also being played out internationally as governments strive to deal with the perceived ‘failings and inadequacies’ of planning (Campbell, Tait, and Watkins 2014, 45–46). Countries such as the UK (Gunn and Hillier 2012, 2014) and New Zealand (Goldfinch and Roberts 2013) have initiated ambitions reform agendas (see Gurran, Austin and Whitehead this issue). What differentiates Australian planning system reform from that occurring elsewhere is the complexity and multiplicity of systems, agendas and instruments being implemented. Unlike countries such as the UK or New Zealand, the Australian planning system is not coordinated by the national government, with constitutional authority for planning resting with the states. For routine planning matters this authority is delegated to local government (which is not recognised in the Constitution). Australian planning is also characterised by a combination of discretionary merit-based planning similar to the UK and increasingly a more codified land use planning and development assessment model found in America. Yet despite a diversity of state-based planning systems, the most recent round of reforms have been characterised by high degree of coalescence around a common set of themes and objectives. Despite the rapidity of planning system reform, to date, there has been limited academic exploration of the logic, instruments and outcomes of these reforms in the Australian context (although see Gurran and Phibbs 2013a; Steele and Ruming 2012; Ruming 2011a, b; Searle and Bunker 2010). This is a gap which the papers in this special issue address, focusing specially on the regulatory functions of planning systems. While there might be limited research specially addressing reform of the regulatory function of planning, this is not to suggest that Australian urban studies have not tackled issues of reform and its influence on our cities in a broader sense. For example, Searle and Bunker (2010) explore in their review of shifting strategic planning documents, an alignment across states. They position Australian metropolitan planning as simultaneously akin to strategic planning systems operating in other Western nations and a unique and more forceful approach directing urban growth and form through the use of housing targets and infrastructure. Further, discussions of planning system reform have also occurred within broader urban governance literature that identifies the planning system as just one part of the complex political, economic and social miasma that constitutes our cities (Gleeson, Dodson, and Spiller 2012; Dodson 2013). This debate often takes place within the larger debate about the emergence of the neoliberal state, the associated transition of historical functions of the state to the private sector (a form of roll-back neoliberalism) and the role of new urban governance arrangements which replace traditional state functions (a form of roll-out neoliberalism) (Peck and Tickell 2002; Sager 2011). Of course this is not to suggest the existence of a coherent neoliberal project, but that foundations of neoliberalism have permeated the planning system and recent attempts to transform it across Australia (McGuirk, 2005). The papers in this special issue highlight how the broad neoliberal agenda (nuances and specificities aside for the moment) has influenced contemporary reforms. For each state, the trigger and timeframe for planning system reform are unique; however, a common catalyst centres on the push for economic growth. The reforms are positioned by state governments as necessary to respond to a post-Global Financial Crisis economic regime. In this environment, the planning system should facilitate growth needed to address government budgetary pressures and stimulate the broader economy. In states where economic growth has been buoyant (such as Queensland and Western Australia), the planning system should be ‘streamlined’ so as not to obstruct this economic activity. For states characterised by more stagnant economies (such as New South Wales and Tasmania), perceived planning system impediments must be dismantled to kick-start economic growth via the building and construction sector (Gurran and Phibbs 2013a). Australian Planner, 2014 Vol. 51, No. 2, 102–107, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07293682.2014.896065