Urban and Regional Planning in Australia - Essay Example

Urban and Regional Planning in Australia Name: University: Date: Transport Planning and Development in Victoria and South Australia Introduction Planning can be defined as the process of generating good outcomes for communities in the natural as well as built environment. Without a doubt, conducting planning is exceedingly challenging, but facilitates the creation of sustainable urban environment for both the future and current generations. Generally, planning enhances communities and people’s overall well-being through creation of more attractive, equitable, accessible, healthy, and efficient places to work, live, play and plan. Effective planning can as well create communities which provide improved choices for how and where people live and ensure that the future generations are offered fair and realistic opportunities. In Australia, Urban planning has enabled the government, communities and private sector to foresee the direction through which Australians wants to develop as well as grow. Thanks to urban and regional planning, Australia has managed to get the right balance between heritage and environment protection, essential services, as well as support for innovative change. This has consequently led to infrastructures that are of inherent value for the Australians. Transportation is an investment tool utilised by cities across Australia to realise their larger goals. Basically, transportation engineers and planners normally place emphasis on the efficient movement of goods and people across Australia. Still, transportation is concerned with various aspects of life in the cities like ecological sustainability, social equity, quality of life, economic development, and public health. Transport planning and development enhance people access through construction of roads. Through planning, transport-related congestion can be reduced and improved accessibility attracts residences as well as job. The focus of this essay is to demonstrate how Transport planning and development, as a theme of urban and regional planning in Australia has made difference to the states of Victoria and South Australia. Discussion As mentioned by Robb (2014), all states in Australia have their own Government led by a Premier and Parliament tasked with making laws for everyone in that State. More importantly, the State Government is accountable for emergency services like ambulance and fire, police, schools, prisons, railways and most roads. States finance their projects by raising their own money by means of taxes and the Federal Government normally gives them financial resources. City-wide infrastructure as well as transport networks, new suburban developments, regional towns, urban infill projects, and shopping malls are some of the structures achieved through urban design. As mentioned by Infrastructure Australia (2011), high quality urban design have turned out to be crucial considering that the cities’ increased density and the need for managing the changing and growing population. Sustainability can only be achieved through excellent planning and design of Australia’s built environment. According to LeGates and Abercrombie (2004), towns’ planners and builders should have adequate wit to look after the wellbeing of people and the due ordinary dwellings’ arrangement. This is true considering that the urbanisation and population growth may indirectly increase the health risks through stress associated with climate on transport, housing, and energy infrastructure. Without a doubt, transport infrastructure faces various risks such as flooding and extreme heat but future risks quantification is still limited (Chiew et al., 2014). According to RDA ACT (2013), the ACT Government has been progressing different policies which intend to improve the population density, particularly along transport corridors. The residents of Canberra have different lifestyle as well as housing options, and they have turned out to be more diverse with increased high and low-rise developments on transport corridors. The urban densification plan steered by the Federal Government has been aligned with the public transport agenda that seeks to change the transport options in order that a small number of people can travel using private means and more go for public transport. As mentioned by RDA ACT (2013), ‘Transport for Canberra’ would become the transport planning foundation for the coming two decades and most importantly, it replaces and updates the 2004 Sustainable Transport Plan. Given that Canberra is changing and growing, ‘Transport for Canberra’ would enable the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion while making sure that people utilising public transport increases. In so doing, Canberrans’ accessibility to the city would be improved and the links all through the region would also be improved. In Victoria, the State Government believes that an improved urban structure offers a setting that unifies different buildings and activities and facilitates easy access for the residents. Improved urban structure, according to Victorian Government (2010), improves engagement as well as contact between people, which is crucial for a better public environment. Besides that, an integrated and extensive street networks offer improved connectivity, increases possible choice, exchange and interaction between the inhabitants of the cities. More importantly, an improved infrastructure supports the ongoing activities and offers the changes’ potential in redevelopment and use more importantly, a good structure facilitates change whereas the structure itself stability is retained. With the view to South Australia, the ‘Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan’ was purposely designed with the aim of guiding the state, local, federal and private sector investment towards the transport system for the next three decades. The plan covers all transport modes and outlines the goals, solutions, and objectives for the transport system development which are in line with South Australia’s Seven Strategic Priorities as well as Strategic Plan. Considering the Planning Strategy volumes that detail the land development plan as well as the South Australia’s Strategic Infrastructure Plan that details the state’s infrastructure needs, a need arose for the state to develop an integrated transport plan which demonstrates the transport system development for connecting people between their residential areas and recreation as well as employment facilities. Thanks to this Plan, businesses have been connected to markets with the aim of supporting economic growth. According to Government of South Australia (2014), the Plan continues playing a crucial role in ensuring that the planning of land use, delivery of strategic infrastructure as well as transport investment are integrated fully and offer plans’ hierarchy for delivering a more sustainable, prosperous, and liveable regional areas and city South Australian people. More importantly, the Plan is in line with the ‘Expert Panel on Planning Reform’ work that involves conducting a once-in-a-generation review of South Australia’s legislation that underpins its planning system. As pointed out by Government of South Australia (2014), the Plan offers an all-inclusive solutions suite for handling the present as well as the future South Australia’s transport challenges by specifically focusing improving the public transport role in servicing the State’s regional and urban centres as well as cities. The transport challenges are also handled through provision of resourceful connections to the import and export gateways. Furthermore, South Australia is prioritising transport services and infrastructure with the aim of encouraging development of mixed use in inner and central Adelaide. The state government has started supporting the vibrant communities through encouraging the residents to utilise the active modes of transport in regional centres and Greater Adelaide. The state has developed and maintained a planning system which promotes integrated transport as well as land use. The Plan has enabled the state to focus on offering greater travel opportunities and choice to enable South Australians to easily access experiences, services and jobs, which underline their wellbeing and quality of life. By increasing opportunities, South Australia has been able to build stronger and active communities that are safer ad healthier. As pointed out by Government of South Australia (2014), the Plan offers the businesses with sureness of reliable transport system to successfully operate as well as deliver services and goods across the city, and to international, interstate and local markets. It has been projected that the people of South Australian will gain from having a spatial development plans and strategic direction for the transport system that could be understood clearly. For some years, transport planning in South Australia has experienced significant improvements and reforms. The transport system’s key features before this time were: a successful and strong emphasis on project management, but no strategic transport planning system that is sufficiently strong preceded it. Before the introduction of the Plan, South Australia’s transport planning was insufficiently integrated and there was modal silo philosophy in the process of transport planning. Thanks to the Plan, the government of South Australia can now apply the mandated processes consistently. In Victoria, the’ Principal Public Transport Network (PPTN)’ was recently adopted and has since then become a crucial ‘Plan Melbourne’ component and has been integrated in the ‘planning schemes ‘across Victoria. According to Department of Economic Development (2017), the PPTN is a legislative tool for land use planning which facilitates the integration of transport and land use planning by offering the community and planners’ certainty regarding locations that are served or will be served through high-quality public transport. Under Victoria Planning Provisions, the PPTN have to be considered by the concerned authorities while making decisions. The PPTN signifies the current network as well as committed improved public transport services. The objective of designing PPTN was to support integrated land use as well as transport planning, by facilitating dense and more diverse development close to high-quality public transport with the aim of encouraging the usage of public transport. As pointed out by Brumby (2008), Victoria is planning to have a transport system capable of serving over seven million people in the state. The public transport map of Melbourne would be changed into a metro-style and mass-transit system similar to the other prosperous and large cities across the globe. Melbourne will have underground expansions and extensions to areas experiencing population growth and the current network’s capacity will be doubled. Furthermore, services to the cities in the region will become more frequent. There rail express lines would prevent the present delays, especially when the regional trains go through the suburban network. Brumby (2008) posits that the present transport system centred on Melbourne’s central business district would mature leading to additional connections around middle and outer Melbourne as well as cross the state. Although the city’s CBD is projected to remain Melbourne’s economic centre, many new jobs would come about in other areas such as Frankston, Broadmeadows, Box Hill, Dandenong, Ringwood as well as Footscray. Furthermore, development of new road/rail freight terminals and the Port of Hastings in Melbourne will help reduce the current pressure on Port of Melbourne, which is considered to be busiest container port in Australia. These developments would help reduce inner-Melbourne’s congestion in and will also lead to improved suburban economies near the residential areas. More houses are to be constructed along the tram routes in the inner city, with more focus on the roads’ higher capacity trams while buses as well as trains would be suitable for peak transportation in the outer as well as middle suburbs. Expanded as well as new walking and cycling tracks would experience a major change in inner Melbourne’s bicycle commuter traffic and also across regional Victoria. The outer growth areas in Melbourne would remain affordable and popular places for people to live, but the choices for transport, employment and housing would be more. Victoria governments planning to invest enormously in Geelong’s transport system in order to facilitate continued strong growth. Victoria government is also working hard in order to deliver major transport- related projects that would help reduce congestion and support the future economic growth of the state. For instance, the West Gate Tunnel Project is worth $5.5 billion and would offer an alternative solution to the West Gate Bridge, a direct Port access and a second river crossing. Besides that, the Monash Freeway Upgrade will help improve reliability as well as safety along the 27 miles between Pakenham and Chadstone. Another transport-related project in Victoria is CityLink Tulla Widening project whereby new lanes were added and measures taken to enhance the flow of traffic across 15 miles of freeway between the Melbourne Airport and CityLink tunnels. Other projects include Metro Tunnel and Level Crossing Removal that will help free up space in the City Loop to accommodate more trains and also removing worst level crossings across Melbourne. Basically, the relationship between economic growth and transport infrastructure draws a lot of attention from politicians, policy makers and economists. What remain certain is that transport planning plays a crucial role in Victoria and South Australia’s vision for their future. Transport planning involves considering the possible strategies comprehensively; it is an assessment process which involves different viewpoints; the relevant transportation-related organisations and agencies’ collaborative participation; and meaningful, timely, and open public participation. Without a doubt, transportation has enabled both Victoria and South Australia to achieve quality of life and economic health. Furthermore, transportation system has allowed goods and people to move across the state and has influenced the growth patterns as well as economic activities through land accessibility. The system performance influence public policy concerns such as social equity, environmental resource consumption, air quality, urban growth, land use, safety, economic development, as well as security. Owing to transportation planning, both Victoria and South Australia have been able to identify the critical links between societal goals and transportation. Basically, the process of planning is not just about listing capital and highway transit projects but also the development of strategies for managing, operating, and financing as well as maintaining the transportation system of the area in a manner that allows for the advancement of the state’s long-term goals. The road transport infrastructure sufficiency establishes the state’s success; therefore, lack of planning can be exhibited by the inability of the government to reduce poverty, expand trade, diversify production, manage the population growth or improve conditions in the environment. Undoubtedly, an improved transport system increases productivity particularly in the economy‘s agricultural sector and also reduces the costs of production. More importantly, infrastructure capacity is improved gradually with growth in economy. Having good road system will make it easier for the people to make contributions towards environments sustainability. More importantly, non-polluting power sources, clean water and sanitation, safe solid waste disposal, and improved traffic management in the cities and urban areas offer environmental benefits for every person. A good transport system help improve living standard; therefore, integrated transport policy and urban planning could result in more efficient utilisation of both transport and land capacity with encouraging environmental outcomes. Transport infrastructure expansion as evidenced in Victoria help reduces green gas emissions since traffic congestion is reduced enormously. A good transport system leads to shortened routs and reduce emissions. For that reason, improving the infrastructure capacity of Australia’s states would help improve management of traffic as well as land use and would promote non-motorised means of travelling such as public transport. As mentioned by Savery and Chastel (2009), robust systems and processes of planning enable communities to get used to the societal changes and are crucial for shaping the future where they would live. The planners’ role has become more and more vital since the society is focusing more on balancing development and environmental issues, achieving high quality urban design and promoting liveable communities. Given that towns and cities across Australia are changing and growing, the demand for planners has increased substantially to manage such changes sustainably. In the view of this, it has become imperative for the communication of positive and consistent messages regarding planning to different audiences (Savery & Chastel, 2009). Conclusion In conclusion, this essay has demonstrated how Transport planning and development, as a theme of urban and regional planning in Australia has made difference to the states of Victoria and South Australia. In both South Australia and Victoria, transport planning and development cannot yet be considered as sustainable, but both states show many positive signs. The states will achieve a lot by improving the environmental profile and quality of their transport system. As demonstrated in the essay, both states have espoused different approaches to improve their transportation infrastructure. Basically, the transportation planning leads to efficiency by means of engaging the accessibility-based planning that expands the solutions of transport to involve improvements of other means of transport and mobility management. As mentioned in the essay, transportation planning would help improve local economy and encourage people to utilise the public transport system. In so doing, traffic congestion and green gas emissions are reduced tremendously. The transport plans of both Victoria and South Australia focus on encouraging people to use public transport modes rather than private means. Improved transport system supports transport demand and offers long-term sustainable solution. Urban and regional planning has enabled South Australia and Victoria to foresee the direction through which the residents want to develop as well as grow. In so doing, the states have managed to improve transport infrastructure. References Brumby, J. (2008). The Victorian Transport Plan. Policy Paper, VR-Enthusiast. Chiew, F., Hughes, L., Newton, P. C., Schuster, S. S., Tait, A., & Whetton, P. (2014). Australasia. In V. Barros, C. Field, D. Dokken, M. Mastrandrea, K. Mach, T. Bilir, . . . K.L. Ebi, Climate Change 2014 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Regional Aspects (pp. 1371-1438). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Department of Economic Development, J. T. (2017). Principal Public Transport Network. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://economicdevelopment.vic.gov.au/transport/about-transport-for-victoria/planning-our-transport-system/transport-strategies-and-plans/principal-public-transport-network Government of South Australia. (2014). Overview of Infrastructure Planning and Delivery in South Australia. Policy Paper, Adelaide. Infrastructure Australia. (2011). Creating Places for People: an urban design protocol for Australian cities. Protocol Paper, Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. LeGates, R. T., & Abercrombie, P. (2004). Planning or Laissez-faire . In E. U. Planning. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. RDA ACT. (2013). Regional Development Australia - Australian Capital Territory. Strategic Regional Plan, Regional Development Australia, Canberra . Robb, A. (2014). The Role of Government in Australia. Educational Resource, Parliamentary Education Office. Savery, N., & Chastel, L. d. (2009). The importance and value of urban and regional planning. Australian Planner, 46(3), 6-9. Victorian Government. (2010). The Urban Design Charter for Victoria. Charter, Victorian Government, Melbourne. Read More

This is true considering that the urbanisation and population growth may indirectly increase the health risks through stress associated with climate on transport, housing, and energy infrastructure. Without a doubt, transport infrastructure faces various risks such as flooding and extreme heat but future risks quantification is still limited (Chiew et al., 2014). According to RDA ACT (2013), the ACT Government has been progressing different policies which intend to improve the population density, particularly along transport corridors.

The residents of Canberra have different lifestyle as well as housing options, and they have turned out to be more diverse with increased high and low-rise developments on transport corridors. The urban densification plan steered by the Federal Government has been aligned with the public transport agenda that seeks to change the transport options in order that a small number of people can travel using private means and more go for public transport. As mentioned by RDA ACT (2013), ‘Transport for Canberra’ would become the transport planning foundation for the coming two decades and most importantly, it replaces and updates the 2004 Sustainable Transport Plan.

Given that Canberra is changing and growing, ‘Transport for Canberra’ would enable the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion while making sure that people utilising public transport increases. In so doing, Canberrans’ accessibility to the city would be improved and the links all through the region would also be improved. In Victoria, the State Government believes that an improved urban structure offers a setting that unifies different buildings and activities and facilitates easy access for the residents.

Improved urban structure, according to Victorian Government (2010), improves engagement as well as contact between people, which is crucial for a better public environment. Besides that, an integrated and extensive street networks offer improved connectivity, increases possible choice, exchange and interaction between the inhabitants of the cities. More importantly, an improved infrastructure supports the ongoing activities and offers the changes’ potential in redevelopment and use more importantly, a good structure facilitates change whereas the structure itself stability is retained.

With the view to South Australia, the ‘Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan’ was purposely designed with the aim of guiding the state, local, federal and private sector investment towards the transport system for the next three decades. The plan covers all transport modes and outlines the goals, solutions, and objectives for the transport system development which are in line with South Australia’s Seven Strategic Priorities as well as Strategic Plan. Considering the Planning Strategy volumes that detail the land development plan as well as the South Australia’s Strategic Infrastructure Plan that details the state’s infrastructure needs, a need arose for the state to develop an integrated transport plan which demonstrates the transport system development for connecting people between their residential areas and recreation as well as employment facilities.

Thanks to this Plan, businesses have been connected to markets with the aim of supporting economic growth. According to Government of South Australia (2014), the Plan continues playing a crucial role in ensuring that the planning of land use, delivery of strategic infrastructure as well as transport investment are integrated fully and offer plans’ hierarchy for delivering a more sustainable, prosperous, and liveable regional areas and city South Australian people. More importantly, the Plan is in line with the ‘Expert Panel on Planning Reform’ work that involves conducting a once-in-a-generation review of South Australia’s legislation that underpins its planning system.

As pointed out by Government of South Australia (2014), the Plan offers an all-inclusive solutions suite for handling the present as well as the future South Australia’s transport challenges by specifically focusing improving the public transport role in servicing the State’s regional and urban centres as well as cities.

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