Metropolitan strategic planning: An Australian paradigm?

This article describes the characteristics of a distinctively Australian paradigm of metropolitan planning which reflect circumstances of governance, infrastructure provision and concentration on suburban expansion into surrounding countryside. The resultant plans are detailed in their arrangement of land use and communications, comprehensive and long term. There are indications this paradigm may be changing as these dominating influences alter in character. Contemporary metropolitan strategic planning in Europe and America is overviewed to establish the distinctiveness of the Australian paradigm. Changes in plan-shaping forces are leading the emergence of a new European strategic spatial planning paradigm very different to Australia's. Strategic spatial planning in the United States, while heterogeneous, has examples that reinforce the idea of an Australian paradigm in terms of the influence of governance structure and infrastructure agency on the level of spatial plan detail

Wetland Loss in the Transition to Urbanisation: a Case Study from Western Sydney, Australia

Together with other signatories of the Ramsar Convention, Australia is obliged to seek to halt wetland loss, which may include farm ponds/dams and other constructed wetlands. Since European arrival in Australia, extensive clearing of native ecosystems for agriculture and urbanisation has resulted in a concomitant loss of natural wetlands. However, there is limited information on changes in physical characteristics of wetlands with the transition to agriculture and urbanisation. In North-western Sydney, we investigated changes in wetland surface area, distance to nearest neighbour (connectivity), and shape complexity with transition from natural to agricultural and urban landscapes. There were significant differences amongst land use types for these three waterbody parameters. Wetlands in natural areas were larger and further apart from each other. Half the wetlands in agricultural and urban landscapes had small surface areas, but wetlands in agricultural areas were closer together, so connectivity for biota was potentially greater. Most wetlands in all land use classes were simple or irregular in shape, though urban areas had a higher proportion of irregular wetlands. We predict that on the current trajectory of increasing urbanisation, native biodiversity will continue to decline unless more emphasis is placed on the importance of wetlands – natural and constructed