the australian planners dilemma

8/3/2019 The Australian Planners Dilemma

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THE AUSTRALIAN PLANNER'SDILEMMA

L. B. KEEBLE


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~ " ' ' o o " ' : ; " ' . : ; , . ,.osINAUGUR AL LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OFQUEENSLAND, 8 JULY 1971

THE AUSTRALIAN PLANNER'SDILEMMA

by L. B. KEEBLEM.e., B.Sc. (Lond.), M.A. (Manc.),F.R.!.C.S., P.P.T.P.!., F.A.P.I.,Professor of Regional and Town Planning,University of Queensland

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND PRESS


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University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1971Text set in Monotype Bembo 11 on 12

Text paper is Two sided Matt Printing 23 x 36 x 531b.Printed in Australia by The Courier-Mail Printing Service,Campbell Street, Bowen Hills

National Library ofAustralia card number and ISBN 0 7022 0768 3This book is copyright. Apart rom any fair dealing forthe purposes of private study, research, criticism orreview, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no partmay be reproduced by any process without writtenpermission. Enquiries should be made to the publishers.

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THE AUSTRALIAN PLANNER'S DILEMMA

This is rather an oversimplified tide. There are in fact several suchdilemmas, most of which interlock with each other, and they crop u pall over the world, not just in Australia; however one can hardlyexpress all that in a tide. They are at least as manifest and troublesomehere as anywhere else where physical planning is carried on and theycan perhaps be seen here in starker outline than in most places. I shallidentify some of these dilemmas and then go on to concentrate on acouple of them.First, though, it is necessary to make clear what I mean by planning

in the context of this lecture. I mean the moulding and direction ofgrowth and change in land and building uses, including the intensityof use, by government agencies in accordance with definite political,social, and economic aims. I specifically do not limit it to the mereprediction of growth and change and the provision of appropriateinfrastructure. This must be emphasized, for much Australian planning(and most American planning) seems to be conceptually confined tothis useful but insufficiendy ambitious goal.The first dilemma for a planner who does any inward looking mustbe to decide whether to stay in planning or get out of t, and I'm notsaying this in any frivolous way. The frustration quotient in planningis so high that no one of choleric or depressive temperament, likely tobe afllicted with ulcers, oug ht to stay in it for his life's sake. Financially,too, it's a pretty insecure game. As a public servant in planning onemay be well paid and secure but, in terms of what I shall be talkingabout, comparatively uninfluential. As regards consultants, ColinBuchanan has roundly declared that even in a country such as GreatBritain, where a relatively large amount of attention is given tophysical planning, and even for a ,person as famous as himself, it is

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impossible to rely on planning consultancy alone to give one a living.There has to be either a nice academic chair to provide an income tofall back on or else a secondary practice in architecture or civil engineering (or sometimes both a chair and 'a secondary practice!) Thisposition is not satisfactory. No serious-minded planner could beblamed for asking himself whether he wants to remain in a field inwhich his role in society is so il l defined and mostly so little valued.The second dilemma which presents itself to planners is quitedifferent; should a planner in contemporary Australian society insiston trying to plan properly in accordance with his hard-learned expertise or should he avoid the conflicts with society and employers whichthis is likely to involve and just push along doing the best he canwithin the limits of a distorted and intellectually impoverished existingsituation, effecting such little improvements here and there as he hasthe opportunity to promote: If he follows the latter course he islikely to be generally honoured and loved rather than hated anddespised but his achievements are not likely to be considerable ormemorable. In planning, just keeping on keeping on in the hope ofgradual improvement does not really offer much hope. There has tobe ajump to viabilityof rog-like rather than cane toad-like dimensionsfor worthwhile achievements to become possible.A variant of this dilemma, sufficiently different from it to be worthdistinguishing, is whether to go for long-term advantages or shortterm advantages. In a good many cases the dilemma is fairly easilyresolved by skilfully preparing short-term plans which will fit in wellwith long-term objectives; in fact everyone ought as far as possibleto do this in planning, but there are many awkward cases. Of theseperhaps the most frequently encountered is the demand for one todesign a programme of road widening or "improvement" which mayproduce specific and even, perhaps, dramatic short-term advantagesin situations where one knows quite well that in terms of any sensiblelong-term programme the last thing that is desirable is "improvement"and that one ought to be going for the removal of traffic altogetherfrom the roads concerned and their conversion into pedestrian-onlyways. It is so much easier to convince people of the importance ofshort-term than oflong- term problems that there is a constant temptation to concentrate on the short term.Another awkward and dangerous dilemma is the temptationpresented to senior planners nearly everywhere to go along with the"team" concept of planning for the sake of harmony, co-operation,

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and short-term progress while knowing perfectly well that.,at)eastin its more extreme forms, such a concept may be fatal to the emergenceof a genuine planning profession and a genuine planning process.The last of the dilemmas I shall mention is whether to behave like atechnocrat, work out the best planning proposals you can and backthem up simply by means of rhetoric and pulling wool over people'seyes, or genuinely try to enlist public understanding, participation,and support in the planning process. In what follows I shall concentratemainly on the second and last of these dilemmas.

I am sure that honest and intelligent town planners are frequentlyand acutely dismayed by their ignorance of the subject they professand that they tend to feel fairly helpless because, in order to remedythis ignorance, it would be necessary for quite a lot of money to bespent; not sums of money comparable to those involved in visitingthe moon, but sums involving the expenditure of perhaps severaltens of housands of dollars on each substantial problem. No one withthe necessary funds has yet shown readiness to recognize or financethe kind of research needed for fundamental planning research in theseareas.I think planners themselves are very largely to blame for this forthey have not sufficiently honestly identified the areas in which theyneed much more knowledge, perhaps because on the whole thesesound rather elementary; so elementary that the ordinary intelligentlay member of the public might think it incredible that everythingthat needed to be known about them was not already known.I shall mention three such subjects of vital concern for the planner.

In the first, important, though hazy, information is available but in theother two, almost incredibly, planners operate almost in the dark.First the one about which we do know something; the British Ministryof Transport in its publication Roads in Urban Areas1 published a tablegiving the maximum amounts of traffic which can, in its view, passthrough simple uncontrolled T junctions of roads without unduedanger or congestion. At about the same time the Buchanan group,in Traffic in Towns, 2 Appendix I, sought to discover the level of trafficintensity above which it is not safe or comfortable for pedestrians tobe allowed to cross roads when and where they choose. Specificsuggestions were published based on assumptions and techniqueswhich were admittedly exploratory.These two sets of information do not sound very impressive;probably in few important areas of human activity would policy be

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based on evidence as scanty as that which they provide. Neverthelessin the field of planning they have made it possible to proceed, as neverbefore, with a certain amount of confidence in designing the layoutof residential areas. It turns out in fact that in areas where design canbe reasonably free no unduly onerous limitations are imposed thoughslightly novel forms oflayout design become necessary. Tho ugh it islittle recognized that this is so these two investigations provide arational basis for residential design which never before existed.Next I mention the application of computers to town planning.Computer technology has already carried out useful ad hoc work fortown planners but this has been limited mainly to subjects which areeither particularly apt for computer techniques to handle or those inwhich finance-commanding interests other than planning have movedin to sponsor investigation. My own experience has not been veryencouraging. Some years ago it seemed to me that, as a kind of trialrun or preliminary, it would be interesting to have produced a computer programme which, simply in terms of main road costs, woulddetermine the relative costs of all feasible alternative land use combinations for a new town of a hundred thousand people on a completelyregular and unimpeded site, the only constraints being those imposed

.; by accessibility requirements and road capacities. I have not yetsucceeded in having such a programme prepared despite fairly strenuous i f discontinuous attempts. Numerous programmes exist forcompanng three or four alternatives but not for comparing theseveral million which a comprehensive approach to planning throwsup.My third example is of quite a different kind. Successful townplanning depends upon the provision in the right places of amounts ofland appropriate for the urban land needs of the amount and kind ofpopulation predicated in the brief for the preparation of the plan.Without reasonably close estimates of the land needed per thousandpopulation for each main urban use no realistic town planning ispossible. In most towns housing takes up about half the urban areabut the exact amount of land which ought to be allowed for it i f

effective demand were reasonably accurately allowed for is quiteunknown. Investigation of existing conditions in comparable townsis quite easy but almost worthless because the kinds of housing actuallyproduced probably bear little relationship to genuine demand. Thisis partly because in conditions in which most housing is supplied byprivate enterprise under almost uncontrolled conditions dwelling types

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rand sizes and garden sizes, which govern density, are chosen b y v ~ . . r y conservative criteria. Among these overwhelmingly the greatest isusually the desire to play safe on the part of the entrepreneur and tocater for the largest market, with very little catering for minority tastes.This distorting factor is overlaid, and itself often further distorted, bypublicly imposed restrictions on density, usually dating back fiftyyears or more, and even then not worked out in accordance withgenuine social or technological considerations but simply based upona set of rules for which the rational foundations are either lost in themists of time or never existed at all.It is very good that the Queensland branch of the AustralianInstitute of Urban Studies is conducting a well-based though unavoidably modest investigation of this kind. It will not provide a full set ofinformation but will at least constitute a good start and lighten thegloom of gnorance.Misunderstanding about what planning controls are for and onwhat criteria they should be based has to be dispelled i fproper planningis to be done. It is often misunderstanding almost as profound as inthe apocryphal story of Lyndon Johnson, who, while president, wassupposed to have done a sort of state of the union tour by helicopter.Over Florida he saw on a lake two young white American men in aboat, towing behind them a young negro. Apparently they wereengaged in water-skiing. Johnson seized the loud-hailer and expressedin warm terms his delight at seeing young white Americans engagedin such splendid and healthy sport in company with a young blackAmerican. The helicopter then zoomed away and one of the youngwhites turned to the other and said: "Man, he may be a fine politicianbut he sure knows nothing abou t alligator trawling."

It is in conditions such as this that town planners the world overoperate, but this is only one part of the story; the other is equallydismaying. Everywhere town planners find themselves unable toimpress on the authorities they serve the need to make use fully ofsuch knowledge and expertise, by no means negligible nowadays,as town planners possess. It is not always easy accurately todistinguish between the unwillingness and the inability of authoritiesto make use of the planning advice given to them. Quite often theysimply do not operate within a conceptual system sufficiently sophisticated for them to muster the courage to act upon the advice tendered;but perhaps even mor e often, they have n o sufficient financial resourcesavailable to them to do so, and insufficient political experience and

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determination effectively to bombard and embarrass political authorities at a higher level without whose help they can do little.One tries to be humble about one's lack of relevant technical information, but is eventually driven back to the realization that how-ever little one knows it is so much more than there seems to be anyhope of applying that it often appears a waste of ime to try to acquireany more technical knowledge. Rather, one feels, one should be using

one's utmost powers to acquire the techniques for gaining morepolitical influence, by which I mean, specifically, the development ofmeans to convince governments and other employing authoritiesthat the proposals one is putting forward are the ones which they, inall the prevailing circumstances, ought to adopt. It is necessary for theplanner to get in right at the nerve centres and influence the planningpolicy of governments which take sufficient interest in planning toexercise decisive responsibility for it. It may be no ted in passing thatthis does not fit Queensland; in Queensland there appears to be nogovernment planning policy, and the principal decisive influence onplanning is exerted by the Local Government Court. This, howeverably it performs, is, in turn, controlled, in effect, by a mass of non-rational law, precedent, and custom which it is difficult for the courtto overcome, since no sufficiently clear, rational, and authoritativeguidelines have ever been available to enable it to exert the positiveand creative influence which it is essential that any good planningtribunal should bring to bear.

Even in England planning policy in the last decade seems to havebeen formed out of a curious mixture of political expediency andsuperficial planning expertise. The English South-East Study optedrather strongly for the creation of large new cities, conceived asgrowing, over a generation or so, to a size as large, perhaps, as aquarter of a million people. In that and various related studies,including, in particular, the Northampton, Bedford, North BucksStudy, other possible policies were examined for absorbing the 3imillion extra population expected to need accommodation in thesouth-east of England by the end of the century. But the alternativesput up were all like men of straw, put up only to be demolishedcontemptuously in a few words; no intellectually stringent analysisand validation of the large new city policy was ever attempted. Inopposing the creation of what is now known as Milton Keynes onbehalfof objectors I put forward the proposition that since one coulddemonstrate that an extra 3i million people could readily be distributed

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: ' ; ~ . through south-east England by means of moderate expansion ofexisting towns on land which is well related to those existing townsfunctionally, and is physically suitable for development, and that sinceit seemed probable that many of those towns would have reserve orlatent capacity in many of their services and infrastructure, then itwould be well not to commit the country witho ut further investigationto a policy which, as it seemed and still seems to me, is perilousbecause of severe interference with central place structure and theincursion of massive development into scarce open countryside.Here, in fact, was a first-rate example ofan opportunity to use thresholdanalysis to test the economic. as well as the physical validity of what Ihad said, but this was never done. The big new city policy goesahead without any adequate testing of its merits in comparison withother possible methods.By contrast, Canberra provides an encouraging example. It issadly tmdervalued in Australia, so that one is tempted to say that a new

city is not without honour save in its own country . It strides acrosshistory; the original concept can be thought of as a last curiousflickering of Renaissance geometry, while plans for its future growthreach forward to hint at the possibilities of planning technology ablyharnessed for humane purposes. It is true that much of the housing istrivial, but that does not matter so very muc h for, assuming the continued existence of the human race, Canberra is likely to be inhabitedlong after all the houses now there have decayed and been replaced.By then let us hope that means will have been found to enjoy thebenefits of detached houses without sacrificing the beauty and elegancemade possible by deliberate grouping.The comparatively little known Voorhees report on Canberracommissioned a few years ago seems to me to come closer to genuine

scientific evaluation and comparision of alternative planning policiesthan any other study of he kind that I have seen, and puts to shame thewoolly generalizations of English equivalents. How one wishes thatthe techniques and calculations used in it had been more fully andclearly set out so that one could be certain of its merits instead ofhaving largely to intuit them.A much simpler English example is the long-drawn-out drama ofthe Oxford Christchurch meadow relief road. It has been said that anOxfor d road inquiry has become almost as popular an annual sportingevent in England as the Oxfo rd and Cambridge boat race. So far asI know the matter is still unresolved, th0ugh the problem is simple and

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could now be resolved instantly though it did present some difficultyin its earlier stages. Briefly, the object was to build a road bypassingthe centre of Oxford so that heavy through traffic should not have topass along the superb High Street. To the horror of many people theroute chosen ran through the hallowed Christchurch meadows.The defenders of the road claimed with some justification that, toattract th rough traffic on to the relief road, it must follow a convenientroute and not involve an excessive detour, which any alternative routewould have to do. Other defenders of the road simply said thatChristchurch meadows was, anyhow, just a rather inferior cow pastureand why worry, But in later years it became evident that it was bothpracticable and desirable to stop up the High Street and convert it intoa pedestrian way, thereby making it more usable and protecting itsancient buildings from the shock of passing heavy traffic. In thatcase the use for the relief road of a route which involved a detour didnot matter, for traffic would have to use it. No minister has been keento make a decision and one called for a new traffic survey to help himdecide or, perhaps more likely, to put off the evil day of decision, fortraffic surveys are not now very relevant to this issue.

One sometimes feels that a good deal of harm is done by performingover-elaborate planning surveys, in which the trees which representplanning policy are lost in a wood of confusing and barely relevantfact. In some cases one can go further and say that survey is deliberatelymade over-elaborate in order to avoid providing any clear pointersand to leave the way open to the planning authority concerned toadopt a plan for reasons not connected with technical data. One is, infact, a little reminded of the story of the business tycoon who hired afum of industrial psychologists to help him choose a secretary. Theirrepresentatives helped him to carry out short list interviews. The tycoon, at the end of the day, asked for their conclusions and was given,in elaborate psychological language, a list of the merits and defects ofeach of he girls interviewed. It seemed to him to leave them all aboutequal, the good points of one balancing the good points of another."So", he said, "You really mean it would be alright for me to haveanyone of them," "Yes." "Good!" he cried, "I' ll have the one withthe big bottom."

What makes things especially difficult for the dedicated planneranxious to promote the success of his profession for the sake of thehuman race is the virtual impossibility of inding enough time, energy,and wisdom simultaneously to press for the acquisition and spreading10

1Jof greater technical planning knowledge and also to acquire greaterpolitical expertise and influence. The result is that those who seek topromote genuine technical advance by their research and publicationstend to be forgotten or ignored as unpractical theorists, while thosewho pursue the path of political acceptability and influence find itdifficult to maintain professional integrity. The latte r are seduced intoadvocacy of ideas which have nothing to recommend them exceptthat they are so crude that they can easily be popularized, while theformer are often lured into areas of research which have little to dowith genuine problems related to decisions about the form andpattern of urban change and growth. Over the last ten years, forexample, the articles in the Journal of he Town Planning Institute and inthe Royal Australian Planning Institute Journal have become more andmore esoteric. Whil e some, even of the most obscure, contain theseeds of techniques which might be applied to determine desirableforms of change and growth others do not. For example I cannotreally believe that the theory of games is truly applicable to planningof a kind which attempts to steer rather than merely predict growthand change.

One has here to distinguish between knowledge for its own sakewhich, through the greater understanding of the world and its operations which it imparts, may, indirectly and in the long run, produceideas leading to valuable action, and knowledge which is too remoteeven to do this.In a different category come techniques which are complex andmysterious sounding but which, given a reasonably sophisticatedplanning system, can be directly and fully applied. One thinks ofgravity models, sieve maps, threshold theory, and Lichfield's planningbalance sheet. All of these embody techniques which can directly beapplied in any planning situation in which a level of planning competence higher than the elementary can be brought to bear.In the intermediate class comes the systems approach to planning.This provides a vivid and enlightening way of hinking about regional

and urban problems but it is hard to see just how it could affecttechnique as distinct from concepts.Now I come to make suggestions as to how the dilemmas I havebeen talking about might be resolved. I think it is inescapable tha t ifthis is to be done planners have to take some sort of a lead politically;

by this I don't mean that they necessarily have to enter parliament orbecome aldermen but that a considerable proportion of them need to11

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spend a good deal of their time in trying to spread public enlightenment and interest about planning. This is less necessary if here happento be available gifted and enthusiastic amateurs like Sir FrederickOsborn in England or, much earlier, Ebenezer Howard, but these donot grow on every tree.There are sad lessons to be learned from English experience sincethe Second World War . There, perhaps a little surprisingly, restraintson public expression of opinion by public servants are both clearerand more severe than they tend to be in Australia. Personally Iregard this severity and definiteness as desirable and necessary fordemocracy, but if professional planners are going to perform aneffective missionary role then it follows that a substantial proportionof their abler members have got to be outside public employment,and this is not so in Britain. A recent survey there showed that justover 70 per cent of qualified British planners are public servants.Having regard to the very comprehensive and on the whole goodBritish planning legislation, the relatively advanced state of centraland local government, and the relative numerousness of the planningprofession, it is surprising and disappointing that British planning has

-: not been much more effective. I believe that this is due not only to solarge a proportion of British planners being publicly employed andmuzzled but also to the unfortunate dominance of the unspecializedadministrator in the British government system. Bad though Queensland government is in many ways it is at least heartening to perceivethat civil servants with a technical professional background reachlevels of status and influence here much higher than is possible fortheir counterparts in Britain. It is almost inconceivable that anyonein Britain in a position at all nearly equivalent to that of the Queensland Co-ordinator General would have had an engineering background.

In consequence British planning has tended to be dominated by theunspecialized civil servant, and this has been particularly unfortunatebecause planning is the kind of subject about which it is easy for anyintelligent person to feel that he knows a great deal when in fact hisknowledge is negligible. It is interesting to note that there was abrief period in British planning, from the latter part of the war untilabout 1950, when this was not so, when professional planners of avery high order, including Holford and others not so very much lesseminent worked in the ministry and hammered out postwar Britishplanning policy. This period represented the very frnest flowering ofBritish government planning activity. But then the administrators

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flocked in and took over with horrifying speed and c o m p i ~ ~ e r i ~ s s , using the professional planners in the ministry as little more thantechnicians. The best among these got out rapidly. Though, indirectly, this had the good result of making Buchanan a world figurein planning (which he could hardly have become if he had stayed inthe ministry) and of providing New Zealand with its first planningprofessor, the net effect was one of heavy loss.Assuming the existence of an effective background professionalmissionary force in planning let us go on to consider what results itshould be aiming at, not only in missionary work but in day-to-dayprofessional work. There are, I think, two main needs: first the needfor planning proposals to be comprehensible and capable of beingtested and in fact to be tested, and, second, the need for an adequatelegal-administrative framework within which suitable proposals canbe made and can be effectively implemented. Not even EvonneGoolagong would be able to do very well at Wimbledon if she wasonly allowed to use a ping pong bat, and that is more or less thesituation of planners in, say, Brisbane at the present time; they simplyhave no adequate tools to use.Planners have to learn to explain themselves well enough to becometrusted and then, when they are trusted, they can influence legislation;but how can they get themselves into a position of trust when thesystem hardly permits them to do work which will demonstrate theirtrustworthiness? There is no simple, easy answer to that one butsomehow there has to be a break-in. It is useless for planners to shrugtheir shoulders and say, "Ah well, this is the system I work under, Imust do my best with it". I f it is a thoroughly bad or inadequatesystem they have got to stand up and get it changed if they want todo any good.I want to consider what might be done now in Queensland. Allthe Australian state planning systems have strong similarities butQueensland's is the one which most people here will know mostabout and it is probably the one which is the most in need of change.Currently there is in Queensland no sufficient amount of widelyavailable planning expertise, though there are some very good planners,and there is virtually no legal-administrative planning system whichamounts to anything. There is obviously public dissatisfaction withthis situation on a fairly large scale, so conditions are such that veryrapid change and progress could be made.I think it is encouraging to think of, Ireland; its resemblances to

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Queensland are numerous: lovely landscape, bad schools, repressivecensorship, a small population, few experienced planners, and lotsof Irishmen. There are of course some differences; Queensland isbigger and warmer and Ireland doesn't y ~ t have a Lutheran chiefminister. But Ireland has modern, sophisticated planning legislation.It is based on the current English planning system, unlike Queensland'swhich is based on the English planning system of the late 1920's. Butthe Irish system is no slavish copy of the English one; it is quite skilfully adapted to local conditions and needs. When I last saw it at workin 1967 it perhaps could not be said to have been working very wellbut at least it gives an opportunity, which may well be taken, for goodplanning to be done; with a quite inadequate legal-administrativesystem there is no chance of doing go od planning.This is important no t only in the direct ways to which I shall comein a moment bu t in an interesting indirect way. The most importantthing to be done to resolve many of the Australian planner's dilemmasis to provide him with the opportunity to do really worthwhile workin Australia. To produce conditions in which good and experiencedplanners would be eager to wor k in Queensland would be a w onderful thing; a sound legal-administrative set-up is the first requirement

"for that.I think a very simple legislative way to take the first steps towardsthat situation would be to enact that any Queensland local authoritysubmitting a plan must have had the advice of a suitably qualified andexperienced town planner. The lord mayor of Brisbane frequentlywields a huge red herring, whirls it round his head, and deplores theway in which unkind and ignorant academics and ill-disposed andself-interested persons insult his wonderful and devoted planningstaff. This is quite untrue. I have not seen any references to the Brisbane City Council planning staff more unkind than those I have mademyself, and the worst remarks that I have made about them I wouldbe willing to make in their presence without any fear of woundingthem. What I say is that the city council hasn't got enough plannersand doesn't make good use of them and that it hasn't got a chief

planner of sufficient stature and experience or with the proper statusfor the planning ofa quite large city like Brisbane to be done effectively.They need about twenty qualified planners, of whom several needto be people with long and deep experience of important planningprojects.

It is enough to make the gods weep to see the brutal way in which14

Brisbane, with its magnificent site and splendid people, is b ~ i n g butchered. .,., ':..,There are two very important legislative planning niatters which I

am going to set aside on the grounds that they need much morelengthy discussion than I can provide here and by their nature arelikely, at best, to take some years to deal with properly. I refer firstto the need for effective legislation to govern and relate the levels ofcompensation payable in respect of injurious affection resulting fromplanning restriction and compulsory purchase (and the need for thecommunity to reap at least a proportion of ncreases in land value dueto planning control) and second to the need to fuse planning andsubdivisional control law.The most important point which I will discuss is that no goodplanner and no good planning authority fears opposition or tries tostifle it. Although the general soundness and validity of proposalscan and should be demonstrated one can hardly ever say that theproposals in a town plan are definitely all absolutely right and thebest possible. Planning has to design for a loose fit in which there hasto be flexibility, not flexibility of the kind which might lead one intwo years' time to tear the whole thing up and start again, but inwhich errors in forecasting can be allowed for. But, apart from that,the best of plans are open to criticism that they have included rather toomuch or too little land for particular purposes or that the spatialrelationships of uses in different parts of the area could be improvedor that some road proposals are unnecessary or inadequate and soforth; and the best way to get the best fmal result is to argue all thisout i n public before a competent and impartial tribunal, which mightbe empowered to make the final decisions itself, or, more likely,would make recommendations to the appropriate minister.This means holding public inquiries into town and other plans.Much of what I have to suggest could in fact be implemented withinthe umbrella of the present very general law, but there are reasonswhich make it desirable that specific duties and obligations should belaid upon planning authorities and minister.

The benefits to be gained from public planning inquiries of allkinds, not just those into town plans, are greatly reduced if the peoplewho take par t in them are put at financial hazard. At present inQueensland there are, of course, no public inquiries into town plans,but people who appeal against refusals of planning permission orobject to permission given to others by local authorities under dis-15


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cretionary powers are placed in a very bad position which it is im-portant to remedy immediately. Public debates on planning disputesare quite unlike hearings as to whether someone stole the gold-platedRolls Royce or ran someone down with'it or broke his contract;the debate is usually about whether A's ideas or B's ideas about thebest use for a piece ofland or the best way to develop it are the soundest. The loser of the argument has done nothing wrong, for whichhe should be penalized. Indeed he may often have performed apublic service in having the matter ventilated, and he should not befinancially penalized. At present many a Queensland citizen dare notpress his objection to a local authority's decision on a planning matteras far as a court hearing for fear that ifhe loses he will have to pay notonly his own costs, which is fair enough, but the authority's costs aswell. Some smaller authorities with ti ny resources are similarly fearful.This is a manifest injustice which could be put right by means of veryshort and, I would think, non-contentious legislation, while abusecould, as in England, be prevented by reserve powers to impose costsagainst a manifestly frivolous appellant.But that is a detail, though a very important one in cOlmectionwith democratic rights. Much of the fundamental structure of

.. Queensland planning machinery needs changing if planning is to bedone simply, speedily, justly, and effectively. To do this planners andlawyers need to work in close partnership. Planners need to know alot about law; not only how to apply it but how to make it and whatkind oflaw will best serve their needs. But it is lawyers who have theskill and experience actually to frame law that will stand up to attackand be free of loopholes. I gather that Queensland lawyers are notmuch interested in planning law and think oflegal practice in planningas something rather lowly. This is a pity. I notice that, of the barristers with and against whom I played the merry game of planningappeals across the face of Britain for a decade, at least, seven are nowhigh court judges and one has recently become l ord chief justice, soperhaps there is more future in practising planning law than theQueensland bar realises!

The first big change needed is a very simple one which would savegreat quantities of useless clerical work. It is to enact that all localauthorities in Queensland are henceforth endowed with planningpowers in accordance wit h a statewide statutory code. There is simplyno point in, as at present, nominally requiring a local authority to getpermission to prepare a planning scheme and use planning powers,16

and there is no point in each separate local authority producing itsown set of ordinances, which have to be separately approved, h 6 w e ~ r closely they may resemble each other. All the planning law neededcan appropriately apply to the whole of Queensland and can eitherbe contained in one statute or, preferably, with the more generalmaterial in a statute and the more detailed material in regulations,which can be changed to meet changing requirements more speedilythan can statutes.The essential first requirement of such law is that it should closelyand clearly define what kinds of operations require planning permission and which do not. Astonishingly, this vital matter is not atpresent directly touched on in Queensland legislation, whereas nearlythe whole of that part of British planning law wh ich t own plannersreally need to be familiar with is included in sets of very carefuldefinitions. Do you need planning permission to put a guinea pighutch in your back garden, or only for a very big hutch and if so howbig, It would be hard to find out in Queensland. It is necessary toenact that planning permission is prima facie needed for all buildingoperations and changes in the use of and and buildings and then to goon to define what is meant by these terms and to add de minimisprovisions which exempt specified minor operations and changesfrom obligat ion to obtain permission. Everyone then knows wherehe is except for an inescapable grey band in which there is room fordoubt; but skilful drafting can make this grey band a very narrowone. This system has worked, if not perfectly, at least very wellindeed in Britain for a generation.Next, it follows, it is necessary to impose a universal obligation toobtain planning permission for all operations and changes of use(including mining!) which are not statutorily exempted, and this inturn removes any reason to have statutory zoning, with its contingentembarrassment that the accidental dropping of a bit of red paint onthe edge of a map may confer the right to build a house on the landinadvertently coloured. It becomes possible to look at every proposedoperation or change of use and decide whether, in the light of one'splan, it is unacceptable in principle, acceptable in principle but undesirable in detail, or entirely acceptable. I cannot believe that thereis any valid objection to this kind of system on grounds of time, costor justice.

It is, however, a matter for debate to what extent detailed planningcontrols should be formalized or left entirely to the discretion of the17


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local authority, subject to rights of appeal. I personally incline verystrongly to the latter but I recognize that its adoption involves patternsof thought and an expression of confidence in the competence andintegrity of local authorities which is somewhat alien to Queenslandthought. Certainly, wit h the British system, in which control overdetails such as density, heights of buildings, road layouts and widths,distances from boundaries, and so on is left completely to the discretion of the local authority, there is general satisfaction temperedby an appreciable but not very strong desire in some quarters for someslight measure of formalization so that developers can have priorassurance of the sort of performance standards they must meet. I amat least absolutely certain that complete formalization is quite inappropriate; it puts both authorities and developers in strait jackets,discourages imaginative design and leaves authorities helpless whenconfronted by abominably badly designed development whichhappens to comply with all the relevant ordinances. Rigi dly definedminimum allotment areas and minimum allotment frontages are, inparticular, crippling to good design, especially for sites of awkwardshape.I hope Queensland will advance rapidly towards a situation of

., complete discretion, but meanwhile it would not be difficult to framelegislation to produce a situation intermediate between that and thepresent system.The present system produces many unsatisfactory situations whichit cannot have been the intention to produce. The projected substantial residential development at Moggill provides an interestingexample. I am not here discussing whether this development is agood one or not, I am simply using it to point out the very undesirable consequences produced by the current legal system. Thesite in question is zoned in the Brisbane Town Plan as non-urban,which means that the city council has no discretion to permit theproposed development. In order to permit it the council has to seekpermission from the minister to re-zone it for residential purposes.If t had been a matter of the council exercising its discretion underdevelopment control powers there would have been a right of objection and a cour t hearing for those who felt strongly enough and couldraise enough money bu t in the case of re-zoning there is no such right.Yet this development, quite apart from the possible personal objections of residents in the vicinity, raises fundamental issues. It is adrastic variation of the to wn plan for Brisbane, and calls into question

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all kinds of matters such as the desirable ultimate urban extel1t;iormand texture of Brisbane, effects on the loading of the road system,desirability of maintaining a green belt around Brisbane, and so on.It clearly should be the subject of a very stringent public inquiry atwhich all with an interest of any kind can put forward their views.My personal view is that it ought not to be permitted, but there isno way in which I can effectively put forward that view.Perhaps one could summarize this by saying that real town planningis not just allocating a permitted use or set of uses for every bit oflandin the planned area, with associated ordinances prescribing performancestandards, but that there should be a large element of creative designin it, even though in realistic planning creative design is necessarilycircumscribed by legal and financial considerations.

What is needed is a situation in which the city council puts forwarda plan in which it says what its assumptions are as to relevant facts,what its general planning policy is, how the plan expresses that policy,and why the particular plan put forward is considered to be betterthan possible alternatives. All the material comprising the plan, bothwritten and drawn, including the survey information upon which itis based, should be prominently displayed in many parts of the cityand on sale to the public at prices (if necessary, subsidized) which putit within easy reach of everyone. The inevitable battle should thenbe joined, with all who feel aggrieved doing their best to demolishthe plan and all who approve of it doing their best to validate it.Even if he motives of many such people happen to be selsh this doesnot matter i f hey happen to be right about the planning merits of heparticular issue they are contesting.

When that had been done and the minister had received the tribunal's report he would be in the best possible position to knowwhether he ought to approve the plan and, if so, what modificationsto it he should require.No informed person can doubt the need for effective physicalplanning today, nor can anyone reasonably deny the need for availability of an adequate supply of good planners to resolve the dilemmas

set out in the earlier part of this lecture. To get a good supply ofAustralian planners it is necessary, I repeat, to make it worthwhilefor gifted people to become and remain planners in Australia; forthis to happen there have to be conditions in which they can exercisea high level of skill, for i f a high level of skill is not called for inplanning it is not worthwhile doing it, and clerks can do the sort of19

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pseudo-planning that obtains after brief training. A condition precedent for real planning is that government has to be interested in it,sufficiently interested to be determined to , create a proper legaladministrative planning framework. This, apparently, in Queenslandtoday is only likely to happen i f here is a strong, clear, public demandfor it to happen. This could best be expressed in clear, forceful messages to the government adding up to: "We won't re-elect you unlessyou do this". And, in tum, for that to happen depends on informedand persistent permeation of public opinion. I hope this lecture mayhave been a humble example of this process.

NOTES1 London: H.M. S.O. , 1966.2 London: H.M.S.O., 1963.

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the australian planners dilemma

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