Reviewing the Path Dependency in Australian Metropolitan Planning

This article advances that the distinctive characteristics of Australian metropolitan planning that developed last century have become entrenched and enlarged in the mainland metropolitan strategies of the first decade of the 21st century. However, while such plans were reasonably successful and appropriate in the circumstances of the long boom, this modernist approach is no longer apposite for the more fluid, fluent and complex dynamics of current Australian metropolitan centres. The article discusses why this may be so and explores ways in which current metropolitan strategic planning processes might be reconfigured to more positively reflect and guide these more complex and uncertain challenges.