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1 ~ '71
THE AUSTRALIAN PLANNER'S
DILEMMA
L. B. KEEBLE
.. ,
.os;:
INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
QUEENSLAND, 8 JULY 1971
THE AUSTRALIAN PLANNER'S
DILEMMA
by L. B. KEEBLE
M.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
University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1971
Text 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 of Australia card number and ISBN 0 7022 0768 3
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for
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review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part
may be reproduced by any process without written
permission. 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 such
dilemmas, most of which interlock with each other, and they crop up
all over the world, not just in Australia; however one can hardly
express all that in a tide. They are at least as manifest and troublesome
here as anywhere else where physical planning is carried on and they
can perhaps be seen here in starker outline than in most places. I shall
identify some of these dilemmas and then go on to concentrate on a
couple 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 of
growth and change in land and building uses, including the intensity
of use, by government agencies in accordance with definite political,
social, and economic aims. I specifically do not limit it to the mere
prediction of growth and change and the provision of appropriate
infrastructure. This must be emphasized, for much Australian planning
(and most American planning) seems to be conceptually confined to
this useful but insufficiendy ambitious goal.
The first dilemma for a planner who does any inward looking must
be to decide whether to stay in planning or get out of it, and I'm not
saying this in any frivolous way. The frustration quotient in planning
is so high that no one of choleric or depressive temperament, likely to
be afllicted with ulcers, ought to stay in it for his life's sake. Financially,
too, it's a pretty insecure game. As a public servant in planning one
may be well paid and secure but, in terms of what I shall be talking
about, comparatively uninfluential. As regards consultants, Colin
Buchanan has roundly declared that even in a country such as Great
Britain, where a relatively large amount of attention is given to
physical planning, and even for a ,person as famous as himself, it is
3
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 to
fall back on or else a secondary practice in architecture or civil engin-
eering (or sometimes both a chair and 'a secondary practice!) This
position is not satisfactory. No serious-minded planner could be
blamed for asking himself whether he wants to remain in a field in
which his role in society is so ill defined and mostly so little valued.
The second dilemma which presents itself to planners is quite
different; should a planner in contemporary Australian society insist
on trying to plan properly in accordance with his hard-learned exper-
tise or should he avoid the conflicts with society and employers which
this is likely to involve and just push along doing the best he can
within the limits of a distorted and intellectually impoverished existing
situation, effecting such little improvements here and there as he has
the opportunity to promote: If he follows the latter course he is
likely to be generally honoured and loved rather than hated and
despised but his achievements are not likely to be considerable or
memorable. In planning, just keeping on keeping on in the hope of
gradual improvement does not really offer much hope. There has to
be a jump to viability of frog-like rather than cane toad-like dimensions
for worthwhile achievements to become possible.
A variant of this dilemma, sufficiently different from it to be worth
distinguishing, is whether to go for long-term advantages or short-
term advantages. In a good many cases the dilemma is fairly easily
resolved by skilfully preparing short-term plans which will fit in well
with long-term objectives; in fact everyone ought as far as possible
to do this in planning, but there are many awkward cases. Of these
perhaps the most frequently encountered is the demand for one to
design a programme of road widening or "improvement" which may
produce specific and even, perhaps, dramatic short-term advantages
in situations where one knows quite well that in terms of any sensible
long-term programme the last thing that is desirable is "improvement"
and that one ought to be going for the removal of traffic altogether
from the roads concerned and their conversion into pedestrian-only
ways. It is so much easier to convince people of the importance of
short-term than oflong-term problems that there is a constant temp-
tation to concentrate on the short term.
Another awkward and dangerous dilemma is the temptation
presented 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)east
in its more extreme forms, such a concept may be fatal to the emergence
of a genuine planning profession and a genuine planning process.
The last of the dilemmas I shall mention is whether to behave like a
technocrat, work out the best planning proposals you can and back
them up simply by means of rhetoric and pulling wool over people's
eyes, or genuinely try to enlist public understanding, participation,
and support in the planning process. In what follows I shall concentrate
mainly on the second and last of these dilemmas.
I am sure that honest and intelligent town planners are frequently
and acutely dismayed by their ignorance of the subject they profess
and that they tend to feel fairly helpless because, in order to remedy
this ignorance, it would be necessary for quite a lot of money to be
spent; not sums of money comparable to those involved in visiting
the moon, but sums involving the expenditure of perhaps several
tens of thousands of dollars on each substantial problem. No one with
the necessary funds has yet shown readiness to recognize or finance
the kind of research needed for fundamental planning research in these
areas.
I think planners themselves are very largely to blame for this for
they have not sufficiently honestly identified the areas in which they
need much more knowledge, perhaps because on the whole these
sound rather elementary; so elementary that the ordinary intelligent
lay member of the public might think it incredible that everything
that 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 the
other two, almost incredibly, planners operate almost in the dark.
First the one about which we do know something; the British Ministry
of Transport in its publication Roads in Urban Areas
1
published a table
giving the maximum amounts of traffic which can, in its view, pass
through simple uncontrolled T junctions of roads without undue
danger or congestion. At about the same time the Buchanan group,
in Traffic in Towns,
2
Appendix I, sought to discover the level of traffic
intensity above which it is not safe or comfortable for pedestrians to
be allowed to cross roads when and where they choose. Specific
suggestions were published based on assumptions and techniques
which 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. Nevertheless
in the field of planning they have made it possible to proceed, as never
before, with a certain amount of confidence in designing the layout
of residential areas. It turns out in fact that in areas where design can
be reasonably free no unduly onerous limitations are imposed though
slightly novel forms oflayout design become necessary. Though it is
little recognized that this is so these two investigations provide a
rational 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 for
town planners but this has been limited mainly to subjects which are
either particularly apt for computer techniques to handle or those in
which finance-commanding interests other than planning have moved
in to sponsor investigation. My own experience has not been very
encouraging. Some years ago it seemed to me that, as a kind of trial
run or preliminary, it would be interesting to have produced a com-
puter programme which, simply in terms of main road costs, would
determine the relative costs of all feasible alternative land use combina-
tions for a new town of a hundred thousand people on a completely
regular and unimpeded site, the only constraints being those imposed
.; by accessibility requirements and road capacities. I have not yet
succeeded in having such a programme prepared despite fairly stren-
uous if discontinuous attempts. Numerous programmes exist for
companng three or four alternatives but not for comparing the
several million which a comprehensive approach to planning throws
up.
My third example is of quite a different kind. Successful town
planning depends upon the provision in the right places of amounts of
land appropriate for the urban land needs of the amount and kind of
population predicated in the brief for the preparation of the plan.
Without reasonably close estimates of the land needed per thousand
population for each main urban use no realistic town planning is
possible. In most towns housing takes up about half the urban area
but the exact amount of land which ought to be allowed for it if
effective demand were reasonably accurately allowed for is quite
unknown. Investigation of existing conditions in comparable towns
is quite easy but almost worthless because the kinds of housing actually
produced probably bear little relationship to genuine demand. This
is partly because in conditions in which most housing is supplied by
private enterprise under almost uncontrolled conditions dwelling types
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and sizes and garden sizes, which govern density, are chosen b y v ~ . . r y
conservative criteria. Among these overwhelmingly the greatest is
usually the desire to play safe on the part of the entrepreneur and to
cater for the largest market, with very little catering for minority tastes.
This distorting factor is overlaid, and itself often further distorted, by
publicly imposed restrictions on density, usually dating back fifty
years or more, and even then not worked out in accordance with
genuine social or technological considerations but simply based upon
a set of rules for which the rational foundations are either lost in the
mists of time or never existed at all.
It is very good that the Queensland branch of the Australian
Institute of Urban Studies is conducting a well-based though unavoid-
ably modest investigation of this kind. It will not provide a full set of
information but will at least constitute a good start and lighten the
gloom of ignorance.
Misunderstanding about what planning controls are for and on
what criteria they should be based has to be dispelled if proper planning
is to be done. It is often misunderstanding almost as profound as in
the apocryphal story of Lyndon Johnson, who, while president, was
supposed 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 a
boat, towing behind them a young negro. Apparently they were
engaged in water-skiing. Johnson seized the loud-hailer and expressed
in warm terms his delight at seeing young white Americans engaged
in such splendid and healthy sport in company with a young black
American. The helicopter then zoomed away and one of the young
whites turned to the other and said: "Man, he may be a fine politician
but he sure knows nothing about alligator trawling."
It is in conditions such as this that town planners the world over
operate, but this is only one part of the story; the other is equally
dismaying. Everywhere town planners find themselves unable to
impress on the authorities they serve the need to make use fully of
such knowledge and expertise, by no means negligible nowadays,
as town planners possess. It is not always easy accurately to
distinguish between the unwillingness and the inability of authorities
to make use of the planning advice given to them. Quite often they
simply do not operate within a conceptual system sufficiently sophis-
ticated for them to muster the courage to act upon the advice tendered;
but perhaps even more often, they have no sufficient financial resources
available to them to do so, and insufficient political experience and
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determination effectively to bombard and embarrass political authori-
ties at a higher level without whose help they can do little.
One tries to be humble about one's lack of relevant technical in-
formation, but is eventually driven back to the realization that how-
ever little one knows it is so much more than there seems to be any
hope of applying that it often appears a waste of time to try to acquire
any more technical knowledge. Rather, one feels, one should be using
one's utmost powers to acquire the techniques for gaining more
political influence, by which I mean, specifically, the development of
means to convince governments and other employing authorities
that the proposals one is putting forward are the ones which they, in
all the prevailing circumstances, ought to adopt. It is necessary for the
planner to get in right at the nerve centres and influence the planning
policy of governments which take sufficient interest in planning to
exercise decisive responsibility for it. It may be noted in passing that
this does not fit Queensland; in Queensland there appears to be no
government planning policy, and the principal decisive influence on
planning is exerted by the Local Government Court. This, however
ably it performs, is, in turn, controlled, in effect, by a mass of non-
rational law, precedent, and custom which it is difficult for the court
to overcome, since no sufficiently clear, rational, and authoritative
guidelines have ever been available to enable it to exert the positive
and creative influence which it is essential that any good planning
tribunal should bring to bear.
Even in England planning policy in the last decade seems to have
been formed out of a curious mixture of political expediency and
superficial planning expertise. The English South-East Study opted
rather strongly for the creation of large new cities, conceived as
growing, over a generation or so, to a size as large, perhaps, as a
quarter of a million people. In that and various related studies,
including, in particular, the Northampton, Bedford, North Bucks
Study, other possible policies were examined for absorbing the 3i
million extra population expected to need accommodation in the
south-east of England by the end of the century. But the alternatives
put up were all like men of straw, put up only to be demolished
contemptuously in a few words; no intellectually stringent analysis
and validation of the large new city policy was ever attempted. In
opposing the creation of what is now known as Milton Keynes on
behalf of objectors I put forward the proposition that since one could
demonstrate that an extra 3i million people could readily be distributed
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through south-east England by means of moderate expansion of
existing towns on land which is well related to those existing towns
functionally, and is physically suitable for development, and that since
it seemed probable that many of those towns would have reserve or
latent capacity in many of their services and infrastructure, then it
would be well not to commit the country without further investigation
to a policy which, as it seemed and still seems to me, is perilous
because of severe interference with central place structure and the
incursion of massive development into scarce open countryside.
Here, in fact, was a first-rate example of an opportunity to use threshold
analysis to test the economic. as well as the physical validity of what I
had said, but this was never done. The big new city policy goes
ahead without any adequate testing of its merits in comparison with
other possible methods.
By contrast, Canberra provides an encouraging example. It is
sadly 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 across
history; the original concept can be thought of as a last curious
flickering of Renaissance geometry, while plans for its future growth
reach forward to hint at the possibilities of planning technology ably
harnessed for humane purposes. It is true that much of the housing is
trivial, but that does not matter so very much for, assuming the con-
tinued existence of the human race, Canberra is likely to be inhabited
long after all the houses now there have decayed and been replaced.
By then let us hope that means will have been found to enjoy the
benefits of detached houses without sacrificing the beauty and elegance
made possible by deliberate grouping.
The comparatively little known Voorhees report on Canberra
commissioned a few years ago seems to me to come closer to genuine
scientific evaluation and comparision of alternative planning policies
than any other study of the kind that I have seen, and puts to shame the
woolly generalizations of English equivalents. How one wishes that
the techniques and calculations used in it had been more fully and
clearly set out so that one could be certain of its merits instead of
having largely to intuit them.
A much simpler English example is the long-drawn-out drama of
the Oxford Christchurch meadow relief road. It has been said that an
Oxford road inquiry has become almost as popular an annual sporting
event in England as the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. So far as
I 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 difficulty
in its earlier stages. Briefly, the object was to build a road bypassing
the centre of Oxford so that heavy through traffic should not have to
pass along the superb High Street. To the horror of many people the
route chosen ran through the hallowed Christchurch meadows.
The defenders of the road claimed with some justification that, to
attract through traffic on to the relief road, it must follow a convenient
route and not involve an excessive detour, which any alternative route
would have to do. Other defenders of the road simply said that
Christchurch meadows was, anyhow, just a rather inferior cow pasture
and why worry, But in later years it became evident that it was both
practicable and desirable to stop up the High Street and convert it into
a pedestrian way, thereby making it more usable and protecting its
ancient buildings from the shock of passing heavy traffic. In that
case the use for the relief road of a route which involved a detour did
not matter, for traffic would have to use it. No minister has been keen
to make a decision and one called for a new traffic survey to help him
decide or, perhaps more likely, to put off the evil day of decision, for
traffic surveys are not now very relevant to this issue.
One sometimes feels that a good deal of harm is done by performing
over-elaborate planning surveys, in which the trees which represent
planning policy are lost in a wood of confusing and barely relevant
fact. In some cases one can go further and say that survey is deliberately
made over-elaborate in order to avoid providing any clear pointers
and to leave the way open to the planning authority concerned to
adopt a plan for reasons not connected with technical data. One is, in
fact, a little reminded of the story of the business tycoon who hired a
fum of industrial psychologists to help him choose a secretary. Their
representatives helped him to carry out short list interviews. The ty-
coon, at the end of the day, asked for their conclusions and was given,
in elaborate psychological language, a list of the merits and defects of
each of the girls interviewed. It seemed to him to leave them all about
equal, the good points of one balancing the good points of another.
"So", he said, "You really mean it would be alright for me to have
anyone of them," "Yes." "Good!" he cried, "I'll have the one with
the big bottom."
What makes things especially difficult for the dedicated planner
anxious to promote the success of his profession for the sake of the
human race is the virtual impossibility of finding enough time, energy,
and wisdom simultaneously to press for the acquisition and spreading
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of greater technical planning knowledge and also to acquire greater
political expertise and influence. The result is that those who seek to
promote genuine technical advance by their research and publications
tend to be forgotten or ignored as unpractical theorists, while those
who pursue the path of political acceptability and influence find it
difficult to maintain professional integrity. The latter are seduced into
advocacy of ideas which have nothing to recommend them except
that they are so crude that they can easily be popularized, while the
former are often lured into areas of research which have little to do
with genuine problems related to decisions about the form and
pattern of urban change and growth. Over the last ten years, for
example, the articles in the Journal of the Town Planning Institute and in
the Royal Australian Planning Institute Journal have become more and
more esoteric. While some, even of the most obscure, contain the
seeds of techniques which might be applied to determine desirable
forms of change and growth others do not. For example I cannot
really believe that the theory of games is truly applicable to planning
of a kind which attempts to steer rather than merely predict growth
and change.
One has here to distinguish between knowledge for its own sake
which, through the greater understanding of the world and its opera-
tions which it imparts, may, indirectly and in the long run, produce
ideas leading to valuable action, and knowledge which is too remote
even to do this.
In a different category come techniques which are complex and
mysterious sounding but which, given a reasonably sophisticated
planning system, can be directly and fully applied. One thinks of
gravity models, sieve maps, threshold theory, and Lichfield's planning
balance sheet. All of these embody techniques which can directly be
applied in any planning situation in which a level of planning com-
petence 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 thinking about regional
and urban problems but it is hard to see just how it could affect
technique as distinct from concepts.
Now I come to make suggestions as to how the dilemmas I have
been talking about might be resolved. I think it is inescapable that if
this 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 or
become aldermen but that a considerable proportion of them need to
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spend a good deal of their time in trying to spread public enlighten-
ment and interest about planning. This is less necessary if there happen
to be available gifted and enthusiastic amateurs like Sir Frederick
Osborn in England or, much earlier, Ebenezer Howard, but these do
not grow on every tree.
There are sad lessons to be learned from English experience since
the Second World War. There, perhaps a little surprisingly, restraints
on public expression of opinion by public servants are both clearer
and more severe than they tend to be in Australia. Personally I
regard this severity and definiteness as desirable and necessary for
democracy, but if professional planners are going to perform an
effective missionary role then it follows that a substantial proportion
of their abler members have got to be outside public employment,
and this is not so in Britain. A recent survey there showed that just
over 70 per cent of qualified British planners are public servants.
Having regard to the very comprehensive and on the whole good
British planning legislation, the relatively advanced state of central
and local government, and the relative numerousness of the planning
profession, it is surprising and disappointing that British planning has
-: not been much more effective. I believe that this is due not only to so
large a proportion of British planners being publicly employed and
muzzled but also to the unfortunate dominance of the unspecialized
administrator in the British government system. Bad though Queens-
land government is in many ways it is at least heartening to perceive
that civil servants with a technical professional background reach
levels of status and influence here much higher than is possible for
their counterparts in Britain. It is almost inconceivable that anyone
in Britain in a position at all nearly equivalent to that of the Queens-
land Co-ordinator General would have had an engineering background.
In consequence British planning has tended to be dominated by the
unspecialized civil servant, and this has been particularly unfortunate
because planning is the kind of subject about which it is easy for any
intelligent person to feel that he knows a great deal when in fact his
knowledge is negligible. It is interesting to note that there was a
brief period in British planning, from the latter part of the war until
about 1950, when this was not so, when professional planners of a
very high order, including Holford and others not so very much less
eminent worked in the ministry and hammered out postwar British
planning policy. This period represented the very frnest flowering of
British government planning activity. But then the administrators
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flocked in and took over with horrifying speed and
using the professional planners in the ministry as little more than
technicians. The best among these got out rapidly. Though, in-
directly, this had the good result of making Buchanan a world figure
in planning (which he could hardly have become if he had stayed in
the ministry) and of providing New Zealand with its first planning
professor, the net effect was one of heavy loss.
Assuming the existence of an effective background professional
missionary force in planning let us go on to consider what results it
should be aiming at, not only in missionary work but in day-to-day
professional work. There are, I think, two main needs: first the need
for planning proposals to be comprehensible and capable of being
tested and in fact to be tested, and, second, the need for an adequate
legal-administrative framework within which suitable proposals can
be made and can be effectively implemented. Not even Evonne
Goolagong would be able to do very well at Wimbledon if she was
only allowed to use a ping pong bat, and that is more or less the
situation of planners in, say, Brisbane at the present time; they simply
have no adequate tools to use.
Planners have to learn to explain themselves well enough to become
trusted and then, when they are trusted, they can influence legislation;
but how can they get themselves into a position of trust when the
system hardly permits them to do work which will demonstrate their
trustworthiness? There is no simple, easy answer to that one but
somehow there has to be a break-in. It is useless for planners to shrug
their shoulders and say, "Ah well, this is the system I work under, I
must do my best with it". If it is a thoroughly bad or inadequate
system they have got to stand up and get it changed if they want to
do any good.
I want to consider what might be done now in Queensland. All
the Australian state planning systems have strong similarities but
Queensland's is the one which most people here will know most
about and it is probably the one which is the most in need of change.
Currently there is in Queensland no sufficient amount of widely
available planning expertise, though there are some very good planners,
and there is virtually no legal-administrative planning system which
amounts to anything. There is obviously public dissatisfaction with
this situation on a fairly large scale, so conditions are such that very
rapid 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, repressive
censorship, a small population, few experienced planners, and lots
of Irishmen. There are of course some differences; Queensland is
bigger and warmer and Ireland doesn't y ~ t have a Lutheran chief
minister. But Ireland has modern, sophisticated planning legislation.
It is based on the current English planning system, unlike Queensland's
which is based on the English planning system of the late 1920's. But
the Irish system is no slavish copy of the English one; it is quite skil-
fully adapted to local conditions and needs. When I last saw it at work
in 1967 it perhaps could not be said to have been working very well
but at least it gives an opportunity, which may well be taken, for good
planning to be done; with a quite inadequate legal-administrative
system there is no chance of doing good planning.
This is important not only in the direct ways to which I shall come
in a moment but in an interesting indirect way. The most important
thing to be done to resolve many of the Australian planner's dilemmas
is to provide him with the opportunity to do really worthwhile work
in Australia. To produce conditions in which good and experienced
planners would be eager to work in Queensland would be a wonder-
ful 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 towards
that situation would be to enact that any Queensland local authority
submitting a plan must have had the advice of a suitably qualified and
experienced town planner. The lord mayor of Brisbane frequently
wields a huge red herring, whirls it round his head, and deplores the
way in which unkind and ignorant academics and ill-disposed and
self-interested persons insult his wonderful and devoted planning
staff. This is quite untrue. I have not seen any references to the Bris-
bane City Council planning staff more unkind than those I have made
myself, and the worst remarks that I have made about them I would
be willing to make in their presence without any fear of wounding
them. What I say is that the city council hasn't got enough planners
and 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 status
for the planning of a quite large city like Brisbane to be done effectively.
They need about twenty qualified planners, of whom several need
to be people with long and deep experience of important planning
projects.
It is enough to make the gods weep to see the brutal way in which
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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 more
lengthy discussion than I can provide here and by their nature are
likely, at best, to take some years to deal with properly. I refer first
to the need for effective legislation to govern and relate the levels of
compensation payable in respect of injurious affection resulting from
planning restriction and compulsory purchase (and the need for the
community to reap at least a proportion of increases in land value due
to planning control) and second to the need to fuse planning and
subdivisional control law.
The most important point which I will discuss is that no good
planner and no good planning authority fears opposition or tries to
stifle it. Although the general soundness and validity of proposals
can and should be demonstrated one can hardly ever say that the
proposals in a town plan are definitely all absolutely right and the
best possible. Planning has to design for a loose fit in which there has
to be flexibility, not flexibility of the kind which might lead one in
two years' time to tear the whole thing up and start again, but in
which errors in forecasting can be allowed for. But, apart from that,
the best of plans are open to criticism that they have included rather too
much or too little land for particular purposes or that the spatial
relationships of uses in different parts of the area could be improved
or that some road proposals are unnecessary or inadequate and so
forth; and the best way to get the best fmal result is to argue all this
out in public before a competent and impartial tribunal, which might
be 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 within
the umbrella of the present very general law, but there are reasons
which make it desirable that specific duties and obligations should be
laid upon planning authorities and minister.
The benefits to be gained from public planning inquiries of all
kinds, not just those into town plans, are greatly reduced if the people
who take part in them are put at financial hazard. At present in
Queensland there are, of course, no public inquiries into town plans,
but people who appeal against refusals of planning permission or
object to permission given to others by local authorities under dis-
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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 disputes
are quite unlike hearings as to whether someone stole the gold-plated
Rolls 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 the
best use for a piece ofland or the best way to develop it are the sound-
est. The loser of the argument has done nothing wrong, for which
he should be penalized. Indeed he may often have performed a
public service in having the matter ventilated, and he should not be
financially penalized. At present many a Queensland citizen dare not
press his objection to a local authority's decision on a planning matter
as far as a court hearing for fear that ifhe loses he will have to pay not
only his own costs, which is fair enough, but the authority's costs as
well. Some smaller authorities with tiny resources are similarly fearful.
This is a manifest injustice which could be put right by means of very
short and, I would think, non-contentious legislation, while abuse
could, as in England, be prevented by reserve powers to impose costs
against a manifestly frivolous appellant.
But that is a detail, though a very important one in cOlmection
with democratic rights. Much of the fundamental structure of
.. Queensland planning machinery needs changing if planning is to be
done simply, speedily, justly, and effectively. To do this planners and
lawyers need to work in close partnership. Planners need to know a
lot about law; not only how to apply it but how to make it and what
kind oflaw will best serve their needs. But it is lawyers who have the
skill and experience actually to frame law that will stand up to attack
and be free of loopholes. I gather that Queensland lawyers are not
much interested in planning law and think oflegal practice in planning
as something rather lowly. This is a pity. I notice that, of the bar-
risters with and against whom I played the merry game of planning
appeals across the face of Britain for a decade, at least, seven are now
high court judges and one has recently become lord chief justice, so
perhaps there is more future in practising planning law than the
Queensland bar realises!
The first big change needed is a very simple one which would save
great quantities of useless clerical work. It is to enact that all local
authorities in Queensland are henceforth endowed with planning
powers in accordance with a statewide statutory code. There is simply
no point in, as at present, nominally requiring a local authority to get
permission to prepare a planning scheme and use planning powers,
16
and there is no point in each separate local authority producing its
own set of ordinances, which have to be separately approved, h 6 w e ~ r
closely they may resemble each other. All the planning law needed
can appropriately apply to the whole of Queensland and can either
be contained in one statute or, preferably, with the more general
material in a statute and the more detailed material in regulations,
which can be changed to meet changing requirements more speedily
than can statutes.
The essential first requirement of such law is that it should closely
and clearly define what kinds of operations require planning permis-
sion and which do not. Astonishingly, this vital matter is not at
present directly touched on in Queensland legislation, whereas nearly
the whole of that part of British planning law which town planners
really need to be familiar with is included in sets of very careful
definitions. Do you need planning permission to put a guinea pig
hutch in your back garden, or only for a very big hutch and if so how
big, It would be hard to find out in Queensland. It is necessary to
enact that planning permission is prima facie needed for all building
operations and changes in the use of land and buildings and then to go
on to define what is meant by these terms and to add de minimis
provisions which exempt specified minor operations and changes
from obligation to obtain permission. Everyone then knows where
he is except for an inescapable grey band in which there is room for
doubt; but skilful drafting can make this grey band a very narrow
one. This system has worked, if not perfectly, at least very well
indeed in Britain for a generation.
Next, it follows, it is necessary to impose a universal obligation to
obtain planning permission for all operations and changes of use
(including mining!) which are not statutorily exempted, and this in
turn removes any reason to have statutory zoning, with its contingent
embarrassment that the accidental dropping of a bit of red paint on
the edge of a map may confer the right to build a house on the land
inadvertently coloured. It becomes possible to look at every proposed
operation or change of use and decide whether, in the light of one's
plan, it is unacceptable in principle, acceptable in principle but un-
desirable in detail, or entirely acceptable. I cannot believe that there
is any valid objection to this kind of system on grounds of time, cost
or justice.
It is, however, a matter for debate to what extent detailed planning
controls should be formalized or left entirely to the discretion of the
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local authority, subject to rights of appeal. I personally incline very
strongly to the latter but I recognize that its adoption involves patterns
of thought and an expression of confidence in the competence and
integrity of local authorities which is somewhat alien to Queensland
thought. Certainly, with the British system, in which control over
details such as density, heights of buildings, road layouts and widths,
distances from boundaries, and so on is left completely to the dis-
cretion of the local authority, there is general satisfaction tempered
by an appreciable but not very strong desire in some quarters for some
slight measure of formalization so that developers can have prior
assurance of the sort of performance standards they must meet. I am
at least absolutely certain that complete formalization is quite inap-
propriate; it puts both authorities and developers in strait jackets,
discourages imaginative design and leaves authorities helpless when
confronted by abominably badly designed development which
happens to comply with all the relevant ordinances. Rigidly defined
minimum allotment areas and minimum allotment frontages are, in
particular, crippling to good design, especially for sites of awkward
shape.
I hope Queensland will advance rapidly towards a situation of
., complete discretion, but meanwhile it would not be difficult to frame
legislation to produce a situation intermediate between that and the
present system.
The present system produces many unsatisfactory situations which
it cannot have been the intention to produce. The projected sub-
stantial residential development at Moggill provides an interesting
example. I am not here discussing whether this development is a
good one or not, I am simply using it to point out the very un-
desirable consequences produced by the current legal system. The
site in question is zoned in the Brisbane Town Plan as non-urban,
which means that the city council has no discretion to permit the
proposed development. In order to permit it the council has to seek
permission from the minister to re-zone it for residential purposes.
If it had been a matter of the council exercising its discretion under
development control powers there would have been a right of objec-
tion and a court hearing for those who felt strongly enough and could
raise enough money but in the case of re-zoning there is no such right.
Yet this development, quite apart from the possible personal ob-
jections of residents in the vicinity, raises fundamental issues. It is a
drastic variation of the town plan for Brisbane, and calls into question
18
all kinds of matters such as the desirable ultimate urban extel1t;iorm
and 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 at
which 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 is
no way in which I can effectively put forward that view.
Perhaps one could summarize this by saying that real town planning
is not just allocating a permitted use or set of uses for every bit ofland
in the planned area, with associated ordinances prescribing performance
standards, but that there should be a large element of creative design
in it, even though in realistic planning creative design is necessarily
circumscribed by legal and financial considerations.
What is needed is a situation in which the city council puts forward
a 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 better
than possible alternatives. All the material comprising the plan, both
written and drawn, including the survey information upon which it
is based, should be prominently displayed in many parts of the city
and on sale to the public at prices (if necessary, subsidized) which put
it within easy reach of everyone. The inevitable battle should then
be joined, with all who feel aggrieved doing their best to demolish
the plan and all who approve of it doing their best to validate it.
Even if the motives of many such people happen to be selsh this does
not matter if they happen to be right about the planning merits of the
particular issue they are contesting.
When that had been done and the minister had received the tri-
bunal's report he would be in the best possible position to know
whether he ought to approve the plan and, if so, what modifications
to it he should require.
No informed person can doubt the need for effective physical
planning today, nor can anyone reasonably deny the need for avail-
ability 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 of
Australian planners it is necessary, I repeat, to make it worthwhile
for gifted people to become and remain planners in Australia; for
this to happen there have to be conditions in which they can exercise
a high level of skill, for if a high level of skill is not called for in
planning it is not worthwhile doing it, and clerks can do the sort of
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pseudo-planning that obtains after brief training. A condition pre-
cedent for real planning is that government has to be interested in it,
sufficiently interested to be determined to, create a proper legal-
administrative planning framework. This, apparently, in Queensland
today is only likely to happen if there is a strong, clear, public demand
for it to happen. This could best be expressed in clear, forceful mes-
sages to the government adding up to: "We won't re-elect you unless
you do this". And, in tum, for that to happen depends on informed
and persistent permeation of public opinion. I hope this lecture may
have been a humble example of this process.
NOTES
1 London: H.M.S.O., 1966.
2 London: H.M.S.O., 1963.
20
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