Planning for Sustainable Communities - A Question of Governance?
Presenting a paper to the Local Government Sustainable Development 2010 conference (August 25), SGS Economics and Planning Director Dr Marcus Spiller argued that there is little point in having a sustainable neighbourhood or municipality embedded in a metro area which is unsustainable. We need to make far-reaching, structural, changes at the metropolitan level.
"Planning for Sustainable Communities - A Question of Governance?" explains that we won't be able to develop sustainable cities unless we engage in institutional reforms, based on subsidiarity principles. These would see the re-instatement of democratically mandated metropolitan governments working alongside local Councils and State Governments. The reforms would require the Commonwealth to promote reform and co-operation by sharing the substantial productivity dividend arising from sustainable cities. The paper expands on the concepts of subsidiarity, nested communities, and a possible division of responsibilities between a metropolitan sphere of governance, local Councils and State Governments.