- Specification for Metropolitan Planning Agency which can Make a big Difference   72 kb by    Dawkins, Jeremy | jeremy.dawkins@uts.edu.au    Short Outline If climate change and biodiversity loss lead to strong global and national responses how can a planning agency have maximum effect? Australian experience of failures and successes suggests less rhetoric and radically more expertise and independence. Abstract This paper addresses the issues raised in Workshop 2 and in particular subthemes 2.1 and 2.2. Copenhagen demonstrated that real change towards sustainability requires whole-of-government, if not whole-of-world, action. Planning agencies, while acting now, need to be strong and well prepared for the time, in the near future, when economic and regulatory measures fundamentally depart from business as usual. The Australian experience is that planning agencies currently exaggerate the effectiveness of measures to achieve, for instance, compact cities, better public transport, energy efficiency in buildings and centres, etc. This practice will probably retard effective responses to strong carbon reduction measures when they come into force. To contribute maximally to the shift towards sustainable, low carbon cities, planning agencies will need to adopt far stronger policies while moderating the rhetoric. The Australian experience is also that metropolitan strategies and policies relating to ESD and climate change mitigation and adaptation have much greater legitimacy when adopted or endorsed by independent expert planning agencies than when adopted by ministers or governments. The two extremes of a continuum between direct ministerial powers and independent authorities are represented by the states of New South Wales and Western Australia. Fifty years of institutional change, and recent planning controversies, reinforce the finding that strong measures for making urban regions more sustainable will require institutions seen to have independent expertise. Concrete examples of successes and failures will be presented to illustrate the above arguments. Keywords planning agency metropolitan expertise independence effectiveness Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper