Robert Freestone
Robert Freestone FASSA FAHA is a Professor of Planning in the School of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales and a City Futures Research Centre Fellow. He is a former president of the International Planning History Society and co-author and editor of several books, including Campus (2023), Designing the Global City (2019), Planning Metropolitan Australia (2018), Urban Nation: Australia’s Planning Heritage (2010), Urban Planning in a Changing World (2000), and Spirited Cities (2004).
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4265-5059
Australian Urban Policy »
Prospects and Pathways
Publication date: March 2024
Urban Australia confronts numerous challenges in the 21st century: climate change, housing, transport, greenspace, social inequality, and governance, among them. While state and local governments wrestle with these issues, they are continent wide and require national leadership, direction and participation. As a highly urbanised country without a national approach to urban policy, Australia is an outlier.
Contributors to this book argue that this policy gap needs to be addressed. They ask: How have productive, sustainable and liveable cities so far been enhanced? Where have aspirations fallen short or produced negative outcomes? And what approaches are emerging to challenge existing and devise new urban policy settings?
In the face of ongoing crises and escalating change, the need for policy to quickly transform urban Australia is daunting. Problems, wicked in their complexity, require innovative, ethical solutions. This book offers new ideas that challenge policy orthodoxy.