Wendy Steele
Wendy Steele is Professor of Sustainability and Urban Policy and leads the Critical Urban Governance research program in the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne. Her recent books include Planning Wild Cities: Human–Nature Relationships in the Urban Age (2020), Quiet Activism: Climate Action at the Local Scale (2021), and The Sustainable Development Goals and Higher Education: A Transformative Agenda? (2021). She was a chair of the 2021 State of Australasian Cities Conference and President of the Australasian Cities Research Network.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1565-3752
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.