While most migration flows from India have been directed to different countries of the American continents, the emergence of the Indian economy in the global arena in the twenty-first Century has led to reverse flows in the form of return migration of Indians. Besides, many foreigners from the Americas are also coming to India specifically to explore the possibilities of future career prospects in multinational companies or even as students. This chapter provides an overview of immigration from the Americas to India and the return migration of Indians. Due to the lack of quantitative data on these two aspects, the chapter mainly relies on secondary sources and attempts to identify major trends and patterns regarding the immigration of foreign nationals and return migration of Indians from the Americas to India.

Immigration from the Americas

During World War II, more than 400,000 American soldiers were posted in India (Vest 1948: 223). Before the end of the British rule in India in 1947, the ‘colonial third culture’ surrounded employment, which featured expatriates in superior roles, natives in subordinate roles, and little informal socialization between the two. However, this was gradually replaced by a ‘co-ordinate third culture’, based around a common social life wherein the Americans working in multinational corporations mingled with their Indian colleagues (Useem J. 1966: 146). Americans who came to India for work slowly assimilated into this culture. However, many companies in those days had difficulty in retaining those American employees who were living in India accompanied by their children as they found the educational facilities at the school level inadequate (Useem R. 1966: 132). In a break from the long tradition of older American expatriates coming to India to manage local subsidiaries of American companies, a trend began in the first decade of the new century, of younger Americans taking up jobs in Indian companies, especially in the information technology sector, often at lower wages than they had previously earned in the US (Rai 2005; Chea 2006).

Welcome to the second edition of Planning Australia. The first – published in 2007 – was adopted by many Australian universities for their planning students and shortly after its release, was honoured by state and national Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) awards. Planning Australia has been well reviewed and at last count was held in 144 libraries worldwide (University of NSW 2011). These outcomes are testimony to every one of the contributing authors, as well as those who assisted with research, formatting and editing to produce the most up-to-date, comprehensive and cohesive overview of the major issues and concerns dominating Australian planning theory and practice available at the time.

So when Cambridge University Press approached me in 2010 to consider a second edition of Planning Australia I have to confess that I was not totally surprised. Delighted to be asked – of course – if not a little daunted at the prospect of producing a second edition. With the help of some positive critiques from our publisher’s market research, and the enthusiasm of different authors, I needed little persuasion to take on this task. I was also very pleased that Paul Maginn accepted my invitation to be co-editor. Paul is a Western Australian colleague with whom I have collaborated on other writing projects (Maginn, Thompson & Tonts, 2008a, 2008b), and is well known to the academic planning community across the country. One of his most recent achievements was hosting the 2011 World Planning Schools Congress in Perth (<http://www.wpsc2011.com.au>). He has brought a fresh set of eyes to this edition, and in particular his knowledge of Western Australia has been invaluable. Together we have sought to ensure revisions to the book embrace a wider geographical breadth of planning initiatives from across Australia.

Planning at the metropolitan scale has two purposes. The first is to provide a framework of public policy to guide and constrain planning decisions made by local government authorities. This ensures that decisions by local authorities are made with reference to wider metropolitan interests, as well as to local concerns. The second purpose is to ensure that the government agencies and private firms that provide urban infrastructure and develop land for various purposes coordinate their actions to support an overarching vision of metropolitan development. Underlying these coordinating functions are the broader purposes of planning that apply at any geographical scale. These are to ensure that cities are spatially structured to maximise their economic productivity and social cohesiveness, as well as minimising their adverse impacts on the biophysical environment.

This chapter discusses the key features of Australian metropolitan planning, as reflected in Australian metropolitan strategies and related policies and processes. First, it elaborates on the notions of vertical and horizontal coordination. Next, it identifies generic elements of metropolitan spatial plans. Finally, it provides a glimpse of future challenges for metropolitan planning. Metropolitan planning is presented as a project in public administration supported by technical knowledge. Although it recognises that politics has a major impact on the effective prosecution of public administration, the chapter is not about the politics of urban governance – in any case, this approach to understanding cities has been well developed by others (for example, Parkin 1982; Stilwell 1993; Gleeson et al. 2004). Neither does the chapter take an historical perspective. Again, others have covered the ground exhaustively; among the many commentaries on the planning of Australian cities are the essays in McLoughlin and Huxley (1986), Freestone (1993) and Hamnett and Freestone (2000).

Regional planning, regional policy and regional governance are contentious topics. There is debate about what properly constitutes a ‘region’, as there is about the form, role and scope of planning in and for regions (Beer, Maude & Pritchard 2003). At the same time, the responsibility for regions and regional planning is currently spread across many levels of government as well as non-elected bodies. It is not surprising, then, that many in the planning community regard the current state of regional planning in Australia as unsatisfactory. Planners who propose a commitment to genuine spatial planning on the regional scale – that is, planning that attempts to integrate social, economic and environmental objectives for regions that are larger than local government areas and smaller than states – face a very significant challenge. To meet it, they must go beyond traditional land-use planning and regulation.

Within this context, the chapter defines regions, regional planning and regionalism; outlines the main arguments for regional-scale spatial planning; describes government involvement in Australian regional planning; explains the main challenges for regional planning in Australia; and proposes options for good regional governance. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates the close relationships between regional governance and regional development in Australia. Regional planning is advocated in the form of spatial planning rather than land-use regulation, but the advantages of the former are weighed against the realities of Australian planning and governance regimes and the absence of agreement over what constitutes a region.

Planning at both urban and regional levels across Australia exhibits several common features, shaped largely by the same challenges and managed through similar responses. Although they might seem numerous, the challenges for planners all relate to ensuring Australia’s environmental, economic and social sustainability– the so-called triple bottom line– at a time of global economic restructuring, environmental degradation and non-renewable resource depletion, rising levels of urbanisation and the apparent roll-back of principles of democratic government at all levels. At the same time, planners must also consider the needs, desires and expectations of current and future generations. The challenges that lie ahead for planners, politicians and Australian society are likely to be immense and increasingly complex given projected population growth– from around 22.7 million in 2011 (ABS 2011), to between ‘30.9 and 42.5 million people by 2056, and to between 33.7 and 62.2 million people by 2101’ (ABS 2008).

There is an integral relationship between sustainability issues and population patterns in Australia that frames the specific nature of the challenges faced by Australian planners, while their responses are shaped by the urban governance and urban management structures within which they work. In this context, ‘urban’ should not be understood as signifying that governance and management are purely issues for cities. Rather, governance and management responses are consequent upon the impacts of broader human settlement or development activity, irrespective of whether this occurs in city or rural locations. The scope and effectiveness of contemporary urban governance in Australia is closely related to the constitutional roles and powers of different levels of Australian government (Forster 2004). This area of governance has been characterised by changes in decision-making agents and structures, and such changes have been accompanied by increased supervision and scrutiny of government action. As the chapter explains the development of the various arrangements and relationships that characterise contemporary Australian urban governance and planning, it draws attention to the debates that have attended these developments.

Planning Australia has brought together the themes at the forefront of planning in Australia today. In its attempt to be comprehensive, the book has touched on the broad range of issues that constitute contemporary planning practice and scholarship. We have aimed to give the reader, whether new to planning or keen to know more, as complete a picture as possible of the discipline’s foundational principles and historical evolution, its prime concerns, its current challenges and its future possibilities. This conclusion draws matters to a close by reflecting on the themes canvassed across the different chapters and imagining how planning in Australia can be a positive force, playing its part in enabling a sustainable future for the environment and the diverse communities who inhabit the vast expanse of this nation.

Planning Australia today: the issues

Although the authors in Planning Australia have addressed many diverse issues, it is possible to identify several unifying themes throughout the book. History shows us that most are not new to planning; rather, they take on a different intensity and emphasis in today’s world. Perhaps the biggest shift lies in the pace of change and our awareness of the complex and interdependent nature of the challenges that confront humankind today.

This chapter is about the practice and development of urban design in Australia. After defining terminology, I plot the evolution of urban design in Australia. The chapter then sets out the qualities of a ‘successful’ place, before discussing some exemplars of urban design. I conclude with challenges for urban design in Australia through the 21st century. My message is communicated through both the text and accompanying illustrations.

Defining urban design

The response to the question ‘what is urban design?’ might seem simple and straightforward. The term ‘urban’ means all elements that constitute a city: its roads, buildings, parks, paths, public spaces and transport systems; its people, activities and culture. ‘Design’ is a broad topic. In an urban context, it is the creative application of thought and invention to the identification of a solution to a particular requirement or demand. Accordingly, urban design can be defined as an intervention in the urban environment that seeks to produce, or invoke, outcomes for urban spaces and places that ultimately impact upon human experience and use of towns and cities. Such experiences and use may be positive or negative, thus giving rise to the notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ urban design. Further useful definitions of urban design are provided in Discussion point 13.1.

This chapter examines the statutory or legal framework in which planning takes place, both as a function of government and as an expression of public policy and social goals and aspirations. Indeed, legislation has a pivotal role in determining planning’s administrative and governance context, but it is important to understand that the context for planning varies according to jurisdiction. Therefore, the chapter compares the jurisdictional and legal characteristics of the different federal, state and territory planning systems in Australia, noting first that planning issues need to be considered in relation to environmental law across all jurisdictions. It then provides an overview of the administrative and jurisdictional characteristics of Australian planning systems, before arguing that the most significant areas of legislation from a planning point of view are:

• strategic planning, statutory plans and plan-making

• development assessment

• environmental impact assessment

• appeals and review

• public participation.

Australia’s planning systems have been subject to ongoing reforms since the 1980s, and these are invariably reflected in and implemented through ongoing legislative change in the areas noted above. Trends, similarities and contrasts in different jurisdictions are analysed in relation to these recent changes and reform agendas. The chapter concludes with comment on future directions in the legislative frameworks of domestic planning systems.

Although human health is a new connection for planning in Australia today, a century ago planning was strongly aligned with public health objectives to prevent the spread of infectious disease. This close relationship was not, however, sustained. Planning shifted its focus to urban policy development, design and environmental sustainability, while public health largely pursued a medical model (Botchwey et al. 2009). Today, we face a different set of health problems associated with our sedentary and automobile-dependent lifestyles, and the two disciplines are gradually re-aligning as evidence mounts about the critical role that the built environment plays in supporting human health.

So what makes a healthy place in Australia and how can planning contribute to the creation of such places? In this chapter we explore these questions– initially by defining the concept of ‘healthy planning’ and providing a brief overview of its evolution. Contemporary Australian health patterns are then presented, setting the context for considering the role of the environment in supporting good health as part of everyday life. The chapter concludes with key challenges for healthy planning.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the natural environment and the biophysical impacts of human activity. Such human activity includes both urban settlements and broader land uses, which together constitute the ‘built environment’. The chapter’s primary concerns, therefore, are with the interaction between the natural and built environments and particularly with pertinent aspects of current environmental planning and natural resource and environmental management in Australia.

The interrelationships between human land use (particularly urbanisation), planning and the sustainable management of environmental systems have led to calls for meaningful remedial and proactive responses by governments, businesses and individuals, as well as concerns about long-term sustainability. These interrelationships are analysed in relation to the following topics:

• fundamental concepts

• environmental and resource management tools

• principles for assessing human impacts on the environment

• principles of ecologically sustainable development (ESD)

• climate change

• environmental indicators and state of the environment (SoE) reporting

• planning for biodiversity

• bioregional planning and integrated approaches to resource and environmental management (such as catchment management).

Transport has always been central to the planning of cities and regions. The Griffin Plan for Canberra, for example, used streets and intersections to structure the city (see Chapters 4 and 13). Similarly, Ebenezer Howard’s (1902) ‘garden city’ was designed to reduce long travel times to and from work. Despite this history, 21st-century transport planners are still grappling with the problem of long work journeys in the wake of suburban expansion, as well as dealing with a suite of new challenges: from congestion, pollution and climate change, to more personal concerns of obesity and lack of exercise (see Chapter 16).

This chapter begins by discussing the scope of transport planning, distinguishing it from related disciplines such as traffic engineering. It then examines the development of transport planning techniques and ideas in the United States and Europe, and their adoption by Australian planners. This leads to an analysis of contemporary challenges and policy responses, before concluding with a discussion of likely future directions in transport planning.