A Marriage of Convenience? Rail-Supportive Transport Policies and Urban Consolidation in Station Precincts in Australia and Europe

The interplay and the coordination of rail infrastructure investment and urban development has been a recurrent theme in urban planning ever since the late 19th century. Influenced by the New Urbanism movement and by the sustainability debate questioning the resource efficiency and socio-economic opportunities of car-based, low-density and functionally segregated settlement structures, the concept of rail-oriented development has gained much currency in Australian cities since the 1990s. Perth’s Network City paradigm and the Melbourne 2030 metropolitan strategy reflect this policy shift. Meanwhile, rail-oriented development has also become an important directive for urban growth in Europe, where it is seen as an antidote to a trend of incremental, functionally disintegrated development at a regional scale. This paper looks at the motivations, institutional frameworks, goals and preliminary results of Victoria’s Transit Cities program – a key element of the Melbourne 2030 strategy – and the French-German project Bahn.Ville which examined several rail lines in Germany and France regarding their suitability to act as anchors for urban development, and the roles of key actors in the planning and implementation process. It compares these two programs against a background of recent literature on the potential for improved sustainability performance in urban and regional development where transport and land use are coordinated. It examines the extent and character of institutional synergy as well as disconnection between stakeholders and points at some successful examples of collaboration. It will critically assess the scope for change towards more public transport-oriented settlement and mobility patterns in both projects, argue for more integrated structures of governance for transit-oriented development, and highlight how both the Australian and European examples could benefit by learning from each other’s strengths and weaknesses