Sustainable urban development approval systems in crisis

The initial starting conditions of a development project are increasingly problematic in the Australian property and construction industry. Since the late 1990s it has been recognized that the development approval process was in crisis. The issues which have been either directly or indirectly attributed to the development approval decision making process include: wasted time; inadequate planning document coordination; conflicting policy and planning instruments; lack of planning expertise; politicized approval process; degradation of quality of living environment; reduced amenity of urban areas; low quality design for environmental and social objectives; high individual firm costs, high cost to advocacy groups and ultimately wasted firm and government resources. During the intervening years there have been various attempts to address this problem. Coupled with an already inadequate system was the rise of the 'sustainable urban development' movement which is increasingly manifest in development policy, guidelines and planning control documents. This paper describes the chronology of various initiatives to improve the development approval processes in Australia and in so doing highlights that there has been considerable attention to the problem but with little evidence of solving the governance issues of building project procurement in the early stages. Not only is there a development approval crisis but increasingly the system is under pressure to resolve tensions between various stakeholders to achieve sustainable urban development