In the shadow of metropolitan planning: Local plan making in Melbourne, 1946-1976

Melbourne has evolved and changed over time in response to the many challenges that this city has faced over the last century and a half. Some of this change was due to forces that lay beyond the control of those who governed it whereas other changes had been guided by local government acts and a handful of metropolitan level strategic plans. Largely absent from the historical narratives that have been written about the planning of Melbourne is what had happened to urban planning at the local level. This is a serious gap in our understanding of Melbourne's historical urban development when it is remembered that local councils and shires had been charged with enforcing metropolitan strategy since 1955. It was at the local government level that the detailed strategic and statutory planning was undertaken but it was also here at the local level that a city's capacity to respond to any newly emerging challenges were either expedited or stymied. In an attempt to shed some light on this much neglected facet of Melbourne's urban planning history this paper proposes to investigate how much urban planning took place at the local level and what forms it took between 1944 to 1976, plus what factors may have impacted upon the local plan making process