Responding to change in a growing Melbourne : community acceptance, wellbeing, and resilience

In the context of urban population growth, urban consolidation and intensification is a common policy response and challenge across all capital cities in Australia. The urban residents’ views and perceived impacts of different types of intensification will critically shape the nature of what will be accepted and eventually implemented in local suburbs. However, little is known about general attitudes toward urban growth across metropolitan regions. This paper reports on data from a recent Survey of Community Wellbeing and Responding to Change conducted in six Local Government Areas (LGAs) in inner, middle, outer, and urban fringe areas of Melbourne. It examines levels of community acceptance of urban growth in these LGAs, including some alternative explanations which help explain some of the variation in community acceptance of developments related to urban growth. Most important for predicting community acceptance of urban growth were perceptions of a community’s resilience (adaptation) and the associated processes around planning and navigating urban change; and whether changes to suburbs were perceived as varied, mixed and interesting. These alternative explanations provide a point of focus for stakeholders aiming to implement policies around urban consolidation and intensification while maintaining or enhancing community wellbeing. Potential implications of results to policy and further research are identified