Achieving Mode Share Targets in Australian Cities through Policy Integration: Are we on Track?

Over the past 25 years, Australian cities have experienced a substantial reinvigoration of their traditional, inner suburban neighbourhoods. These areas are characterised by medium to high urban densities and a fine-grained diversity of residential and nonresidential land uses. Their walkable layout and the presence of reasonable public transport services produce patterns of movement that are similar to those found in many European cities. Economic activity and property prices in these districts are consistently strong, and some high-profile redevelopment programmes of formerly industrial land in their vicinity (such as the Ultimo–Pyrmont scheme in Sydney, Southbank and Docklands in Melbourne, East Perth and Subiaco in Perth) have succeeded in translating the qualities of older inner suburbs into a contemporary urban form. Simultaneously, most Australian cities still grow at a rapid rate—for example, metropolitan Melbourne’s housing stock increased by 18 per cent during the 10 years to 2001 (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2002). This continues to lead to a substantial proportion of new residential areas to be developed on greenfield sites at the urban fringe. For nearly half a century, such urban extensions have been built at very low densities, a near-complete segregation of land uses and a street layout/infrastructure provision that was all but designed to marginalise walking, cycling and public transport. Life in a detached house on a suburban block with a spacious backyard was heralded as the ‘Australian Dream’ (Davison & Yelland, 2004), but it entrenched a level of automobile dependence in the middle and outer belts of Australian cities that is clearly at odds with sustainability objectives (Engwicht, 1992; Newman & Kenworthy, 1999) and has led, in Sydney and Melbourne at least, to a chronic condition of traffic congestion and inefficiency of access in both inner and outer suburbs.