We don't want urban capability assessment: How much will this development cost?

Land capability assessments have an important warning role, but do not fit well within modern planning and development decision making processes. Planning decisions are increasingly made using numerous datasets with scenarios evaluated using multi-criteria analysis. We advocate the use of risk management as a means of directly comparing disparate impacts when developments go ahead. Risk management is a means of determining capability and can be used to assess “urban feasibility”. Urban feasibility provides outputs that are generally more useful and meaningful to planners and developers. Its assessment takes into account the costs incurred in ameliorative actions and residual risks, i.e., the risks that remain after the actions are taken. Work being developed for the NSW Comprehensive Coastal Assessment Soil Landscape Capability project is used to describe this semi-quantitative urban capability assessment process.