ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews contemporary capital city metropolitan plans and maps the role that urban regeneration plays in defining the future of Australia’s cities. Australian cities have mobilised Metropolitan Strategic Plans (MSP) as a central policy tool for framing urban change. MSPs outline the state-sponsored vision for our future cities, by prioritising key sites of change, establishing frameworks and conditions of development, and advocating the benefits of a consolidated urban form. R. Bunker identifies the early 1990s as a period transition in MSPs where urban consolidation and density emerged as the dominant spatial vision for Australian cities, replacing previous discourses which centred on infrastructure development and coordination, and whole-of-government urban growth management. While MSPs originate from a variety of geographic, economic, demographic, political and environmental contexts, a common set of claims, ambitions and instruments emerge. In an effort to overcome critiques of demographic forecasts, MSPs have moved towards using demographic ranges and implemented rolling updates.
