A Post Growth Approach to Urban Planning with Michael Buxton

The way we design and plan our cities and towns significantly influences our daily lives, which, in turn, affects our carbon emissions and ecological footprints. Australia's continually expanding cities are a striking example of this, illustrating the consequences of an unrelenting pursuit of growth.

Fortunately, there are a few urban planners who recognise that transitioning to a degrowth, steady-state system is imperative for the future of urban planning. Our special guest, Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton (OAM) is one such expert.

Michael Buxton is one of the most well known and most quoted planning professors in Australia and has taught thousands of planning students over the years at RMIT University and Monash University, as well as working in the public service for 12 years. Despite officially being retired, Michael continues to play a huge role in town planning issues, including being interviewed for podcasts such as PGAP.

As a resident of Melbourne, Michael discusses his home city as a case study throughout the interview to illustrate the current state of urban planning. In particular, he draws attention to the Victorian government’s obsession with ‘growth at all cost’ and their ongoing deregulation of the urban planning sector.

This episode provided us with an opportunity to discuss the importance of systemic change towards a post growth society and why this will lead to much better planning and development outcomes.

We invite you to share this very important episode among your networks and rate and review PGAP on Apple Podcast, or contact us with your thoughts and ideas. PGAP is made possible by the support of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). All opinions, views and legacies past and present of our guests are exclusive theirs and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PGAP or SPA.

Speaking of Sustainable Population Australia, PGAP co-hosts Mark Allen and Michael Bayliss worked with SPA on an animated video, "The Endless Growth Paradigm", launched in 2019. The animation explores why we need to break from a system of endless economic and population growth. Otherwise, our neighbourhoods will never be dense enough, our cities will never stop sprawling and we will never catch up with the infrastructure backlog. The video has amassed ten thousand views on YouTube and we believe it is still very relevant five years later.

If you are keen to revolutionise the town planning sector, we encourage you to check out Town Planning Rebellion or, if you are a resident of Victoria, Planning Democracy, chaired by Kelvin Thomson.

PGAP has explored the issue of urban planning and overdevelopment several times. If you would like to find out more, we recommend our interviews with Kelvin Thomson, Alex Baumann and David Holmgren. Looking outside Victoria, we interviewed several Western Australian groups fighting overdevelopment. You may also be interested in your co-hosts Mark and Michael’s own perspectives in the episode: “Housing Crisis?? What Housing Crisis!!”