ABSTRACT: The South Australian Planning Review’s ‘2020 Vision – Planning Strategy for Metropolitan Adelaide’ (1992) provided the prototype for the current generation of planning strategies for metropolitan Adelaide. The first adopted version appeared in 1994, with revisions in 1998 and 2003. In April 2005 a further draft strategy was published. This departs in style somewhat from its predecessors, but its principal distinguishing feature is an explicit commitment to a set of guiding principles of ecologically sustainable development which are intended to underpin the future planned development of the Adelaide metropolitan area.

This paper provides the background to a recently commenced research project at the University of South Australia which aims to critically review the aims and achievements of metropolitan strategic plans for Adelaide since 1990. One strand of this project is exploring the difficulty of pursuing integrated ‘whole of government’ planning strategies under prevailing urban governance arrangements. The paper notes within these strategic plans a number of different conceptions of ‘planning’ which sit uneasily alongside each other – for example, planning as a facilitator of markets, planning as a forum for dialogue and planning as an institution for promoting particular public ends, such as sustainability and economic development. There is a tension between competing views of the nature and purposes of planning which is not resolved simply by including them within the pages of a single strategic planning document. This tension is illustrated in the paper by brief reference to the transport and accessibility sections of successive metropolitan planning and related strategies for Adelaide. The paper notes a rhetorical commitment to integrated land use and transport planning and to increased investment in public transport which fails, however, to confront seriously the powerful interests which support automobility and does not lead to the pursuit of policies which run counter to existing consumer preferences.

The paper concludes that the issues identified around integrated land use and transport planning strategies, as these are illustrated by the analysis of Adelaide’s recent experience, are a subset of broader disputes about the extent to which a commitment to ‘sustainability’ and the maintenance of natural systems may require some limits to economic growth.