As Melbourne’s population is predicted to reach six million by 2030, this strategic audit comes at a critical stage in the evolution of the Melbourne Strategic Assessment which aligns State and Federal biodiversity regulation under one program. The report makes 16 recommendations and lists important challenges.

This study examines the drivers of peri-urban agricultural land loss in Greater Western Sydney (GWS), one of the fastest growing peri-urban regions in Australia, and on the particular contribution of government planning policy and resultant tensions between state and local government decision making.

in 2010 the Growth Area Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC) fund was introduced to partially offset (up to 15%) the cost of new ‘essential state-funded’ infrastructure in growth areas on Melbourne’s fringe. This paper examines the GAIC fund and within this, its use for public transport – towards which 50% of GAIC funds are to be directed.

Illustrating the trend to increasing vulnerability, this paper examines two case studies, South Eastern Australia and California USA, examines the potential effectiveness of land use planning as a means of reducing bushfire risk and argues the need for anticipatory planning to prevent an expansion of settlement into bushfire prone areas.

Social-ecological systems are breaking down at local, regional, and global scales, and sustainability seems an increasingly distant aspiration. Social harmony and economic systems are connected to ecological systems and climate, in multiple complex ways, at many scales.