Towards effective planning of transborder city regions: three Australian case studies.

With the rise of “global city regions” since the late twentieth century (Simmonds and Hack 2000; Scott et al. 2014), there has been increasing acknowledgment that new models are replacing the twentieth century urban conception of a metropolis. The phenomenon of the polycentric city region has superseded the old idea of suburbs radiating out around a single city centre or ‘CBD’ (Garreau 1991; Calthorpe and Fulton 2013). Suburbs are becoming urbanized within these new city regions and ‘placeless’ suburbs are beginning to be transformed through the creation of denser, mixed use suburban centres connected by efficient public transport (Al-Kodmany 2016; Beske and Dixon 2018). These polycentric city regions are increasingly spreading across state and national borders. Such transborder city regions have been noted around the world, including in Europe, Asia and the Americas/ North America. Well known examples include: • the expansion of Shenzen (and other Pearl River Delta cities) and neighbouring separately-administered Hong Kong; • Aachen-Maastricht-Liege (Germany, Netherlands and France); • San Diego (US) – Tijuana (Mexico); and • the ‘BonNYWash’ crescent embracing Boston, New York and Washington across several north-eastern states in the USA. In addition to transborder city regions such as these, there are increasing examples of cross-border collaboration in economic development corridors such as the Dublin-Belfast corridor (linking Ireland and Northern Ireland), the Oresund corridor between Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmo (Sweden) and the link across the Causeway between Singapore and Johor, Malaysia. Such corridors typically involve a focus on improving transport connections and partnerships to improve the economic well-being and international competitiveness of formerly discrete cities and towns. This paper examines the uneven progress of policy for regional planning of Australia’s emerging internal transborder city regions since the 1970s. Three contrasting case studies are presented, focusing on regional plans in three city regions that extend across state and territory borders within Australia. As an exploratory research paper, the case study methods used are a combination of literature review, document research and policy analysis of city-regional plans. Comparisons are made with selected international transborder city regions. The Australian case studies illustrate that development of effective transborder city regions, even within one country, depends on overcoming differing levels of commitment to transborder planning by the state or territory jurisdictions involved. This commitment may also be shaped by the different balance between resources (eg infrastructure, jobs) and population within a city region that spans across state or national borders. References Al-Khodmany, K 2016 New Suburbanism: sustainable tall building development. London and New York: Routledge. Beske, J and D Dixon (eds) 2018, Suburban Remix: creating the next generation of urban places. Washington DC: Island Press. Calthorpe, P and W Fulton 2013 The Regional City: new urbanism and the end of sprawl. Washington DC: Island Press. Garreau, J 1991 Edge City: life on the new frontier. New York: Doubleday. Scott, A, J Agnew, E Soja, and M Storper 2014 Global city-regions: an overview. Accessed 4 April 2019 at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265192243_GLOBAL_CITY-REGIONS_AN_OVERVIEW Simmonds, R and G Hack 2000 Global City Regions: their emerging forms. Abingdon and New York: Spon.