The new edition of my second book, The Victorian Planning System: Practice, Problems, and Prospects, is out now.
The book has been comprehensively revised, with factual updates throughout. It has also been thoroughly re-theorised, drawing more on literature about regulatory design, and more carefully drawing put principles of good decision-making and good system design. As a result its critique of the operation of the system has been considerably sharpened. I think I’m much clearer now than I was in 2017 about why the Victorian system – which seems so sound in theory – has performed so disappointingly over recent decades. I also try to outline an alternate approach to system design that I argue can lead us away from the repeated cycle of unhelpful or counterproductive reform that we have seen over the last two decades.
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