Can Growth Be Planned? The Case of Melbourne’s Urban Periphery

Growth may have a logic of its own that results in the unplanned appearance of development at the urban fringe. We summarize the challenges of planning for growth at the urban periphery in terms of the uncertainty, irreversibility, interrelatedness, and indivisibilities surrounding development decisions. Drawing on original research, we illustrate the growing pains of metropolitan Melbourne. We underline the challenges to public planning’s spatial logic of placemaking and sequencing but also the innovation apparent in the face of contemporary growth of new speed and spatial extent.