Local Living and Travel Time based Urbanism

ABSTRACT The concept of local living, whether in the form of 10-, 15-, 20- or 30-minute cities or walkable and healthy neighbourhoods, has become a central theme of Australian planning strategies. It is used to achieve a number of important objectives ranging from sustainability, public health, community and economic development. Despite the common use of this catch-all phrase, there are inconsistencies in its definition, underlying assumptions and objectives, its shaping of planning policy and the instruments used to measure its successful implementation. This paper provides a comparative international overview of the ways in which these more broadly-framed local living policies have been framed, and how they have been incorporated into strategic metropolitan plans for Australia’s capital cities. It is evident that approaches differ greatly, in terms of policy aims, objectives, their relationships to planning practice and other sectors and measures used to assess the success of implementation. The paper examines the salient differences and commonalities in these methodologies with a discussion of their implications for policy and research within varying socio-cultural and spatial contexts. It concludes with a discussion of the need for more specific and target-oriented strategies to overcome the implementation challenges in countries with car-dominated cities such as Australia.