Australian Local Governments’ Practice and Prospects with Online Planning

Online information technologies are becoming essential tools for urban planning as they support information sharing and participatory decision making in the planning process. Therefore this paper underlines the importance of online planning and e-participation, examines household use of information technology, and discusses the digital divide problem. This paper also explores Australian local governments’ potential and experiences in online planning. It scrutinizes existing infrastructures of local councils as well as their willingness to adopt the Internet and geographic information systems in their planning processes. This research clusters local government areas in terms of their potentials in the implementation of online planning. This clustering would lead Australian governments to develop policies on where to start and where to extend online planning next. The paper concludes with introducing online planning examples and initiatives from Australia. citizen empowerment through greater involvement and openness and accountability on behalf of decision makers. Thus, planning benefiting from the Internet and GIS can help local authorities organize planning schemes to involve residents’ interaction with their planning processes. This paper examines Australian local governments’ potential and experiences in implementing online planning. In Australia, local councils have statutory powers over land-use zoning and the development approval processes and they are obligated to develop and implement strategic and local plans. This paper considers the extent to which those local councils are willing to embrace ICTs as planning tools, and the extent to which households might be ready to access new computer technologies. In this research the following questions are considered: (a) What are the patterns of computer and the Internet use across households? (b) What might be done to narrow the digital divide? (c) What are current local government policies, capabilities, and projects with respect to online planning? (d) What are the potentials of local government areas (LGAs) in implementing online planning? The research reported here is based on primary data collection and analysis, and secondary data analysis. Primary data collection and analysis involved conducting a survey of planning officers in Australia’s local councils to obtain information on the extent to which they are making use or plan to make use of ICTs to support online planning. The results of that survey are used to assess the potential and willingness of local governments to adopt ICTs for online planning. Secondary data was used to ascertain the degree to which local councils are using Internet in their planning departments. This was carried out through a search of council Web sites. Secondary data analysis also focused on using Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2001 Census data to conduct a spatial and demographic analysis of ICT adoption by households in LGAs in Australia. This paper discusses the following issues of online planning: