Oil Vulnerability Scenarios and Regional Visioning in Australia: The South East Queensland Regional Plan

Abstract

Growth management has been a key regional planning task, especially in some of the ‘sunbelt’ zones of the United States and Australia. Regional agencies have often used strategic visioning and scenario testing to evaluate future growth trajectories and their impact on regional communities. Many regions are facing complex, multi-dimensional and pressing problems that extend beyond the single dimension of growth management. Part of the task of reshaping regional planning agendas to respond to these pressing urban challenges hinges on the capacity of urban regions to adequately envisage potential future urban development scenarios and the various stresses, vulnerabilities, risks and threats that future global, national and sub-national economic, social and environmental changes may bring. This chapter examines the problem of ‘oil vulnerability’ for city regions and examines how strategic simulation and scenario testing of alternative petroleum scenarios can provide valuable policy-relevant insights for the planning of urban regions. The chapter identifies the problem of increasingly constrained global petroleum supplies and introduces the strategic evaluation technique developed by the authors to investigate the urban ‘oil vulnerability’ of Australia’s major cities. The chapter shows how these methods have been incorporated into the South East Queensland Regional Plan and the policy measures adopted in response to petroleum challenges. The chapter concludes by evaluating the quality of the planning measures proposed as a response to these regional challenges and reflects on the wider implications for these insights into strategic visioning and scenario development processes.