| Abstract: | The role of planning in Sydney's economic development since the mid-1970s is explored, focusing on its role in reducing spatial disparities across the region. Planning policies during the period of each State government--Labor (1976-88), Liberal-National (1988-95) and Labor (1995-present)--are reviewed. The paper analyses a hierarchy of factors underlying the relative failure of policies to lessen disparities, notably intra-government failure to produce effective policies, the influence of prevailing ideology, local institutions and political culture, and the wider context of globalisation and the mode of capitalist accumulation. Each of these has been significant in limiting planning's role in addressing uneven development across the region. |
