Current research into the peri-urbanisation associated with the rapid population growth of preferred Australian metropolitan regions has shown that their landscape values are put at risk and the region’s QoL and the community’s standards of liveability are consequently threatened. Whilst the concept of a landscape framework as an analytical, policy and management tool has general acceptance, there appears to be few if any working
examples where this concept has been operationalised.
To date, the conventional approaches utilised by regional planning agencies and Local Government have not been able to deliver the necessary tools to incorporate the necessary landscape planning principles let alone processes to address the regional landscape values at risk in the peri-urban areas of rapidly growing regions.
However, promising initiatives have emerged from the associated field of landscape planning. Within this alternative planning paradigm a conceptually workable framework has been articulated that can address the management of the priority regional landscape values of peri-urban areas.
Despite shortcomings in the theoretical development of this conceptual framework, a regional landscape framework has been incorporated into the recently released SEQ Regional Plan 2005-2026, a statutory planning instrument for the South East Queensland (SEQ) region, Australia’s fastest growing metropolitan region.
Whilst it is conceivable that in the SEQ case, practice may be ahead of theory, there is now an priority imperative to develop this framework in a manner that it can utilised as a regional policy framework and as an integrating instrument to address the values of the SEQ regional landscape including the range of existing and emerging rural values of the critical urban–rural interface.