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Podcast episode 152: All Around The World - Australia

Episode 152 of 50 Shades of Planning is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify.

I topped and tailed this episode whilst on holiday in Nerja at the end of October, but it was published on 8 November to coincide with World Town Planning Day. This seemed the perfect opportunity to publish the second of a series of episodes being led by the oldest friend of the podcast, Mr Paul Smith. Paul, regular listeners will know, is the Managing Director at the Strategic Land Group and a Housing Today columnist.

Paul put it to me that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. We very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. He wanted to remedy that and so in this series he is chatting with planning professionals and academics from a number of countries to find out what works well there, what works less well, and what can we learn.

In this episode we head down under...

This a conversation that Paul recorded online back in July of this year with Melissa Neighbour. Melissa is a Director and principal planner at Sky Planning in Sydney.

They talked about the politics of Sydney’s housing crisis, gentle density, the merits of a greater than local approach to planning and the benefits and disbenefits of zonal planning. That might all sound very familiar...

I resisted the temptation to say in my outro that 'every podcast needs good neighbours', but will do here because it is too good a line not to use somewhere...



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