Town Planning Historical Material 1925 - 1965

This collection includes key records relating to the development of the First Town Plan for Brisbane in 1965

History of Town Planning in Brisbane 1925 – 1965

The Department of Town Planning was created in October 1925, and its first task was to prepare ordinances giving greater control over development. These were the new Chapter 8 Ordinances confirmed by Council on December 15, 1925, and gazetted in March 1926.

In 1928 the City Planner presented the results of the preliminary civic survey and the resultant zoning plan. The plan was then passed to a general purposes committee for recommendations and the plan was placed on public exhibition for comment and suggestion. The following year a zoning plan and draft ordinances were adopted and confirmed by Council.

After a deputation from manufacturing interests, the Lord Mayor himself moved for modification of the zoning ordinances to permit businesses in areas where they were already established even when they were within prohibited zones. Finally, because of objections by the Town Planning Association and the Property Owners' Association, the State Government refused to gazette the Ordinances on the grounds that they failed to provide for compensation to those injuriously affected by the plan.

In 1934 the State Government enacted the "City of Mackay and other Town Planning Schemes Approval Act of 1934". This Act applied to Brisbane, and among other things. Required definition of the area and submission of plans to the Minister for approval and publication in the Gazette. Any town planning scheme was to be preceded by a civic survey. The Council appointed a Town Planner to prepare the civic survey. He estimated the time of completion as two years. A previous civic survey, which had started before the 1934 Act, was made inadequate by its requirements. For the first time aerial survey techniques were used to ensure that the civic survey was completed by 1939.

The following year, 1940, after World War II started, a new administration took over and immediately started a drastic reorganisation, during which the City Planner's Office was placed in abeyance.  In 1943, as part of the "preparation" side of its policy, the Council reconstituted the Town Planning Department, and the following year a town planning scheme was placed on public exhibition. This was the first metropolitan town planning scheme in Australia and consisted of a zoning scheme and Ordinance. It was also the first attempt at a statutory scheme on a metropolitan basis. Contained in this plan was the controversial green belt designed to maintain parkland approximately 1.6 kilometres deep outside the urban sections of the city.

Following the public exhibition of the plan and subsequent Council reappraisal, the plan was once again shelved.  Eventually, a fresh start on planning was made after the war and a new aerial survey was made in 1946. However, shortage of trained staff continued to delay work on the use and occupation survey and preparation of a town plan. By 1950, failure to keep up with rapid post-war development made another aerial survey a necessity. Between 1947 and 1952 the 1944 plan was revised by resolution of Council, although such a course of action was ultra vires under existing planning legislation. The Council administration which came to power in 1952 approached the State Government for a solution to this problem, and special legislation was devised which in effect enabled the 1952 Plan to follow the planning approval procedure laid down by the 1934 Act. Although a plan was placed on exhibition in November 1952 and submitted to the State Government for approval the following year, the fact that the 1952 Plan had been an illegal Plan in the first instance apparently influenced the State Government in its consideration of the scheme.

Consequently, despite the need for State Government approval and legislation to give full effect to the 1952 plan's provisions, the Government declined to act and the powers of the Council to regulate growth of the city continued to depend on an unsatisfactory system of interim controls. An examination of the green belt scheme, one of the most controversial aspects of planning under the 1940-52 administration of Sir John Chandler, is essential to understand why the 1952 Town Plan was never completed.

The green belt concept had been developed overseas to meet the special needs of European cities and was not designed to cope with Australian conditions. For example, having regard to the comparatively large lots by then common to Australian cities, the restriction of urban growth to a relatively small central area and to satellite towns and small community centres beyond the green belt would have greatly increased cost of essential services and inflated land values.

The City of Brisbane Amendment Act 1952 removed Brisbane from the effects of Section 33 of the Local Government Act and introduced separate planning scheme provisions into the City of Brisbane Act. Before 1952, and indeed subsequently, the endorsement of planning decisions was based on Chapter 35 of Council's ordinances, an interim measure which dated from the first abortive attempt to introduce a town plan in 1928. Although the 1934 Act provided for interim zoning powers from the date that Council gazetted its intention to prepare a Town Plan on March 30, 1935, Chapter 35 continued to provide the basis for enforcing planning decisions.

The ordinance operated by giving Council the power to declare "any defined part of the city to be a residential district". Faced with the need to exercise control over development of the metropolitan area, the Greene administration in 1932 adopted the simple expedient of declaring all parcels of vacant land or land upon which residential buildings were at that time erected to be residential districts. The effect of this decision was to prevent any non-residential development taking place without Council approval.

This continued to provide the basis for interim control until its validity was successfully challenged in the High Court in 1955. In giving judgment against the Council in Vitosh v The Brisbane City Council, the High Court declared the 1932 resolution invalid on the grounds that it had defined residential districts in terms of land-use rather than specific boundaries. This means that Council could no longer legally enforce its planning decisions.

A new Chapter 35 was hastily gazetted to retrieve the situation. However, the case made it obvious that Council's earlier ordinance powers provided insufficient control, and existing State legislation needed to be updated if it was to provide an adequate basis for planning in a city of the size and potential of Brisbane. Town Plan a necessity. By this time, it was becoming clear to everyone that a town plan based on acceptable legislation to govern it was an absolute necessity.

As an outcome of the discussions with the Council on the 1952 Plan, State Cabinet set up a committee to report on what action should be taken. The Committee was formed in September 1958 and reported back that a new plan should be prepared under direction of a committee also to be appointed by Cabinet.

This second Committee was duly appointed in January 1959 and was named the Greater Brisbane Town Planning Committee. It was empowered to prepare a plan for the City of Brisbane by "The City of Brisbane (Town Plan) Act" of 1959.This committee comprised the Lord Mayor as Chairman, Chairman of the Health Committee as Deputy Chairman, the Town Clerk, the Director of Local Government and the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Queensland. During Faculty of Architecture, University of Queensland. During preparation of the Plan the City of Brisbane Town Planning Act 1964 was assented to and it came into operation on the day of gazettal (December 21, 1965) of the Town Plan prepared by the Greater Brisbane Town Planning Committee.

The purpose of the 1964 Act was to provide the machinery to implement and administer the Town Plan, including setting up the Local Government Court to hear appeals and determine claims for compensation. Before this, all appeals and claims had been heard in the Land Court.

Republished from Brisbane Yearbook 1975