Ecological determinism in Australia : tracing the legacy of McHarg downunder and its key precedents

Ecological planning, as advocated by Ian McHarg, filtered extensively through North America following the publication of Design with Nature (1965). The integrated design and planning approach was also advanced by numerous graduates of McHarg's studios at the University of Pennsylvania where this approach was extensively trialled and proven. While a clear synthesis and theoretical framework was articulated and reinforced through a plethora of projects, monographs, and articles, the majority of these perspectives were North American, lacked clarity about the translation of the approach into legal strategic and statutory planning instruments, nor shed light upon what transpired in Australia. This paper reviews the development of the Conservation Plan created for the southern Mornington peninsula in Victoria, Australia, as well as its intent, structure and internal workings as a successful model of ecological statutory planning, in the context of the wider WPRPA activities that draws directly from the McHarg theory. Known as the Conservation Plan for the southern Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, a revolutionary planning structure devised in the early 1970s by several Australian proponents. The Conservation Plan continues in operation today curating a high scenic valued landscape protecting it from intrusion from the growing metropolitan city of Melbourne thus fulfilling its objectives of landscape quality conservation whilst still permitting sympathetic building and land use growth. Contextually, the Conservation Plan appears to be only statutory equivalent translation of the approach internationally other than the Pinelands Commission planning processes in New Jersey.