Touching on transparency in city local law making. Experiences from waking up each day in City of Melbourne, Australia

• Author: Rebecca Leshinsky
• Position: Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
• Pages: 194-209

Touching on transparency in city

local law making

Experiences from waking up each day in City

of Melbourne, Australia

Rebecca Leshinsky

Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University,

Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose for this paper is to share jurisdictional knowledge on local law-making theory

and praxis, an area of law not well represented in the literature despite its involvement in day-to-day life.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper not only shares knowledge about the local law-making

process in Melbourne, Australia, but also explores attitudes to local law-making gathered through

semi-structured interviews from a sample of relevant stakeholders.

Findings – The paper reports on ndings from a study undertaken in Melbourne, Australia.

Stakeholder perceptions and attitudes were canvassed regarding local law-making in the areas of land

use planning and waste management. Overall, stakeholders were satised that Melbourne is a robust

jurisdiction offering a fair and transparent local law-making system, but they see scope for more public

participation.

Research limitations/implications – The ndings suggest that even though the state of Victoria

offers a fair and transparent system of local law-making, there is still signicant scope for more

meaningful involvement from the community, as well as space for more effective enforcement of local

laws. The stage is set for greater cross-jurisdictional reciprocal learning about local law-making

between cities.

Originality/value – This paper offers meaningful and utilitarian insight for policy and law makers,

academics and built environment professionals from relevant stakeholders on the operation and

transparency of local law-making.

Keywords Law, Community, Engagement, Enforcement, Local, Making

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Democracy in action is the Planning and Environment Act and the way local councils

implement this in their planning systems. (Victorian State Government: Ofcer[1])

Each day of our lives, we pass through numerous municipal areas as we travel to

school, work, gym, the supermarket, our favourite café, visiting friends and family,

etc. Local laws touch all aspects of our lives (Frug, 1980,1999;Valverde, 2009,2011,

2012), from the moment we wake to the time we fall back to sleep. Even as we sleep,

garbage is collected, streets are cleaned, roads are repaired and street light globes

are changed; this is the work of municipal workers and contractors, governed by

The author would like to thank UN-Habitat Nairobi for its generous funding for this project.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1756-1450.htm

IJLBE

8,3

194

Received 19 January 2016

Revised 4 March 2016

Accepted 12 March 2016

InternationalJournal of Law in the

BuiltEnvironment

Vol.8 No. 3, 2016

pp.194-209

©Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1756-1450

DOI 10.1108/IJLBE-01-2016-0001

local laws. No one seems to know all of the local laws, yet, this body of law touches

and inuences the experiences of urban life signicantly: quietly shaping both the

built space and social interactions that take place in it (Valverde, 2012, p. 21). It is

essential then that the regulatory system that controls so closely our daily lives is

equitable, fair and transparent (Fainstein, 2010;Korthals Altes, 2016). Even for the

best documented cites in the world, New York and London, where there are

numerous controversial property developments, there has been very little

systematic reection on local law and urban governance (Valverde, 2012, p. 24), and

the instruments, which cause change to daily lives (Legacy and Leshinsky, 2013,

2015). In Western liberal democracies, local law-making should work beyond

top-down institutions of representative democracy (Bevir, 2006;Fung, 2006;Dryzek,

2010) to allow for more direct involvement from citizens (Inch, 2012,2014;Reece,

2015).

This paper discusses ndings from a study undertaken in the City of Melbourne in

2013-2014 that canvassed the perceptions and views of a sample of municipal

stakeholders on the local law-making process. Findings from the paper also enhance the

emerging discussion on the translation and application of urban concepts and law from

one jurisdiction to another (Norton and Bieri, 2014;Alterman, 2010).

The article is structured as follows. First, it situates local law-making in the context

of international and national law. Next, it positions the legal framework for local

law-making in the City of Melbourne, being the capital city of the state of Victoria and

one of the municipalities situated in the Greater Melbourne Metropolitan Area. The

project methodology, which focuses on interviews conducted with nine municipal

stakeholders, is then described. Following this, ndings from the study are reported on:

stakeholder views on law-making in land use planning and waste management in the

City of Melbourne. The paper then concludes with a discussion on shortcomings in local

law-making, paying particular attention as to why greater empowerment and

involvement of the community, as well as more attention to actual enforcement, can

facilitate improvement in the local law-making process.

Situating local law-making

Local law is a transparent model. Good because there is a process, eventually leading to nes.

(NGO 2, ofcer)

By local law-making, we mean municipal or local government law. In some jurisdictions,

such as Toronto and London, cities are large and municipalities themselves are in

control of services such as education, public transit, property taxes, etc. In other

jurisdictions, such as the state of Victoria, with a population on par with the Greater

Toronto area (around 4 million people), education, public transit and property taxes

(save council rates) are the realm of the State government and its agencies.

Under the Australian federal model, law-making powers are separated between a

central government and individual states and territories. There is a third tier of

government, local government, which was created by State governments. There are

some 565 local councils in Australia (Reece, 2015); however, in all large urban cities

across the country, there is no “citywide” legal system. Big ticket costly items such as

education, health and infrastructure are governed and funded at the state level, and,

195

Touching on

transparency