Background

The national resilience ‘agenda’ is focused on creating disaster resilient communities through education, engagement and behaviour change.  But there is a need to improve the resilience of the places these communities live and work in, so that a ‘resilient place’ can respond appropriately to communities needs in an extreme event.

The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience recognises the important role of risk-based land use planning in mitigating the impacts of disasters. Whilst there has been some work at the statutory planning level in establishing controls on single lot developments, there are opportunities to better integrate resilience building into strategic land use planning. 

Objectives

This paper will examine the work underway in the Victorian emergency services sector to create new cross agency strategic partnerships that contribute to the planning, design and creation of resilient places.

The paper will also compare similar work in San Francisco, where the Community Safety element of the General Plan for San Francisco incorporates the multi-agency requirements for land use planning, building, community engagement, emergency response and recovery in relation to disasters.

Methods

MFB is working with CFA and SES on a joint agency response to the Melbourne Metropolitan Strategy ‘Melbourne, let’s talk about the future’. This joint agency response outlines proposals for future consideration in the development of Melbourne, in relation to risk based urban planning, building design and performance, transport planning and community development.

The combined agency work will not only deliver a response paper on the future of Melbourne, but the development of the response will assist agencies in building interoperability across the sector in recognising sector needs and building more integrated land use planning strategies based on shared understandings.

This work will contribute to a greater understanding of the issues faced within and across agencies in relation to integrated planning for risk in developing urban centers.

Findings

It is hoped that the findings will demonstrate the opportunities available to the emergency management sector to engage with land use planning agencies in the development of resilient places, and that an eventual ‘General Plan’ model for major urban centers may incorporate a community safety element that encompasses planning, building, engagement, response and recovery.