Industrial land in the planning imaginary – the role and place of industry in strategic plans for Melbourne, 1929–2017

Urban planning has had a close but evolving relationship with industrial activity. However, industrial activity has rarely been centred in planning or zoning histories. Industrialization was a catalyzing concern in early planning movements, with zoning newly defining and separating land by use. Large-scale manufacturing drove strategic planning for western cities through the mid-twentieth century, while the late twentieth century saw urban industrial land rezoned and redeployed. Industry has partially returned to discourse through productive cities and sovereign manufacturing ideas. In this paper we apply a historical approach to the concept of the planning ‘imaginary’ – the discourses, narratives and practices policy makers use to frame meaning. We analyse persistence and change in how industry has featured in the planning imaginary of Melbourne, Australia across seven strategic plans from 1929 to 2017. Drawing on historical institutionalist approaches, we find recent ideas around advanced manufacturing and logistics layer onto and only partially displace earlier industrial planning imaginaries including post-industrial and sanitary cities. While the prominence of ideas is broadly chronological, legacies from earlier imaginaries coexist and compete. The dominance of new industrial imaginaries is ephemeral – rapidly repositioning for re-imagined futures – but their effects play out over decades.