The consequences of three urbanisation scenarios for northern Australia

ABSTRACT The Australian federal government white paper ‘Our north, our future’ projects that northern Australia’s population could reach 5,000,000 by 2060. This represents an almost four-fold increase in population (an additional 3,700,000 people) all within the next 41 years. Given the ambiguities in the White paper about the distribution of this population, this paper ventures three settlement pattern scenarios to explore the issues these may pose. The paper concludes that population growth of the scale projected will require comprehensive, long term planning – without such planning the scale of population growth projected could result in negative environmental and societal consequences. As such, the discipline of planning in Australia should be aware of this emerging situation.