Retail Services and the Role of the State: Convenience Stores and the Planning Appeals Board in Melbourne

Abstract

Studies of urban and regional phenomena are increasingly coming to recognize the role of the state in many planning processes and outcomes. In this paper we examine the planning process in Melbourne with respect to a recent retailing innovation in Australia, that of drive-in convenience stores. Resistance to the establishment of such stores, particularly their location in residential areas, has come both from residents and from local authorities charged with the administration of the Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme. The conflicts have been adjudicated through a planning appeals body, the Victorian Planning Appeals Board. The nature of constraints placed on the interpretation of the planning scheme by the Appeals Board through Supreme Court decisions, and through the manner of operation of the Appeals Board itself, has meant that decisions have predominantly favoured the developers. Thus structure at the lower levels of the retail hierarchy is altering quite markedly, not as a result of conscious planning decisions, but as a result of the mechanisms to resolve conflict.