Exhibition to Implementation: Introducing Democratic Planning for Metropolitan Sydney 1948–51

Public participation in plan-making is now accepted as mainstream at all spatial scales. Decisive moves to inject consultative provisions are usually dated to the 1960s, a decade of worldwide civil unrest marked by the rise of community social movements. However, there is a neglected pre-history. In Australia, the ideology of democratic planning was apparent from the 1940s. Exhibitions played a key role in public information campaigns. When the first major wave of statutory planning reforms accommodated opportunities for citizen comment, planning experienced an immediate reality check when long-held ideals were contested in their translation into specific spatial regulations. The idealistic marketing of, and subsequent political reactions to, the Cumberland County Planning Scheme for metropolitan Sydney from 1948 exemplify this critical transition in modern Australian planning history.