A push for a major region north of Brisbane to be reclassified as a city is now being considered by Queensland's electoral commission, with public consultation closing on Monday.
Moreton Bay Regional Council Mayor Peter Flannery called for the electoral commission to consider the reclassification for the region in July, saying the regional designation does not accurately reflect Moreton Bay's booming population and leaves it at a disadvantage.
"By definition, we are already a city. Our population is already bigger than Canberra, but we are missing out on funding because politicians have mistaken our region for being a regional centre," Cr Flannery said in July.
"The growth challenge ahead here is real. It's here, and as much as we might like to pretend it's not happening — the truth is that ignoring reality won't make it go away."
Moreton Bay is the third largest council in Australia and rapidly growing. The region's current population of 470,000 is expected to top 650,000 by 2040.
Formed in 2008 by the amalgamation of Caboolture Shire, Pine Rivers Shire and Redcliffe City councils, Moreton Bay has struggled to define itself between its combination of sprawling suburban centres and quiet rural and agricultural stretches.
'Polycentric' city proposal
The council has filed a 244-page submission with the Electoral Commission of Queensland, arguing the region is at a turning point and ready to capitalise on its existing "polycentric" city structure.
"With a strong polycentric city vision, Moreton Bay City can design, plan and implement the bones of a unique city form for it to grow into over the coming generations — a city of this millennium rather than a poor hand me down from the last," the submission says.
Moreton Bay does not have a single central business district like Brisbane City, but the 2008 amalgamation created five existing urban centres — Caboolture, Morayfield, Strathpine, Redcliffe, and North Lakes.
Griffith University Cities Research Institute lecturer Tony Matthews said the concept of a polycentric city emerged in post-World War II Europe.
"In the aftermath of World War II, when they were reconstructing the cities of the Netherlands, it didn't really make sense to have all of the cities doing the same things as each other, especially if they were in such close proximity to each other," Dr Matthews said.
Under the Netherlands' plan, four key cities were designed with different priorities: Amsterdam as the cultural capital, The Hague as the administrative and legal centre, Rotterdam focused on ports and industry, and Utrecht as the professional services centre.
"The whole idea of polycentric urban planning is that you make the cities complementary to each other, not in competition with each other, and then you link them together with high-performance and reliable transport," Dr Matthews said.
"So each of the cities is doing its own thing, which means none of them is knocking out the other one, and they're all working together almost as a cohesive structure at the national scale."
He said if the residents needed to travel between the cities, they could easily jump on a fast train.
"That's what they're trying to go for in Moreton Bay as well because they don't really have a CBD up there," Dr Matthews said.
"What they have instead is a group of different existing town centres, so their pitch is to follow a polycentric model."
Sustainable cities
In 2016, Victoria's metropolitan planning authority began developing Melbourne on a polycentric model with urban centres designed to reduce long commutes, improve travel efficiency and make regions more accessible.
Sydney's booming growth has also led to it being described by researchers as developing into a polycentric region, with the western hub of Parramatta now a city centre in its own right.
A 2015 report Delivering Sustainable Urban Mobility by an expert working group led by Bruce Godfrey argued that polycentric city planning is the most sustainable and environmentally appropriate mode of planning for Australia's future.
"A lack of polycentrism in planning leads to low-density residential expansion of cities [sprawl] and places those in outer urban and inner-regional areas at risk of transport poverty," the report said.
While public feedback to Moreton Bay's proposal was mixed, and a petition against it lodged in the state parliament, the council also noted many residents highlighted the opportunity to improve public transport between Moreton Bay's urban centres.
"The opportunity for Moreton Bay is to overtly adopt a polycentric urban form early and begin a program of shaping infrastructure investment to respond to new and interesting connectivity corridors, mobility innovations, and patterns of settlement in advance of the next waves of urban growth," the submission says.
The electoral commission is expected to publish its recommendations to Local Government Minister Steven Miles in April next year.
