ISOCARP · REVIEW 09 142 143 URBAN AND SOCIAL PLANNING THROUGH PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHI DALLAS ROGERS URBAN AND SOCIAL PLANNING THROUGH PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP: THE CASE OF THE BONNYRIGG LIVING COMMUNITIES PROJECT, SYDNEY AUSTRALIA Dallas Rogers Newleaf Bonnyrigg is a multi-award winning residential renewal project that has paved the way for a new approach to the renewal of social housing through public-private partnerships between Housing NSW and the private sector. Bonnyrigg map and Newleaf dwellings 1 In December 2004 the New South Wales (NSW) state Housing Minister announced the redevelop- ment of the 81-hectare Bonnyrigg public housing estate in Sydney Australia. The Bonnyrigg Living Communites Project (BLCP) is the irst NSW public housing estate redevelopment by public–pri- vate partnership. The project involves a 30-year contract between the NSW Government and a private-sector consortium company. The BLCP is a pathinder project that is exploring new urban and social planning models, social mix policies, a new asset management program and dwell- ing maintenance practices contracted out to the private-sector by the NSW Government. On the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the BLCP this article explores some of the challenges of using public- private partnerships to manage large-scale social, urban and economic change. URBAN AND SOCIAL PLANNING IN AUSTRALIA: THE DEMISE OF PUBLIC HOUSING In Australia the constitutional power to restruc- ture Australian cities resides with the states and territories, and subsequently (through these statutory bodies) with the local authorities at the third level of government. As a matter of historic interest, local government is not referred to in the constitution of the Australian Commonwealth, nor does the Federal Government have any direct political oversight over planning in NSW. How- ever, the Federal Government has historically in- luenced the strategic planning of public housing in NSW through its public housing operational budgets and project funding for major hous- ing and public housing estate redevelopment programs. Over the last ten years in NSW the responsibility for strategic and regulatory planning has become increasingly more luid and highly politicized as the Federal, NSW State, and local governments’ vie for a greater share in the planning governance pie. Planners and bureaucrats in NSW have been engaged in an increasingly politicized discussion about the scale (federal-state-local) at which stra- tegic and regulatory planning should be tasked. A form of “new regionalism” 3 , which is character- istic of the government’s intervention in urban policy at the scale of metropolitan regions rather than at local divisions, is driving a reworking of the political level at which citizens are made governable and major infrastructure is delivered through planning policy. Increasingly these plan- ning frameworks involve the private-sector as the provider and manager of infrastructure and services, which were formerly provided by the state. Within the NSW planning system there is provision to designate certain planning propos-