Stephen Rowley

Stephen is passionate about improving the planning system's capacity to achieve sustainable and equitable outcomes.

Stephen has more than two decades of experience as a planner, working across the public and private sectors. His expertise spans regulatory design, statutory planning, built-form controls, policy implementation, and more. He is a recognised expert in the Victorian planning system, having written the standard text The Victorian Planning System: Practice, Problems and Prospects, the second edition of which was published in June 2023.

Stephen is a Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia, where he has also served as Vice President of the Victorian Division. In addition, he is a Planning Editor for the Victorian Planning Reports, and an experienced planning educator, having taught at RMIT and Monash Universities.

Across his work as a planner, advocate, writer and educator, Stephen is driven by the desire for planning policy that leads to better decision-making and on-the-ground outcomes for communities.

Outside of work, Stephen is a film buff. His first book, Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs: Building Hollywood's Ideal Communities, analyses how the depictions of cities in film and television inform urban planning practice.