This conceptual paper is an attempt at identifying the gap between physical (environmental) planning legislation and city liveability in Papua New Guinea, with a view to making recommendations for improved policy formulation and implementation to bridge the gap. The city of Port Moresby, which is the federal capital, mirrors the rest of the urban centres in the country in terms of physical conditions that are a collective reflection on the poor performance of stakeholders responsible for enforcing planning legislation and standards in the country’s built environment with the resultant rating of Port Moresby as one of the five least liveable cities in the world. The paper adopts the dialectical method to present two opposing points of view for the discourse (the reality thesis and the fantasy anti-thesis) concerning the redeem-ability or otherwise of the observed gap between planning legislation and city liveability in PNG.The synthesis at the end of the discourse shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel for PNG given the right conditions. The conditions include an imbibed right attitude, concerted enforcement of existing planning standards and development control measures, massive infrastructure development, urban renewal to address the challenges of squatter settlements and steadfastness in stemming the tide of worsening rural-urban migration at the points of origin and destination of migrants.
Keywords: City liveability; sustainability; PNG; dialectical approach; physical planning, legislation