Some of the old National Capital Development Commission hands must be smiling.
During the week, Liberal planning spokesman Greg Cornwell looked back and the pre-self-government NCDC as the good old days when the community knew what was going on and had time to have a say. He fondly recalled the large billboards dotted about the town saying: “”NCDC Site for Community Facility” or whatever.
He was bemoaning the way residents had to find out from construction workers about the construction of Optus mobile communications towers. (The towers don’t actually move; they are for mobile telephones.)
In the good old NCDC days a sign would have been placed at the site months before saying “”Site for Towers”, Cornwell’s theory goes.
(Incidentally, I thought the Post-Master General’s Department told us that the Black Mountain tower would make all these horrible steel communications antennas on the skyline unnecessary.)
Anyway, my recollection of the NCDC days is slightly different from Cornwell’s. For a start economic conditions were different. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, these signs were not saying; “Your wonderful NCDC, in full consultation with the community, wonders if anyone would mind terribly much if we built something here and we will give you lots of notice.” Rather they were saying: “Please, please, any investor out there bring your money from Sydney and Melbourne to barren windswept Canberra to give the city a kick along. And we will give you the land for nothing.” You know, just like the Oklahoma land races. Try buying a block in Oklahoma now.
Sure, the NCDC had a lot of public meetings, but basically it did what it liked. It did not have to upset too many residents because there was enough land and money to avoid most conflict. It was not answerable to the people of Canberra, but to the Federal Cabinet.
Now we have more people (and therefore more of the nasty things humans bring to cities: greed, stress, crowding, selfishness etc. I wonder if rats in exploding populations say to themselves: “”I must get out of this human-race”.) Nowadays, the NCDC equivalents do not have to attract investors. There are developers ready, willing and able to make a buck all over town.
This is the real world. The NCDC days were the good old days, not because administration is any better or worse than now, but because there was more land and money.
Then in the mid-1980s we ran out of easy, cheap land. It became economic to redevelop, especially in the commercial heart. Nearby residents were angered because of car parking and objected in the courts. It was hugely expensive for the office-block redevelopers. This was just before self-government in 1989.
The developers did not want to suffer that uncertainty and cost again. They wanted a regime where they could look at the rules and if their development met them, they could build no matter what: the certainty principle.
Essentially, that is what they got in the draft territory plan. And no-one took much notice because Canberrans had a new-city mentality. They were so worried about what would happen to vacant, unleased land next to them, that they did not even notice the new rules about occupied, leased land.
The upshot was that the certainty principle developers wanted for redevelopment of commercial sites became the principle for redevelopment of residential sites. The old rules went: several dwellings could be put on site, blocks could be amalgamated, divided or strata-titled all over Canberra, with no minimum or maximum block size. If you obeyed the new setback and energy-efficiency requirements, you could redevelop no matter what the neighbours thought.
The pendulum clearly went to far.
Fortunately, this is not the good old days of the NCDC. It is a (sort of) democracy. Cornwell, of course, would be the first to recognise that, because he is becoming one of the siphons of residents’ anger.
The result has been a classic political response. Developers have one vote each; so do residents. We have an election in February, and it is under the Hare-Clark system. Annoyed residents can still vote for their philosophically preferred party yet vote against any planning minister from that party who does not respond to their concerns.
Bill Wood has responded “”sat up and taken notice”, were the words of the Conservation Council, in a perhaps unintended reference to seats.
Over past months Wood has announced more than half a dozen major planning changes each significantly eroding the certainty principle, requiring more of developers and giving existing residents a better deal.
You can call it back-pedalling, or saving your political skin. Or you can call it genuine response to community concerns, or genuine pursuit by Wood of a better-designed city. Perhaps a bit of all four.
The most recent announcement, this week, will add more architectural advice to the system.
Wood, of course, will never be able to please everyone. And there is going to be a fair amount of lead time before his changes have an effect on the ground. So there will still be gnashing of teeth over trees, paling fences along front boundaries, second residences 50cm away from the boundary etc etc. And he will still generate some community-group anger.
The local conservation council has been highly critical of Canberra’s in-fill program. Superficially, that puts it at odds with the national movement, which chants: in-fill good; greenfields bad. The essential point made by the local conservation group, however, is that in-fill is welcome on energy and infrastructure efficiency grounds if it is done well, and it is unwelcome if it is done badly.
And most residents would agree. Only the real NIMBYs would remain; other residents would welcome in-fill. Their shops come alive, street lighting, paths and roads are improved, and well-designed mixed low and medium-density can improve the neighbourhood and increase property values.
One issue not yet addressed by Wood, however, is the amount of redevelopment to be allowed in any one neighbourhood. At present the plan permits every present residential block to be amalgamated, divided or have extra dwellings. Market forces cannot be relied upon to create a healthy even mix throughout the city. To the contrary, the economics of redevelopment make it cheaper to build a lot in one place. This suggests that the whole character of some neighbourhoods will be changed while others are left almost totally alone.
If that happens, we will get pressure of infrastructure in some places and under-used infrastructure in others. The public purse loses, and developers gain. Beware the chant: in-fill good; greenfields bad. What we need is good in-fill; good greenfields.
At least the ballot box is making Bill Wood work at it. That is more than you could say for the NCDC benevolent dictatorship. Take away the 1960s largesse of money and land and put the NCDC in 1994, I’d rather have self-government.