The draft variation for Gungahlin may be a splendid exercise in town planning, but there is an underlying weakness of ethos.
The plan may be a splendid improvement on previous town centres in creating a pleasant retail and living environment, but where is the wealth creation?
Housing and retail dominate the thinking about Gungahlin, as they have the other townships.
The aim in Canberra was always to have a lot of employment generated locally to avoid peak traffic flows into the centre of Canberra.
However, the vast bulk of local employment has been Commonwealth public-sector employment in nearby large office blocks. It has not been local industry.
The only reason Canberra does not have huge peak traffic flows, is that the traffic at peak times is more multi-directional than in other cities as people move between the townships.
To date Canberra’s main industry has been housing public servants. The Federal bureaucracy in Canberra is not growing at anywhere near the speed of when Woden and Belconnen were settled. The big departmental transfers from Melbourne and Sydney have stopped. Indeed, they are being reversed.
True, Gungahlin planners are projecting a slower growth than Belconnen and Woden. None the less their population projections and their plans to date for the township leave a fundamental question unanswered: where will they work? What will they produce? Where or who are their markets?
Canberra’s youth unemployment, unlike its adult unemployment, is at the Australian average. It is a symptom of Canberra no being a breeding ground for new Commonwealth public-sector employees.
Canberra needs some industry other tourism and housing and providing federal public servants. The plans for Gungahlin indicate that no-one has much idea what it is going to be.
Planning houses on the ground is one thing. Planning an economic base to provide employment another.
The background papers to the draft variation to the Territory Plan for the Gungahlin Town centre say: “”The Town Centre is to be planned to maximise the number of job opportunities for its residents. The creation of jobs for residents is integral to the success of Gungahlin.”
If the latter sentence is true, the former is only a pious hope.
The papers say: “”A successful retail centre will establish a considerable number of jobs within the Town Centre. In addition, institutional and community facilities will also be significant employers in the Town Centre.”
Boiled down that means everyone will be employed looking after each other. There is little mention of value added, wealth creating industries.
“”Underpinning the Town Centre through the creation of public-sector jobs will have a multiplier effect on the economy of Gungahlin and will allow residents to be provided with a range of employment opportunities.”
Really?
“”It is likely that private-sector office employment will follow an injection of public-sector jobs in the Town Centre,” the papers say. “”Private sector office employment may be expanded by marketing the strengths and the distinctly different environment of the Town Centre.”
Our planners and the people who direct them should recognise that two of the great 1970s parties are over: public-sector growth and the growth of office blocks.
Ideology has changed the former and technology the latter. We have to do more than put houses on a sheep paddock and hope that the udder of Federal bureaucratic growth will succour them all. This generation of highly educated, jobless off-spring of well-paid public servants has to be directed into some wealth-generating industry and the plans for new areas have to make the statement that that is the direction for the city.