The people of Gungahlin must despair of ever getting a town centre with adequate shopping and other facilities. They must be worried watching as what little government office development there is goes to Dickson and looking with envy as approval is given for a large shopping complex at Manuka. These developments will cause Gungahlin to remain a dormitory suburb … a place where people only sleep … for longer than necessary. It should by now be a vibrant township in its own right which provides local employment, local shopping and local facilities.
One of the aims of the planned city was to avoid the nasty, inefficient ways of other cities where thousands of people pour into the central business district in the morning and pour out again in the evening. Sound planning in Canberra was supposed to disperse employment and shopping to prevent the twice-daily rat race in and out of the city. It might not reduce overall travel times to work because not all people would live in the township where they worked, but at least the traffic would be multi-directional and employment dispersal would support shopping and other infrastructure dispersal.
In the short term it might suit governments to reap benefits of concentrating new projects in existing centres, but in the long-term it makes for a less efficient and more unpleasant city with costs in stress, health, extra transport infrastructure that out-weigh the short-term gains.
The fundamental mistake of market-pressure development is that it fails to deliver the best result in the long-term.