An instant, but wrong, response to last week’s announcement by Planning Minister Gary Humphries would be: “”Oh no, not another planning inquiry.” Mr Humphries says the ACT planning system is failing in its most important objective _ the creation of confidence among ordinary Canberrans in the quality of life in their city. It is a welcome change of perspective from the narrow to the broad. In the past five or six years planning has been focused on what can be built on particular parcels of land _ in short a land-use policy. It lacked a vision of what the city should look like in 30 or 40 years’ time and lacked integration with other policies: transport, employment, industry and population; insofar as those policies exist. In some respects Mr Humphries is reaching to an earlier _ pre self-government _ type of planning in Canberra which projected employment and population expectations and only then dealt with land use. That approach had a fair degree of success.
The original Territory Plan emphasised certainty. If you fitted certain footprint and other rules you were permitted to build. Similar rules applied virtually territory wide, irrespective of local sensitivities. In-fill and dual occupancies for profit were built on a scale unimaginable a few years before. It was more a developers’ blueprint than a coherent and comprehensive statement of how Canberra should be. Outrage and hard work by community groups resulted in the plan being changed little by little with inquiry after inquiry, and it is still not right. Victoria and NSW have rightly abandoned the infill-anywhere approach. Canberra must, too.
The chair of the planning committee, Michael Moore, rightly poses the questions: How much development? When? and Where? One could easily add, To what standards? Developers, as much as community groups, have an important role in helping to answer these questions. They might have liked the original Territory Plan which on paper gave them greater scope. But it was politically unsustainable as well as being economically and ecologically unsustainable. It was bound to result in a backlash. Ultimately it will be better for employment, sustainable moderate profits rather than quick windfalls and the lifestyle of Canberrans for them to engage in this new approach.