"(c), contributions which should capture, for community development and betterment, the unearned increases in assessed land value attributable to significant material changes of use".

This is just another way of saying the profits of enterprise will be confiscated by the state.

Increases in value that result from the granting of consent are evidence of the extent of the distortion in the property market caused by the "rationing" of development.

There is a community desire to avoid a purely functioning land market that values all property in line with the economic rent. But the existing IPA system does not conform to proper rationing principles. These are;

1 The burden of scarcity resulting from rationing is distributed fairly and equitably,
2 The supply of rationed products or services are distributed fairly and equitably, and
3 The benefits that result from the scarcity are also distributed fairly and equitably.

The burden of the scarcity falls on our own kids. High land prices go directly on top of their mortgages and we then plan for retirement with the vain hope that the kids marriages will survive.

Development was once seen as everyone's right to improve their circumstances but has been converted into a purely corporate game by the scale and complexity of any entry into the consent process.

And ordinary home owners are now being priced into, and up, the land tax regime by valuation increases. Developers make super profits, existing owners make capital gains (if their marriage survives the debt load), and the kids just surrender to a 100% consumption lifestyle.

The consent process must be embedded in a properly distributed rationing system where "development credits" accrue to all existing lots, based on a projected % growth rate. And a developer who had not accrued sufficient credits on his own lots would need to purchase these in an open market. The assessment can still be guided by community expectations and in the event that approval is denied, the accumulated credits can be transferred to a project that will get consent.

Phil, a few comments on Queensland planning. Brisbane City Council recently undertook a large scale survey relating to their CityScape plan. Many questions were useless. For example, they set up as alternatives options which were complementary – e.g. increased provision of water v improved utilisation. Rational answers to many questions required information which respondents were unlikely to have, making a sensible evaluation of responses impossible.

I noted in my response to the survey that “in my experience, planners in SEQ have an assumption that it is best if people live, work and study in the same district, and that policies which promote that are desirable, for example because they reduce transport demands. This thinking appears to underpin the survey, but I think that it is mistaken. The main positive of a major metropolis, particularly in an increasingly knowledge-intensive society, is the number, diversity and richness of interactions and opportunities afforded by the urban conglomeration. The emphasis should be on facilitating interaction and increasing choice rather than on district-by-district self-sufficiency. This is particularly important for employment and education opportunities and for the development of a more innovative society.”

Your more open approach seems superior to the current one.

I also noted in my response that while it was (of course) focussed on the built environment, the major factors affecting my quality of life in recent years have been the low standards of, and lack of integrity in, public life in Queensland. Improvements in the standards of government and public service are most important to improved quality of life, and any planning and implementation of controls will be deficient until standards improve. Both you and Perseus appear to agree on the need for improvement, if not the direction required.

Until local governments are stripped of planning powers, we will never ever improve.

You can buy local councillors with change, they have no concept of creating communities or ESD, and they allow a spiral of incorrect developments to the point of becoming regions sparse and soulless.

Until they stop thinking short term and get a grasp of the spacial development of cities theories, they should only provide input, not have the magic wand.

If they keep up the double garage transit based suburbs low on infrastrucure, they create an unsustainable, uncertain future for us all.

Build only around infrastucture, build up not out if we have to but very few developers need to take a risk these days with any ESD type developments, as the traditional models and lot layouts work and sell.

It is very sad that we as a nation are at the mercy of these people.

Here we go again, only a few lines into the article and we find the phrase "fundamentally flawed". Can any one of you so called writers and commentators out there simply just say 'flawed' go on try it. You don't have to couple flawed with fundamentally it is not a rule of grammar.
Incidentally today I was in one of those large shopping malls and asked directions from the "concierge" (yes really) I was told to take the travelator, on querying this I realised that I was being directed to an escalator. Now, I ask you what has this got to do with an article about planning?

In north Queensland, different centres have had a series of strategic plans, each of which seems to just be a rehash of the previous process, as though it had not been done before, and well inside the timeframe that the previous plan was supposed to cover! Each time, there is no hint of a limit to overall development. The plans for the next ten or twenty years are formulated, with development after that left open-ended. Then there are numerous examples where councils have simply voted to approve developments that are not in keeping with the plans!

For goodness sake, town plans MUST SURELY have limits to development declared as a fundamental part of the planning process. How on earth can the whole size of a centre be left open? Knowing what ultimate size a town or city is going to be is all-important for infrastructure planning….. and yet councils never declare limits, and specifically avoid any discussion on this point.

The only exception in NQ is Douglas shire (including Mossman and Port Douglas), which as had declared limits to development for many years now), and which has been re-elected a number of times with this platform well understood by the community.

Quite frankly, councils in Townsville, Cairns and other centres with development pressure have been little more than growth-facilitation mechanisms, by way of approval of (and very active encouragement for) just about the maximum rate of development, including urban and industrial expansion.

This is not in keeping with the wishes of the community or an improved quality of life for the community, and we have seen outrage expressed by significant sections of the community over a number of proposals (not just by nimby of greenie minorities).

continued

Worse than this, they lie to us! They tell us that this sort of development is good for the community, by way of increased economic income, employment and community services and infrastructure. Not only is this essentially false, but they fail to say anything about the downsides, generated by way of ever-larger population, including increased congestion, crime, and pressure on infrastructure that is not keeping up with increasing demand.

Then there is the insidious relationship between local government and ‘moneybags’ developers.

Realist writes: “You can buy local councillors with change, they have no concept of creating communities or ESD, and they allow a spiral of incorrect developments to the point of becoming regions sparse and soulless.”

Absolutely.

So how do we develop an integrated planning scheme that makes local government accountable? How do we do it when we have a state government that is every bit as rampantly pro-growth, and which actively encourages people to move to Queensland while at the same time struggling with enormous development and population pressures in SEQ?.....and is likely to ramp up pressure to increase population growth in northern centres in order to relieve the pressure in SEQ? How do we do it when the federal govt and every other state govt are just and pro-expansionist and ant-sustainability-oriented?

Queensland’s Integrated Planning Act is little more than a growth facilitation mechanism for coastal Qld. All it really does is order this growth a little better than if it didn’t exist. But then, what else would we have expected?

Put the "human face" back into development!

Thankyou, I found the comments above extremely fruitful and inspiational.

As Perseus notes; "Development was once seen as everyone's right to improve their circumstances but has been converted into a purely corporate game by the scale and complexity of any entry into the consent process."

Or to expand on a point of Faustino; "... the low standards of... integrity in, public life in Queensland. Improvements in the standards of government and public service are most important to improved quality of life, and any planning and implementation of controls will be deficient until standards improve."

Here I specifically isolate the role of regional managers of Far North Queensland and especially within Cape York, for their failure to encourage more active awareness in planning linkages of socio-economic local and regional integrative development.

I believe the Queensland Government has made a broad effort to develop sustainable policies (on paper) in a number of interesting areas which ought to offer intergrative potential. However... this opportunity to activate possible integrative capacity is more often not transfered by many regional managers who appear to not be committed to sustainable progresses required at regional and ground levels.

This in my opinion puts additional pressure on geographical resource scarcities, breeds community dis-organisation by undermining the valuable inputs of civic diversities as it wastes any potential capacity by creating a network of friction, based on misunderstandings and a divided culture of disunifing choas between local residents and their councils, leaving all "stakeholders" at the mercy of developers.

While I agree there is a communication problem with lingo, I believe the main problem is the process of cultural and political perception as it transfers down the socio-economic and political regional chain.

I remind us all of the UN Declaration of Community Engagement that was signed in Brisbane during 2005. For more see http://www.miacat.com. This is timely and needs to be integrated in all areas of Queenslands planning and development activities.

The "human face" of development involves a few simple steps...

1) The creation of a height limit suitable to an area (60-75 metres for a capital... with 75 metres going to ones like Sydney, and 60 to flat cities. Samller centres would have something closer to 30 metres, with exception being given to towers which are part of public buildings, and then down to 15 metres for some suburbs, with exceptions given to public, religious and scholastic buildings.

2) The issueing of pattern books and source books to builders based around traditional styles of Australian buildings. Such things produced the best suburbs in cities like Sydney and Melbourne, which, although old and, in many cases, ex-working class suburbs, are of highest demand because the buildings have a simple beauty and proportion to them, as well as feeling inherantly Australian. In established suburbs, issueing pattern and source books sourced from the surrounding buildings.

3) The opening up of lots of varying sizes, from town-house to suburban house, and the basing of these lots around a designated commercial centre, with space reserved for parkland/sporting facilities.

4) The end of the modernist fad.

5) Having city limits, opening up cheaper lots in regional centres, with the provision of good public transport from them to larger cities.

Basically, these steps reassert traditional urbanist ideas that have been the base of European civic development for centuries, as well as the Victorian concern for the appearance of the cities. These steps, by creating simple confines, reduces the need for red-tape in planning and development by stating most of the rules beforehand, and lets the cities behave in a semi-organic way, by observing the results of most city development in the past.

Look to tradition, it worked then, and it'll work now.

Oh, and...
6) stop building skyscrapers.

In NSW planning is no better. Despite years of pro-developer reform, State Planning remains reactive, rather than pro-active.

I would suggest that where possible (as in NSW) the State Govt is elected, sets plans for the 4 year term and then when Councils are elected 6 months later, they respond to the State Priorities with a Local plan.

Rezonings are then only considered on an annual and collective basis, and an annual review of applications approved for all development should highlight how local plans are travelling with State Objectives.

The reality that is now coming to public consciousness is that water is as important as jobs, but demographic decline is likely to impact upon all of this.