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.