Planning Never Never Land?

Chermside, Indooroopilly, Carindale and Upper Mt Gravatt are some of the activity centres expected under the plan to accommodate this frenzy of building activity over the next 20 years. But within these centres, the plan again is silent on precisely where the activity is to take place. It seems fair to ask the question: have the proponents of this plan at any stage pulled out a map and decided which entire suburban blocks are to be demolished to make way for the 1,725 apartment towers needed for infill development, or is there some new approach to infill which somehow creates new development sites in built out neighbourhoods?

The credibility gap is actually much wider than this. Infill housing is usually delivered as a mix of medium (townhouse style) to high density. Medium density projects by nature occupy a larger footprint than a high rise tower. So the reality of the numbers is that the foorprint needed to achieve the infill targets will be much greater than our hypothetical 1,725 towers in Brisbane (or the 4,675 towers throughout southeast Queensland).

Where exactly are these sites? I’ve had a good look at Chermside, Indooroopilly, Carindale and Upper Mount Gravatt, and even the wonders of Google Earth don’t reveal vast hectares of vacant land adjoining transit nodes just waiting to be developed as housing.

Has anyone asked the people?

The physical impossibility of the target numbers being delivered is one fatal flaw of the SEQ Regional Plan, and will remain so until the plan’s proponents explain - in precise detail - where and how these numbers will be delivered. Only with that sort of street by street analysis of available land can the credibility gap be closed.

But then there’s another, significant gap in all this. The SEQ Regional Plan proposes perhaps the most fundamental change in the way of life and urban environment for Brisbane and the southeast ever proposed in the history of this state’s development. Did anyone actually ask the people if this is what they want? It is a democracy after all and we have debated and voted on lesser issues than this.

The reality is the community are highly likely to object strenuously to dozens of 20-storey towers appearing in their neighbourhood. Jim Soorley was once savaged by the Liberals for proposing a “sardine city” but his ambitions for infill were miniscule compared to what the SEQ Regional Plan now proposes. The scale of community objection to the infill targets of the SEQ Regional Plan, once the community realises, could be sufficient to unseat local Councillors or State MPs, and the prospect of that is another fatal flaw for the plan. Politically, it is hard to see how it could ever be delivered.

Then there are other market realities to deal with. Families overwhelmingly prefer detached housing and backyards for the kids, so even if deprived of housing choice, will there be a big enough market to buy all the units and townhouses proposed? There’s an issue of cost also - high to medium density is expensive to deliver, inflated by infrastructure levies and build costs. So will there be enough people who could afford to buy all the units and townhouses proposed? There’s an issue of planning polarity, in that while the SEQ Regional Plan is a state instrument adamant on infill, many local council planning schemes don’t support it. Once again, how that tension will be resolved adds yet another wedge to the credibility gap.

Never land?

Is it possible that such a comprehensive planning scheme which purports to deliver on so many noble objectives (preservation of open space, quality of life and so on) actually failed to do the most basic maths on the key assumptions that underpin it? And if that maths was done, why is the plan silent on the answers?

The questions are already being asked and the answers are not forthcoming. At the end of the day, unless and until the Plan’s authors and proponents can answer the physical realities of “where” and “how” in fine detail, site by site, street by street and neighbourhood by neighbourhood, the SEQ Regional Plan is suffering a yawning credibility gap from day one.

In the meantime, a region with a demonstrable housing shortage could find the shortages worsen, affordability deteriorate and growth - the economy’s engine room - falter.

And that doesn’t sound like much of a plan.

If you haven’t searched through the SEQ Regional Plan for all the details yet, this is a good place to start: Chapter 8 on ‘Compact Settlement’ sets it out. You can find it here (PDF 247KB).