Gazing into a planner's crystal ball

If South East Queensland (SEQ) does not successfully adopt the SEQ 2026 plan, what will happen to the region?

In 1944, John Minnery wrote:

Planners proposed a one-mile wide “green belt” of rural land encircling Brisbane’s developed suburbs, together with future satellite towns linked by road. Supporters argued that cities were spreading “like spilled treacle, engulfing everything in its path”. Such treacle cities city covered good agricultural land. They led to the overloading of water and sewerage mains and to insurmountable traffic problems.

Imagine how different SEQ would look today if the idea had been applied. Clear breaks in the continuous suburban landscape now stretching from Noosa to the Tweed and beyond Ipswich, public effort put into towns beyond the green belt with better distribution of jobs, and the infrastructure to serve them. And there would be no public concern about the looming, sprawling “200 kilometre city”.

But the proposal was not implemented - hence we now have the SEQ 2026 plan.

The plan proposes communities be built and managed using the most up-to-date and effective measures to conserve water and energy and for the design and siting of buildings to take advantage of the subtropical climate.

Without it, will South East Queensland continue to be livable? It could become entrenched as a “two-class society” or a “hot and paved” region. Or, we could face a future where SEQ is “wired and miserable”.

But there is another option, and that is that SEQ will undergo a massive transformation where values of sustainability, spirituality, innovation and global governance become our official values. The plan intends to protect biodiversity, contain urban development, build and maintain community identity, make travel more efficient and support a prosperous economy.

So what might 2026 actually look like? While we cannot know the future, we can reduce uncertainty and gain a better sense of the possibilities through looking at different scenarios. There are four “futures” that could present themselves in the SEQ Region.

SEQ still livable

In the first, the SEQ 2026 plans were achieved, and our region is still livable.

Fast forward to 2026 where there is plenty of opportunity in SEQ. The population has dramatically increased but through good governance, community consultation and foresight, negative possibilities (crime, congestion, pollution) have been mitigated and positive possibilities (job growth, green belt protection, water and energy management) enhanced.

People still want to move to SEQ even with higher housing prices. A two-class society has not resulted as government has intervened to deal with inequity. A fair go is still possible.

SEQ hot and paved

A second scenario could be where SEQ could arrive at the fate of being “hot and paved”. Looking back, the plan needed far more teeth. While it was an admirable effort to take power away from local shires and put the region first, that is not how things have turned out. Market pressures kept housing prices going up (demand from other parts of Australia and overseas) continued. Developers gave lip service to green and social concerns and a two-class society has started to emerge. Traffic problems have not decreased, rather, every effort to widen highways has led to more congestion. The vicious cycle continues. SEQ is a long highway between Coolangatta and Noosa.

Global warming has only made life worse - temperatures continue to rise, water shortages increase. SEQ is full of hot, paved cities with higher than normal temperatures. Many have made money but the quality of life for others has gone down.

Health indicators continue to worsen - citizens look to local government to solve problems. Local government looks to state government which looks to federal. The federal government just seeks to stay in power. Capacity continues to shrink.

SEQ wired and miserable

Worse yet, 2026 could be wired and miserable. If the next 20 years play out like this we could face several dire consequences.

The last 20 years have been a series of confrontations between local authorities and regional government; between developers and environmentalists; between individual freedom and security; between councillors and state governments; between young and old; between rural areas and the beach; and between new migrants (many environmental refugees) and old migrants.

There is endless sprawl, congested highways, and gang warfare which has made SEQ a miserable place to live in. There are many gated communities that give some peace to the elderly, but outside these communities social tensions fester. Under these circumstances SEQ is a miserable place to live.

Peace is kept via surveillance and tough regulations. Citizens are monitored in every possible way. Technology and power is used to keep collective peace.

If our attempts to plan for the future, while admirable, are met with resistance at every level, with local concerns taking precedence over regional, this is the possible end result.

SEQ transformed

There is one other possibility. A possibility that could see SEQ transformed. In this instance, the concern for the long term future becomes the passion for many. The SEQ vision will enhance the capacity of shires all over Queensland to develop their own visions, for example: Logan 2026, Gold Coast 2046, and so on.

As a result, there is a community capacity to innovate. The “cultural creatives” - less than 20 per cent of the population in the early 2000's -have grown dramatically in the last 20 years. The values of sustainability, spirituality, innovation, and global governance will have become the official values.

Instead of suburbs, work-home-community electronically linked hubs have grown. Working in these hubs could lead to dramatic jumps in productivity (less time lost on the road, more control of one's work life).

Travel choices have been renegotiated - walking, bikeways, car, light rain - have increased. Organic gardens have sprouted everywhere. Smart green technologies exist all over Queensland. Indeed, not only does this transform Queensland, but exports of these technologies are slowly but surely changing Asian cities.

Healthy eating and living were once a dream but the crisis of the first ten years of this century has led to a dramatic turn around. Systems are becoming smarter and individuals are taking personal responsibility for their health. Personal carbon credits have led to reconfiguration of energy use, making SEQ a world leader.

There are still conflicts, but neighborhood mediation centres (not to mention peer mediation in schools) resolve many of them. While population has increased, energy consumption has remained steady. Innovation continues to breed innovation.

In this outcome, global changes will be met by SEQ citizens , who will not see themselves at the mercy of large institutions, their capacity to influence their lives will continue to increase.

It is too soon to tell which of these futures is the most plausible. Decisive factors will be a shared vision of the future, good governance through enhanced community consultation (creating anticipatory democracy) and the use of smart and social technologies to problems (using technologies to enhance community capacity).

We cannot rely on simply expanding highways, but must change the nature of the city, finding new ways to work and live.

Which future do you want for SEQ 2026?