Forum –
The ink is barely dry on our updated Development Plan, and, to mix a metaphor, the cracks are already showing (“Residents push back against Brick Wharf proposal”, “Proposed flats fall short on visitor parking”, “Umina housing proposal riles neighbours”, PP 021), and this is in just one edition of one paper.
This kind of coverage appears every week and demonstrates the widespread dissatisfaction with the way our “planning” system works (or doesn’t work).
Can anyone claim that the present exercise of development-control powers is leading to efficient, liveable and aesthetically-pleasing built environments?
I think there are very few who would take that position, and there are three basic reasons for the failure of the present system.
First, the whole theoretical reasoning behind the system is fundamentally flawed.
The whole approach to land-use management was wrong when it was introduced some 60-odd years ago, and all the tweaking and fiddling that has gone on since then hasn’t improved it enough to make it workable, and more of the same never will make it workable.
It is a blunt instrument that can never reflect the nuances of varying goals between different communities and sub-communities, and it is based on unsubstantiated assumptions about lifestyles and aspirations that have never been tested.
Given the huge sums that implementation of this machinery absorbs, it is astonishing that nobody ever asks whether we are getting value for money or would be better off scrapping the endeavour.
Secondly, the confusion of controls and standards that make up the typical plan has no logical system, no rational underpinning and no research or analysis basis.
The selected elements used to guide us into the future are no more than an arbitrary hodgepodge of traditional, unquestioned values, with no internal consistency and, often, direct inconsistencies and contradictions.
If we are going to pick numbers out of the air and cannot defend them with substantive justification, is it any wonder that virtually everybody who has to work within the framework questions and challenges them, and that virtually everybody outside the system is suspicious of and dissatisfied with the outcomes that we are seeing.
Thirdly, nobody takes any notice of submissions made during the so-called community-participation process.
Once the draft plan has been hammered out, it is defended against all criticism, and exposure of shortcomings is regarded as a threat and a danger.
In this context, it is easy to dismiss public submissions, because they are often confused and contradictory, given that they are prepared by non-professionals with only limited technical knowledge.
There is hardly anybody involved in the process with the professional standing to debate the exercise from first principles, so attention is focussed on picayune details which really have little impact on the general intent.
As a result, the general public feels excluded and has no commitment to the overall integrity and long-term purpose, assuming that they exist.
The present plan isn’t particularly incompetent, as compared to the general run of plans, but this is a low bar indeed.
The fact that it is already the subject of amendment proposals, before it is even legally adopted, indicates the haste and carelessness with which it was formulated.
If this is to be our only means of securing the kind of urban environment we’d like to see, our prospects are about as dim as they can be.
Email, Aug 8
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy