Page 3636 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 October 1990
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Experience has shown that residential areas of about 4000 to 5000 people form a community of interest and provide the necessary threshold for the provision of facilities such as schools, neighbourhood shops and recreation areas.
For Mr Humphries to stand here blowing his hot air and suggesting that we have no concept of what a definition of a neighbourhood unit is, as he attempts to take schools into broader units, is absolute nonsense. It is clarified there as areas of about 4,000 to 5,000 people. Of course, one can argue that the Metropolitan Policy Plan is getting a little bit out of date, and I will come to that later. It states:
On the basis of the success of the neighbourhood concept in the development of new residential areas in Canberra, the Commission intends that, in future, neighbourhood principles will form the basis of residential area planning in new settlement areas.
On page 187, the policy put forward is:
Within each town will be a series of residential neighbourhoods, based on safe and convenient access to schools and community facilities, and having sufficient shops and open space to cater for neighbourhood needs. A hierarchy of roads will control traffic within residential areas ...
That hierarchy of roads is the thing that talks about safety. We have the Minister here, without any children, and with absolutely ridiculous notions of what safety is and what you can do with the safety of children. He even mentions preschools, and asks: why was not there a problem there? Of course, anybody who knows about preschools knows that the overwhelming majority of preschoolers, probably 99 per cent of preschoolers, are taken to preschool by their parents and picked up again.
The Gungahlin Plan, which was certified in January 1989, reinforces the concept of the neighbourhood with the primary school as an essential part of that planning. The plan did recognise some of the earlier difficulties with schools. However, in offering slightly larger neighbourhoods as a solution, it does still promote the idea of a similar size being viable. It suggests a range of neighbourhoods from 3,500 to 5,500, rather than the more narrow 4,000 to 5,000 of the Metropolitan Policy Plan.
It is quite clear that planners have accepted that neighbourhoods developed as green fields will go through the early school boom, drop back to minimum numbers, and then reach the expected operating size of around 300, which should then be maintained. The cycle can take more than 30 years, but this is not a good enough reason to choke the
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