Page 3813 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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The current reality of more than half of a significant site next to Woden town centre being covered by single-storey units is so incomprehensible that a number of people have suggested to me that the single-storey units will probably be demolished in a few years and rebuilt at the higher density. This, they say, is the reason why the variation alters the height limit for the whole site, including parts of the site which are currently under construction or were built in the last year or so.
Talking a bit more generally now about density issues, we know that high density in town centres makes sense on economic, social and environmental grounds, and such sites close to the Woden town centre are prime redevelopment sites on the basis of public transport alone. I understand that the developers of Woden east would have preferred to create a high density development but were not prepared to wait the time it would take for a territory plan variation to approve this. This is frustrating because it appears that, instead, we will have another situation where lower density buildings are built on prime sites.
There is a need to reduce the greenfield land release on the outskirts of Canberra. Using these greenfield sites impacts significantly on the already threatened natural environment. It is also not very good for the people involved because the greenfield sites have relatively poor employment prospects, transport and community facilities. We need to move to maximise the potential of the sites near major town centres, and this is especially important when developing public and social housing.
Reflecting on that, if the territory plan had been ready and we had a housing department which had been thinking ahead, we could have been using the federal stimulus funding to cleverly redevelop our public housing sites on sites close to town centres instead of what we are doing, which seems to be spreading them all around and not adding significantly to density in prime locations. I think the opportunity to use the federal stimulus package for some significant positive redevelopment has been wasted.
ACT Housing needs to improve its practices to increase densities around the town centres in accordance with the spatial plan. What is happening demonstrates a lack of commitment by the ACT government to the ACT greenhouse strategy in the Canberra spatial plan, which is supposed to reinforce densities around town centres. Increasing densities needs to be part of a robust, high quality urban design process which is subject to public consultation and debate and results sometimes in site-specific building envelope controls being incorporated into a territory plan precinct code. I note that the planning committee is about to embark on such an inquiry into density issues in Canberra, and I look forward to exploring these issues in greater depth through that process.
Getting back to Burnie Court again, there really does not seem to be an overwhelming case for a 10-storey tower. As I said, it seems to be a get out of jail card because it is trying to make up for the single-storey elements on the rest of it. It is what the proponents need to reach the same density as was there before, but the proponents have not specified how many extra units there will be in the 10-storey tower versus a six-storey tower or outlined other options for increasing density.
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