Page 4231 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 21 September 2010
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Social planners and others have long recognised that giving people the formal opportunity to participate in consultation processes does not always ensure that their views are heard. With many groups, including children and young people, everyone from proponents to statutory authorities must make an additional effort. Planning in the ACT has accepted this challenge. Perhaps the first condition for participation in planning processes is education on what planning is and what it seeks to achieve. To this end, the ACT Planning and Land Authority engages with local schools through a dedicated schools liaison and education officer.
A key initiative is ACTPLA’s highly successful suburban challenge: how to build a suburb program, offered in all upper primary and secondary schools in the ACT. To date, over 1,000 students have undertaken the challenge, with another 300 booked in for the final 2010 semester. The program is specifically designed to help students understand the built environment in which they live. Over a five-week period, students, teachers and parents are taken through all stages of the planning process. This includes everything from spatial planning, environmental assessments and sustainable building, through to how streets and suburbs are named.
The program concludes with students building three-dimensional scale models of their sustainable suburb. A key component of the program provides students with the opportunity to participate in community engagement role playing through every stage of the program. Students are given roles either as planners or as community representatives—probably even as MLAs, Mr Speaker. Participating students then present their sustainable suburb models to the student community representatives. Students aim to strike the very delicate balance between competing interests and opinions. As you can imagine, Mr Speaker, the students find this part of the program very exciting and there is some particularly passionate debate that arises.
The final stage of the program is the changing suburb. This is where students learn about the changing nature of suburbs and how different possible scenarios impact on their suburb. Examples of changes include how climate change, combined with an ageing and increasing population, leads to high density demands. This can also be done using community engagement role-play. In October this year 80 students, teachers and parents of Fadden primary school are taking the suburban challenge. They are gearing up for a large public exhibition of their work at the end of the program in November.
As well as the suburban challenge, ACTPLA also provides a variety of educational materials and support to community and youth organisations, schools, individual teachers and students. These include customised maps, specialty publications and guest speakers for special events. Building on these foundations, ACTPLA has recently taken steps to routinely include the voice of young people on strategic planning matters. For example, the Youth Advisory Council participates in the planning and development forum, a quarterly meeting between ACTPLA and community stakeholders.
Individual planning projects also regularly seek to address children’s and young people’s concerns. The Tuggeranong town centre and Erindale planning project will
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