Page 2049 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 August 2014
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a range of issues that emerge through the 2010 time to talk community engagement process, and this included addressing some of those significant long-term issues for the city, including appropriate management of future population growth, environmentally responsible development and recognising and growing our city’s regional economic role.
Before I talk about the details of the brickworks project specifically, I think it is worth spending a moment touching on why urban infill projects are important for the city. Over the past couple of decades, there has been a significant shift in population and climate trends. Resource security and environment protection have become much more pertinent issues. There has undoubtedly been a change in community values and living patterns within our city.
For some people, Canberra cannot change fast enough; for others, they want no change at all. Both are legitimate and are perfectly reasonable opinions to have, but there are opinions at both ranges of the spectrum. Because of these changes, the ACT government determined in early 2011 that planning strategies of the past and long-term planning principles and policies that have been set out in the city’s development in its first century needed to be reviewed.
This was a considered a priority to ensure that we continued to plan and manage the city and our landscape wisely, using our natural resources, particularly the finite resource of land, in a more responsible manner. It is very clear as we plan for the long term and consider the environment that generations will inherit that choices need to be made to address those challenges ahead. By using our land and our resources more efficiently we have a unique opportunity to build a more prosperous and sustainable city and a more prosperous and sustainable national capital.
The delivery of the Canberra brickworks and environs precinct is contributing to a key target within the new ACT planning strategy that articulates a goal of 50 per cent of new housing for the city being within the established urban area of Canberra. The implementation of this target across all of Canberra certainly creates opportunities for increased density and dispersed employment by capitalising on the existing structure of our town centres and our inter-town transport connections. It provides new opportunities for lifestyle choices by providing more choice in housing location and type. This, I think, is an important point to stress, because there is very strong demand, not surprisingly, to want to live in the inner south and to live near Yarralumla. I have no doubt at all that you could sell every property five times over, such is the desire for people to live in this area.
Providing new opportunities for lifestyle choices is clearly an important goal for the city in the longer term. Improving our resilience by investing in improvements in the development and management of our city’s physical infrastructure is also important, as is improving mobility and creating more choices in travel through integrating investment in our transport networks and the land that our networks serve, and building the capacity for everyone to participate in community life by improving the quality of our public realm, by improving access to services, infrastructure and community facilities.
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