Today I had an op Ed published in the West Australian on the failure to properly plan for our city and the sprawled, treeless, car dependent city we will inherit as a result.
Link is here and text below if you don’t have a subscription.
https://lnkd.in/g8zewuiz
PERTH is a city without a plan. The longest city in the world without a plan to slow ever-growing urban sprawl.
The lowest canopy cover of any capital city without a plan to protect Urban bushland or plant new trees.
Over the past few years, this WA Labour government has quietly walked away from good planning that would ensure one of the world’s most liveable cities stays that way.
Instead, it has left Perth’s future largely in the hands of property developers. Perth reached peak developer-led planning last week when Premier Roger Cook asked the property industry to “identify state government land that could be developed for housing.”
That means any land holdings that are not already reserved for future schools, hospitals, road utilities, or essential civic infrastructure, will now be considered for housing.”
I know that WA is in a housing crisis, but this knee-jerk response is lazy and absurd. There is no shortage of government land -- already planned and approved for housing -- sitting idle and undeveloped.
Take Fremantle, where I was Mayor; as an example.
There are hundreds of potential housing sites sitting empty; vacant areas that could house thousands of people.
There is the Heart of Beaconsfield, which has been earmarked for development for years, but which has sat largely derelict with huge areas of empty, cleared land and a handful of residents remaining.
There is the Knutsford land, which the Fremantle Council submitted a plan for development in 2014 that has never been heard of again until very recently, when the government introduced a piece of legislation to enable it to be sold or developed.
Fremantle is not alone. As we saw in the West Australian last week, the Bassendean community overwhelmingly supports an eight-story mixed-use development on State Government-owned land, but that too is sitting idle.
Yet another community actively calling out for higher density housing for first-homebuyers, downsizers, and essential workers next to good public transport.
We can see a lack of orderly planning right through from small developments -- like enabling granny flats to be built without planning approvals -- to much bigger projects that the Special Development Assessment Unit can and does override planning schemes and approve any development, no matter how non-compliant…
Continues in comments…
