AIBS National News

by Property Council of Australia
Better strategic planning is essential to deliver liveable, productive, and sustainable cities and communities is the message emerging from a meeting of industry and political leaders in Canberra today.

Coming together under the umbrella of the Built Environment Meets Parliament (BEMP), experts from across the property industry together with Australia’s political leaders discussed the role of the built environment in shaping Australia’s economic, social and environmental future.

BEMP involves a collaboration of leading property industry voices including the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, the Australian Institute of Architects, the Green Building Council of Australia, the Planning Institute of Australia and the Property Council of Australia.

Now into its third year, BEMP 2009 explored the principles for planning sustainable communities.

To stimulate and drive debate, a consultation draft of Principles for planning sustainable communities prepared by the Allen Consulting Group was released during BEMP.

Identifying ten guiding principles that should typify Australia’s strategic planning framework the paper seeks to inform the newly created COAG Taskforce charged with improving strategic planning in Australia’s major and capital cities.

“Australia needs a new ‘joined up’ framework to design its cities and communities,” said Peter Verwer, Chief Executive of the property Council of Australia.

“We can’t rely on traditional, outdated, uncoordinated plans from the last century as we move into a future dominated by new technology and driven by new economic and environmental demands.

“Fundamentally, good outcomes require good planning. Designing cities can not be left to chance or spread across disparate agencies working in isolation from one another.

“Recent Federal Government activity to fund nation building infrastructure has revealed a lack of integration between land use and infrastructure planning,” said Steve Johnston, CEO of the Planning Institute of Australia.

“We need to rectify this so that land use and infrastructure plans are aligned and complementary. COAG’s review of Australia’s planning arrangements is welcomed by the planning profession as a valuable first step.”

Chief Executive of the Green Building Council of Australia Romilly Madew said Australia was not alone in tackling the issue of designing modern cities.

“The Obama Administration has shown leadership in adopting a comprehensive approach to urban policy development,” Ms Madew said.

“This means bringing together housing, transport, energy, labour, education and environmental policy, rather than approaching them as separate policy issues. Sustainability, of course, must be at the heart of all our efforts.”

CEO of the Australian Institute of Architects David Parken said there were successful blueprints for driving reform across Australian governments’ planning systems.

“We should draw from Australia’s successful experience implementing National Competition Policy (NCP) reforms,” Mr Parken said.

“The NCP experience provides a useful example and demonstrates that Australian governments can work together to successfully reform complex issues.

“A key step is getting governments Australia-wide to sign up. We need a new Intergovernmental Agreement between the Commonwealth, States and Territories and local Government acknowledging their respective roles and responsibilities for planning to achieve well designed, prosperous, liveable and sustainable communities.”

CEO of the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, Megan Motto said nation-wide reform would deliver more robust local plans, not less local influence.

“Ideally, we should have Urban Action Plans developed for every major city and regional area across Australia,” Ms Motto said.

“These plans should reflect local stakeholder input and set out clear targets and performance measures to guide and ultimately gauge the effectiveness of the plans.

“An Urban Action Plan should enable people to see and understand how their local area will grow and change in coming years and how economic, social and environmental challenges and opportunities will be tackled or harnessed.