Deification of the NSW’s Planning Act inhibited reform

In the end, 'Planning' legislation will be but one of a number of means by which cities and towns should be managed.

Managing the drivers of development

Urban management should be focused on the drivers of development, not merely on the consequences of those pressures, which is where development controls are directed.

Having an interest in the causes of demands for changes to environments, activities and structures, urban managers should be about more than the color consulting done by the average statutory planner.

The drivers of development include the form and content of the Budget, the prices set for urban goods and services as well as the level and incidences of taxes and rates.

Also important are the designs of public sector organizations; and the regulatory, administrative and legal systems they operate, as well as the industrial relation systems. So much of what happens in cities is the consequence of the design and operation of arcane administrations.

Urban management staff also should be able to understand capital markets and investment structures, population, social and housing policies. They should understand about environmental systems and be capable of negotiating with a wide range of parties in the pursuit of planning outcomes. And they will want, from time to time, to recommend changes to development rights and obligations.

Although controlling development requires legislation, urban managers do not need legislative permission to operate. This is especially so now the staff of the Department of Planning has become part of 'Infrastructure and Planning' located close to the Premier's Department, potentially as a key 'central agency'.

And an urban manager certainly should not be trying to administer a development assessment process that inevitably will suck up all of the staff available. For that reason alone, quite apart from any concerns about conflicts of roles, the development rights and assessment roles should be separated from the urban management tasks.

Deification of the Act

Despite its wide range of (often conflicting) high-level objectives and its apparent empowerment of the planners, in the end, the current EP&A Act, essentially is only about the allocation of development rights and obligations.

It would help to dispel the false belief that somehow administering the Act is all you have to do to manage cities and towns if any legislation replacing the Act was unpretentious and clearly only about development control.