Some New Year resolutions

In 2012, maybe we could question the relevance to Australian cities of town planning study tours to Copenhagen, Venice, Paris, Portland, or Vancouver (just some of the places cited as ‘cities we should be more like’). For starters, the town centres of most Euro cities were designed and laid out in the middle ages. Transport economics was unheard of. Private transport was mainly by foot because most people were too poor for a horse.  And they were all created before the advent of ‘town planning’ as we know it. And as for more modern centres like Portland and Vancouver, why choose some of the world’s least affordable cities as benchmarks for Australia to study? We’ve got enough problems on that front already. Then of course there’s the climate issue - cities designed for freezing winters and very brief summers may not be the most logical case studies to use? Why not instead visit cities in regions of similar climate, and where affordability and quality of life and economic opportunity are all in a healthy state? Maybe the junket factor for Houston, USA, just isn’t quite as appealing as Hamburg? Or at the very least, if it’s simply impossible to resist the latest planning study tour to Paris, try at least getting out of the ancient and touristy centres of town, and away from the 5 star hotels and conference rooms, and visiting the suburbs where the majority of Parisians live and work.

It’s OK to count heads and ask what they do

I was surprised to be corrected about a recent article which guessed that the $17million budget for the planning and assessment ‘directorate’ of the Sunshine Coast Council might indicate some 200 people working in that department. I was wrong:  the figure I’m told is more like 270 staff. Just what do 270 staff do in a planning department for a local council with a population of just over 300,000 people? That’s almost 1 planning department employee to every 1000 residents. According to the Australian Medical Association of Queensland, the ideal ratio of GPs to population is one to 1000, but we’re currently experiencing a shortage of GPs such that the ratio is closer to 1:1500. Surely planners haven’t become more important that doctors? These large planning bureaucracies spend a lot of taxpayer funds, and have grown exponentially in size and power in the last decade. But for what outcome? It is fair to question bureaucracy wherever it’s found, and town planning bureaucracies are no different. The solution isn’t more bureaucrats, it’s less red tape. Let’s start asking some questions in 2012?

When it’s not ‘our land’– it’s private property

The legal rights and protections afforded to owners of private property have been whittled away to the point that some landowners must wonder why they bother. It might be timely in 2012 to start reminding NIMBYs, bureaucrats, academics and sections of the media who make pronouncements about what should and shouldn’t be done on someone else’s land, that it’s not ‘their’ land make decisions about: it belongs to the person holding the title, and paying the taxes. Owners’ views ought to hold substantial sway.

Hyprocrisy on affordability

Another little resolution for 2012 would be to ask that local, state or federal governments simply stop pleading their concerns about housing affordability if at the same time they continue to raise taxes, add regulations, limit or delay supply and add to the complexity of construction for simple housing development. You can’t have it both ways. If you are concerned about affordability, cut the taxes, free up the constraints, and fix what the industry’s been identifying as a huge problem for more than a decade.

‘Yes you can’ cut levies

On the subject of taxes, it is of course quite possible to cut taxes on property and new development in particular. Upfront per lot or per application development fees are tightly focussed on new supply, to the point where new supply becomes prohibitively expensive. But at the same time, the justification for these development levies seems to be that rates and other general taxes can’t rise beyond inflation. Surely though if the community as a whole benefits from a certain activity or infrastructure investment, the community as a whole should pay? And if you want to provide new libraries and pools, and cultural facilities for the community as a whole, it’s unfair to expect only new development to pay for it. Cutting levies is possible, as is raising rates, or reducing the scale of promises. It just requires more political will. Maybe 2012 will provide some?

Demand some KPIs

A simple measure, easy to put into effect in 2012, would be for new planning schemes, initiatives or regulatory mechanisms to have attached some very clear and measureable KPIs. In short, if the regulation is intended to produce a certain outcome, how will you measure that outcome? And if it fails to measure up, scrap it.

Realism not heroism