Some New Year resolutions

Heroic assumptions are fine in their place, but maybe not in public policy. Realistic, evidence-based approaches are far superior. For example, I still don’t know (nor can anyone tell me) how we are going to create 138,000 infill dwellings in Brisbane, or 374,000 infill dwellings in south east Queensland, in 20 years.  Just where will they go? 374,000 infill dwellings is the equivalent of 4,675 twenty storey apartment buildings, or 212 such towers per year for 20 years. Sound stupid? But that’s exactly the target contained in the SEQ Regional Plan. And if it realistically just can’t be done, is it time to revisit those assumptions with something more realistic?

Forecasting the future?

Is something best left to gypsies. Some developers now complain that it can take 10 years from site acquisition to the first sale, and in that time, much changes. Ten, twenty or 30 year plans are OK for stimulating the mind and provoking debate, but locking in public policy inflexibility for something that may happen in 20 years’ time based on what we know today and the assumption that things won’t change, seems odd.

Take a helicopter view (we’re not running out of land)

To all those ardent believers of the view that we’re fast running out of land, or at risk of ‘LA type sprawl’ my wish for you in 2012 is a helicopter ride over south east Queensland. Look down. There are trees and open land everywhere. We are so far from ‘running out’ that to suggest otherwise is to refuse to believe what your own eyes are telling you.

Private enterprise pays for public services

Basic economics 101 is the lesson that a healthy and profitable private sector generates the wealth (taxes) that pay for the public sector. Cripple the private sector and the public sector fast runs out of money (or has to borrow it). This is something the Greeks and Italians forgot. Let’s not forget the lesson here in 2012. Governments (dare I harp on but planning departments included) could spend a bit more time on the ‘how can we help you make money’ line of thought rather than the ‘making money from economic or urban development is wrong’ culture. Without money, without the profit motive, the music stops and tax revenues that pay for all public services dry up.

Developers create things. Plans don’t.

Look around. Most of our region was developed and built before modern town planning , as we now know it, came to such prominence.  Developers made this happen. People who took risks.  Almost every house in every suburb, every shopping centre, factory, office or workplace was created by a developer taking risks to develop the land on which these things now sit. There are some notable exceptions – SouthBank being one – where public sector planning and development, using taxpayer funds, has created something positive. But even here, it could not have been done without developers. They are not the enemy. They create value. They create jobs and places for people to live, to work and also to play. Planning regulations and brightly illustrated planning documents or policies don’t create these things.

No more ‘initiatives’ that add cost

Here’s a wild idea. Every time some new ‘initiative’ designed to save the planet or achieve some public policy objective is raised, the costs involved in doing so are subject to an affordability test. If mandatory building code changes are going to add several thousand dollars to the cost of a new project home, that test should ask “can young families afford this extra cost on their mortgage.” If not, the proponents ought to have to work much harder to get their ideas up. At the very least they ought to get a thumbs up from the people who are ultimately being asked to pay.

The city is not a museum

We’ve become very protective of our urban form, to the point that NIMBYs have become replaced with BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). It’s almost as if we now have some collective desire to see nothing much change. But that’s a strange way of thinking, because it suggests that nothing we have today can’t be done better tomorrow. Our city can evolve, grow and develop, improving the lives of its residents and meeting their changing needs during their lives. But if we are being asked to place a giant glace dome over the region and declare it all a museum piece to be preserved for all time, then evolution won’t be possible and the quality and standard of life will decline.  It would be nice for the positives of change to get some more air time in 2012, as opposed to this sense of wanting to cling to everything as it now is.

Hope that lot got you thinking, please feel free to suggest a few more.

Happy New Year!