Our regional plan won’t end well

60% of new housing is now expected to be a form of attached housing. Some 20% is expected to be high rise - clearly a fantasy given today’s reality – while nearly a third is expected to be above 4 storeys (medium and high rise). Is this even remotely realistic?

So our regional plan favours a form of housing that takes longer and costs more. In the midst of a torrent of demand thanks to accelerated immigration in times of a housing shortage, this is a very poor fit. Some will argue that outward expansion is more costly than infill (higher density in established areas) but that argument – while popular in its day – no longer stands up to scrutiny. The infrastructure upgrades associated with more people in existing areas – whether that is waste water treatment, road upgrades, more schools, hospital expansions, potable water supplies – is increasingly more costly than if it were built from scratch in new urban areas. (Cue howls of protest from the usual suspects). 

The regional plan is also not strong on recognising the massive changes in industry, employment and technology since earlier versions were authored. The plan is mostly intended for housing a future population. When it comes to jobs, infrastructure and transport, it - like its predecessors - is weak. Yet where the future jobs will be, and what people will be doing for work, and how they access things like schools, hospitals and other forms of social infrastructure – along with the infrastructure to enable those connections – ought to be a starting point for a regional plan. Start with these things, and plan housing around it. Are we doing the reverse?

The mismatch between where population growth is expected and where jobs are expected is a significant failing of the regional plan. Expecting future residents of Moreton, Logan, and Ipswich for example to commute elsewhere for work is setting us up for a future commuting nightmare. 

Regional planning is essential to give governments and the community a sense of future direction. The expectations now placed on these plans are different because no one could have envisaged things like the rapid increase in migration (except the Federal Government which enabled it) nor the fundamental shifts in the costs of delivering construction – be that housing or infrastructure, among other seismic changes over the years. But things have changed, irrevocably. The pressure points are increasingly obvious.

It's not just time for a new plan, but time to rethink all the underlying assumptions. We need planners, engineers, economists, demographers, builders, the developers and the community to put their very best minds together to find a new way of thinking about the future we want in our region. Times have changed. Time we moved with them.