Peter Verwer |
Thursday, 1 October 2009 12:01 AM |
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Last month we looked at the successes of Australia’s national competition policy (NCP).
We said that the modernisation of government business monopolies achieved by NCP offered a model for rebooting Australia’s urban planning and development control systems.
This month, we’ll connect this big picture policy approach to the basic needs of property businesses.
The property industry deserves fair and logical planning rules. That means less duplication, less uncertainty and petty politics removed from planning processes.
We also want to ditch poorly-designed taxes and usurious development charges.
Above all, we call for long-term thinking about population growth and community-building infrastructure.
Few of Australia’s strategic urban plans meet these basic criteria.
Consequently, we need to re-wire the current system and press the reset button.
That’s why the NCP model is an attractive idea. The NCP policy goals were ambitious and required governments to work together. NCP provided governments with incentives to perform and penalties that stopped backsliding.
The US urban planning system faces an equally gargantuan task as Australia.
The new Obama administration has set up a system that will require 50-year plans for US regions and cities.
The President has established an Office of Urban Affairs to facilitate this process.
He’ll redeploy an existing structure of metropolitan planning organisations (MPOs) to integrate planning schemes.
In the US, MPOs aren’t another level of government, they’re a co-ordinating mechanism.
The Obama rationale is simple: “unless you give me sound regional planning, I won’t give you any Federal Government money”.
This is the style of system that would be delivered by an NCP approach in Australia.
So how would it work? The NCP model has four critical elements packaged in an agreement between all Australian governments:
- Reform principles
- Performance targets
- Incentives and penalties
- Independent governance
The Allen Consulting Group had a crack at devising reform principles for the recent BEMP (Built Environment Meets Parliament) meeting in Canberra.
You can provide your thoughts on these principles by visiting www.bangthetable.com/bemp.
• Principle 1 – Establish a shared vision.
Strategic planning should shape prosperous, liveable and sustainable urban communities fostered by governments and their partners working in collaboration.
• Principle 2 – Forge a co-ordinated framework.
Planning must occur within a co-ordinated framework that links national, regional and local goals. These goals should be codified in intergovernmental agreements.
• Principle 3 – Maximise civic engagement.
Strategic planning must advance community participation and civic engagement.
• Principle 4 – Define targeted outcomes for specific places and times.
Plans should establish specific targets for economic prosperity, natural sustainability, liveability and governance.
• Principle 5 – Demonstrate the best use of collective resources (including existing resources) and clearly define how these resources are to be used.
Plans should reflect strategic choices that are evidence-based.
• Principle 6 – Anticipate and address financial requirements.
Plans should identify sustainable funding programs for all major elements of proposed strategies.
• Principle 7 – Strive for and enhance delivery efficiency.
Plans must incorporate programs for maximising implementation efficiency, by identifying and addressing barriers up front.
• Principle 8 – Adhere to and promote good governance.
Strategic plans must be guided by credible institutional arrangements that ensure the plans remain true to their goals and are implemented as promised.
The Property Council believes every region and urban area of Australia needs a strategic plan that ticks these eight boxes.
In order to make these plans meaningful, we need to establish targets that address the long-term (50 years) as well as more immediate goals.
These targets make planning real. They define progress and help assess if we are making any.
The next step is to co-ordinate the work of traditional government departments. This could be done with metropolitan planning commissions.
As is the case in the US, the commissions should act as silo smashers, not another level of government.
The commissions could also co-ordinate long-term funding programs for infrastructure.
Rather than a federal office of urban affairs, we prefer a body similar to the Competition Council that ran NCP. It should advise government, but be independent of it.
Its main role would be to ensure that plans conforming to the eight principles are developed for urban regions. It would also advise on NCP-style incentives and penalties.
Australia is now headed for a 65 percent increase in population by 2050. A population of 35 million will fuel growth and opportunity.
However, despite the inevitability of this demographic destiny, we’re still not designing our cities for the future.
With Australia growing by one person every 84 seconds (net), we need to deliver a new home every three minutes. Then there’s health, education, power, transport …
We need to get a move on.
Peter Verwer |
Thursday, 1 October 2009 12:01 AM |
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