Since 2004 I have been the President of the Local Government Association of New South Wales. The greatest challenge I have, as Mayor of North Sydney or President of the LGA – is ensuring that whatever we do in Local Government genuinely represents our communities’ informed wishes about where we want to go. Because when we go to the ballot box to have our performance assessed, the community delivers a verdict on how well they were engaged at a local level.
Only Local Government can engage the community at the level at which we can all truly make an informed judgement about what we want and whether we have achieved it.
When we at North Sydney Council developed our new Local Environment Plan (LEP), North Sydney LEP 2000, we did so based on extensive community consultation. The process was transparent, interactive, understandable and most of all, asked the community at the local level ‘what kind of place do you want to live in?’
We only have to consider the alternatives to community engagement to prove my point.
For full paper, click on the following link
Power and Politics in Local Planning
On 21 June 2006, Planning Minister Frank Sartor announced that the Carlton and United Brewery site would be declared State Significant Development to allow State Government control of the planning process.
The acceptable outcome sought by the State is clearly a floor space and height greater than that supported by Council, to make better use of the key transport infrastructure at this location. Bringing the project under the Minister’s ambit is required. Why would not the State take over those planning matters which are of an importance beyond the immediate local area in which they are sited?
Was the Minister justified in calling in the project? There is no clear answer but it is appropriate for the State to call in projects of State significance.
What is the Neustein solution? Enlarge the size of metropolitan councils by reducing them. With much larger electorates, and a planning focus on both the local and the sub-regional, such councils and their bodies politic would be sufficiently insulated from parochial or minor concerns so as to focus on the greater public good.
The Sydney Metropolitan Strategy/excerpt of address delivered by John Mant/ 1st Sydney Futures Twilight Symposium
June 1, 2006
Reading the Plan one is reminded that the great advantage of Sydney is its geography. And the main problems of Sydney are its geography and its governance.
The Sydney Metro Plan is not a strategic plan but an end state land use-zoning plan with a list of issues on which there should be further work. What is the difference between a strategic plan and an end- state plan? A Strategic Plan identifies objectives or outcomes to be achieved if the weaknesses and threats in the way of achieving a Vision are to be addressed. It then goes on to suggest the strategies and actions that need to take place to achieve the necessary outcomes. An End State Plan provides a snapshot of the land use pattern for some date in the future – 2031 in the case of the Metro Plan. An end state plan is achieved by making population projections, picking the most likely and then finding the land on which the projected population could be housed and employed. When the planning exercise commenced the Reference Panel and the then Minister said that the output of the Metro Strategy would be a Strategy Plan not an End State Plan. As it has turned out, it appears as one of the most exact End State Plans ever produced. There are exact looking targets for housing accommodation and job distributions allocated to comparatively small areas for the year 2031 – not 2030, which is a round number, but 2031, which is exactly 25 years away and sounds very authoritative. Now, we all recognise that it is hard for a government to do a strategic plan, but the extent of end statedness of the Metro ‘Strategy’ is extraordinary. And the exactness of the predictions! One problem is that it is not clear how much land must be rezoned to meet the targets. There is a suggestion that the high-end targets should be used. Given that much of the demand is to be supplied on land on which there is already urban development, and that therefore not all land that is rezoned will be built on, will Councils have to rezone 10% more land than is needed, 20%, or 50%? And if they don’t rezone considerably more than is needed, will not the land that is rezoned become very valuable, given that the owners will have a monopoly on supply? If affordable housing is an objective, then considerably more land should be rezoned than is needed. And if a true cost recovery is achieved, to what extent should development be staged as against responding to market forces?
For full paper, click on link below
The Sydney Metropolitan Strategy
