POLITICAL IMPERATI= VES OF POPULATION PLANNING

or

CAN A COMMUNITY SAY ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?

In his paper Paul Summers focussed on the beautiful pl= aces of Australia. The main thrusts were that population is a threat to our beautiful places, = in that we tend to love them to death with the result that their charac= ter is forever lost. Then we move on to other beautiful places and repeat the cycle.

Is Planning without Population Consideration Planning? &= nbsp;

· There is no need to pussyfoot around, planning without consideration of population is not planning.

· Each planner in the forum should consider the places in which they live and work. Have you predicted the levels of popula= tion that can be sustained by your plans? Are these populations consistent with = the potential maximum yields under your plans? Can you identify accurately the levels of service that will be needed by these future communities? If so ha= ve you identified with confidence the financial cost to the community?

· If these things cannot and have not been predicted then you are not undertaking planning.

· High growth environments bring an imperative= of development control, while real planning plays catch up.

Places, Population & Planning

· For too long, we have had a narrow focus on = the physical impacts from land development - we control sites and the developme= nt on those sites - but give lip service to the people that come to those sites and what they will do when they are not on them. Consequently the broader impacts of increased population pressure on our natural resources and the character and culture of the places we choose to live are not measured.

· People come to beautiful places, because they are beautiful, but people create pressures on our natural resources and the character and culture of the places we choose to live and visit.

· As planners, do we do we rigorously measure these pressures? As politicians, do you demand that your planners assess th= ese impacts and provide the resources so that these impacts can be assessed? As community members do we state clearly to our politicians what we want and demand that they get it right in the planning?

· Plan is a positive term, about what we want = for our places, not what we don’t want.

· Queensland= planners in high growth environments get bound up in negatives about preven= ting things.

· They get bound into processes and forget why they became planners and what they learnt about the importance of place.

Noosa, As an Example

· Planning schemes produce population outcomes, but governments and planners seem reticent to publish and test the real results. Noosa has not been afraid to do this.

· This has been done with the spectre of compensation provisions, something that you might not have had to face in N= SW. In addition and as for other areas south-east Queensl= and, there were vast commitments in place.

· Noosa you will have heard has a population c= ap. Well does it?

· Can you have a population cap? The Westminster system makes the binding of future governments decision-making difficult, but you are permitted to plan.

· Common sense, intergenerational equity and t= he identification and retention of important values mean that population plann= ing is a critical part of planning.

· All planning schemes have a population capac= ity in built within them, but often this information is not calculated or published.

· There are five imperatives to determining population carrying capacities, four of which are themes for the forum: physical services capacity, ecological obligations, natural resource needs = and social/cultural expectations. The fifth is the economic wellbeing of local communities.

· The Noosa approach has been to carefully ass= ess the community’s infrastructure needs, assess the economic capacity of= the community and the Council to support those needs, assess the environmental = capacity of the Shire to support development and meet the community desires for vari= ous areas.

· By undertaking planning in this rigorous way, planning and business confidence is enhanced.

Political Imperative

· The political imperative to determining population carrying capacities is merely the collective view of a community= on the five imperatives driving the need to assess population carrying capacit= y.

Paul= Summers is the Manager Strategic Planning at Noo= sa Council in Queensland. He was raised on the Gold Coast and witnessed first hand the major changes = that occurred there through 60s, 70s and 80s.

In his paper, <= st1:GivenName>Paul drew from his 13 years of strategic planning and special project experience= in Noosa Shire and 5 years of development control experience with Gold Coast C= ity Council.

Paul has recently managed a 3-year project developing Noose’s current Strategic Plan and the major resource database that informs it. This plan very clearly defines the community’s preferred outcomes for both development and population across the Shire and within the various localities in the Shire.= He is currently leading a team that is developing the Integrated Planning = Act scheme for Noosa Shire.