SERIOUS planning challenges will remain for Canberra until such time as there is an adequate workforce in each of the town centres. Canberra is different from other cities and Canberrans should be proud and celebrate the fact.
Michael Moore.
However, the local planners will have to take this responsibility seriously by ensuring traffic issues are minimised, travel times are reduced and adherence to the fundamentals of strategic planning in Canberra is maintained. This can be done in co-ordination with Commonwealth departments in a way that was not done by the National Capital Authority (NCA).
The Department of Immigration is considering establishing a mega-office block at the airport. This does not give appropriate priority to Gungahlin and should not be approved by any authority.
The effectiveness of construction and sales at the airport has been a tribute to the forces of the free market. However, it has also been an anathema to good planning.
In order to maximise the income when the airport was sold, the planning controls were retained by the Commonwealth rather than being handed to the ACT. The issue was highlighted by me in a column in “CityNews” in February, 2008. At the time, the focus was on traffic problems around the airport, but I also touched on the issue of Gungahlin being deprived of vital infrastructure.
Before self-government, when the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) ruled over the ACT, it went to extraordinary lengths to ensure federal government departments were located in the town centres.
This is why the then-Department of Social Services was located in Tuggeranong. Other departments, such as Immigration, wound up in Belconnen and Health was located in Woden. The NCA has not been able to wield the same influence.
The planners of the NCDC had more power. They understood the importance of people being able to work close to where they lived. The approach was never perceived as providing a perfect match because people have a range of reasons for working in one location and a different range of reasons for living in another.
At the time of the NCDC there were many families with just the father at work. The modern family largely has both parents working and so there will be even more reasons for living in a location away from work.
However, there was always a surprisingly positive correlation between where people lived and where they worked. Had the NCA had the same power as the NCDC (of the ‘60s to the ‘80s), the office buildings at the airport would most likely be in the Gungahlin town centre. This would have increased the correlation of people working closer to where they lived.
Imagine the traffic improvement if even an additional 20 per cent of people living in Gungahlin were also able to work in their local town centre and the need for extensive investment in infrastructure projects, such as the light rail, would be able to be postponed for years.
We know that traffic in school holidays dramatically improves with a minor drop in commuting. How much more so with a significant decrease of commuting vehicles?
Senator Seselja has been successful in pushing for Federal Cabinet to relinquish some of the powers of the NCA over the more distant parts of the city while retaining control over areas of “national character”. However, it’s time to have a co-ordinated effort between the planning authorities, the head of the Prime Minister’s Department and other mandarins to ensure that ordinary citizens are the winners when it comes to the location of federal departments. It is just good planning practice.
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