Article: Time to reassess land use in Brisbane urban design

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Time to reassess land use in Brisbane urban design

Time to reassess land use in Brisbane urban design
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Chris Hale

March 12, 2009 11:00pm

BRISBANE is entering a "fourth era" of human settlement, which will involve a shift in balance back toward mass transit, walking and cycling, as well as a renewed urban design sensibility.

This means that arguing in favour of continued car-based, ex-urban or outer-urban settlement as the primary planning and development response to population growth is much like attempting to hold back the tide - only more costly.

The present economic circumstances may offer a brief but important moment in which we can draw breath and ask whether current plans really do justice to some of the opportunities in southeast Queensland to create accessible, best-practice communities.

Queensland's major state and local government planning and infrastructure agencies would be wise to pay particularly close attention to the treatment and resourcing of urban land assets closer to the city, as we move into an era of continued population growth and a parallel collapse in the relevance of the ex-urban housing model.

Our urban land resources with access to the CBD are rapidly becoming one of our most precious economic, social and environmental assets.

Although areas such as Bowen Hills, Fitzgibbon, Hamilton, and the Boggo Road precinct are well-located, their position and size are scarce and valuable commodities. Once such urban sites are gone, where will we go for housing, employment nodes and public spaces to meet Brisbane's "fourth era" of growth needs?

In Brisbane's "first era" of urban history, early settlement patterns were defined by the assumption that boats, buggies and boots would be the primary means of transporting people and goods.

But just at the time that our first major towns were founded on these old transport realities, settlement patterns faced their most significant change in 8000 years, and entered a "second era" with the arrival of commercially viable railway engineering, which allowed distant towns to be connected and new satellite "garden cities" beyond the central cities to be created.

But just as the rail era had established itself, urban civilisation entered its "third era" with the motor vehicle. Rail-served garden cities became car-based garden suburbs. After World War II, car-dominated planning and development probably was excessive.

In recent years the "magic pudding" assumption that has fed car-dominated planning, design and development has started to falter noticeably. We are now facing up to the reality that fuel no longer will be cheap, and land no longer will be endlessly available for ex-urban development.

We are also facing the reality that our infrastructure funding sources are constrained and need careful allocation.

We are also realising that not everyone needs or wants to live on a large block of land a long way from the city.

Both young and older people are searching for more convenient housing options to match their smaller household sizes, but finding the choices limited when such an emphasis is given to the 50-year-old fashion for ex-urban housing provision.

Our planning and delivery of housing options has become seriously out of kilter. Much of the housing product is on the suburban fringe, while many homebuyers are demanding (or wishing for) something else - something offering better access to public transport and jobs, less maintenance and a more urbane design approach.

Indicators of a change in direction for the way we approach the creation and growth of our metropolitan region are increasingly evident.

Significant movements and signs have included - the creation of the ULDA (Urban Land Development Authority), consistently high fuel prices, the subprime collapse in the viability of ex-urban housing markets in the US, and a growing feeling that our regional housing needs are going unmet.

But only when we answer these fundamental questions regarding development and design, can we then begin to face a new century in which every urban land asset is a goldmine of valuable resources for a better city, and for the reinforcement of sustainable human settlement patterns.

Chris Hale is an urban economist with The University of Queensland Centre for Transport Strategy.