Article: Plan for another 754,000 houses in southeast Queensland

[ozbob]

From the Courier Mail click here!

Plan for another 754,000 houses in southeast Queensland

Plan for another 754,000 houses in southeast Queensland
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Craig Johnstone

July 25, 2009 12:00am

THE Bligh Government plans to rapidly increase the number of people living in established suburbs and other key parts of southeast Queensland through medium to high-density housing.

The plan, due to be released next week, is likely to revive debate on installing a population cap for the region.

The final South East Queensland Regional Plan is expected to lay out a strategy to build 754,000 extra homes in the region by 2031 ? 19,000 more than what was planned just six months ago.

Nearly half of these would be constructed as so-called "infill" redevelopment in established suburbs, with places such as Chermside and Indooroopilly earmarked for residential density of 40 dwellings a hectare, about the same as in Fortitude Valley.

The Government insists that increasing residential density around key transport nodes is the solution to southeast Queensland's urban sprawl.

However, regional leaders are concerned that a slowdown in building planned infrastructure will leave newly developed parts of the region without adequate transport, health and social services.

The South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan, released last week, reveals that infrastructure spending in the region will slump from $7.9 billion last financial year to only $5.8 billion this year.

The Government boasted about adding 32 new projects to the 20-year infrastructure plan, but these only amount to $1.9 billion out of the total $124 billion set to be spent by 2026.

This is despite the Government preparing to tell councils to approve the building of thousands of extra homes for an expected explosion in the region's population growth to about 4.4 million within two decades.

The Sunshine Coast will be given a target of 98,500 new dwellings, which will increase the number of homes on the Coast by 75 per cent.

However, the Government recently deferred the building of the planned hospital at Kawana until 2016. Sunshine Coast Mayor Bob Abbot says the carrying capacity of the southeast Queensland "paddock" should be established and, if more people were arriving than could be accommodated, "we need to slow down the growth or speed up the infrastructure".

But he said that while the council was dealing with planned growth, the Government had deferred "significant blocks" of public infrastructure such as the new hospital and some roads.

"If there is a situation where we are getting the infrastructure further away from the growth, that is not what we want to see," he said.

He said if the Government had revised its dwelling target for the region, it needed to be matched by providing more infrastructure.

"Infrastructure has to be extremely well planned or in place or shovel ready," he said.

"If that is not possible, then we have to find a way of holding up the growth."

Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke is less worried about coping with the plan's demands.

"The Gold Coast can cope provided we stick to our plans," he said.

He said a population cap would inevitably come about if future governments and councils stuck to the urban footprint and kept open spaces, parks and gardens.

[stephenk]

Good to see that the Queensland Government has seen some some sense and wants to increase population density. This will improve Brisbane's sustainability and efficiency of public transport (as long as the population density is increased along public transport corridors).

However, the government needs to stop expanding Brisbane with urban sprawl developments such as Ripley Valley. Brisbane needs a green belt around it to stop it's spread, as was successfully achieved in London over 50 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_belt_(UK)
I really can't see that the Queensland Government have properly considered the relevance of public transport and the future increases in oil prices in their urban planning.