From The Adelaide Review
The city of Adelaide commences 2012 stuck in a conversation about its future direction, but amid the chatter it’s not clear who is listening to whom. Several big development proposals highlight the problem.
The State Government is championing the $394 million Riverbank proposal. But smaller and equally significant proposals for the city indicate that the Adelaide City Council is focusing more on its old retail heart, listening more to city traders there than it is to the State Government. An examination of the proposed developments for the sites indicates that each level of government has a fundamentally different priority for the future. For the council, where all politics is local, it’s a matter of listening to the commercial ratepayers. A recent decision to spend $30 million on a major refurbishment of Rundle Mall highlighted its level of commitment. But on North Terrace all eyes are on Torrens Lake and the view across the parklands. A new vision has sway in the government corridors and the Office of Major Projects has ears only for parliamentarians and eyes only for a huge change to the water-edge skyline.
In December, the council called for a detailed analysis on its potential economic impact on other city commercial precincts, including the Mall, Hindley Street, the Central Market, as well as Melbourne and O’Connell Streets. Curiously, however, it did not seek a similar study before suddenly ramping up its spending on the Mall.
Historians decades from now will look back on 2012 as the year of the great divide, when the council plunged millions on reviving its retail heart at the same time as the State Government began pursuing a proposal to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in a future budget on a vision for new shops, galleries, restaurants and a city entertainment hub a kilometre north.
There are parallels to the listening theme in relation to future residential growth plans for the city. In November 2011 the council completed public consultation on a document Adelaide: One City, Many Futures. It contained a range of suggestions for myriad topics, including transport, jobs and energy. However, the core of it was to probe views on city growth based on poorly explained potential changes to its development plan. The vision is clear. It states: “The State Government’s 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide flags the city as the pre-eminent ‘transit oriented development’ and the need to accommodate an additional 50,000 workers and 27,300 residents. Targets are for around a third more people working in the city [and] more than double the number of people living in the city.”
The mechanics will materialise as rezoned precincts allowing higher density and high-rise, topics not high on the community agenda, in the residential precincts outside the traditional high-rise CBD. The colour brochure’s copywriting made it appear as if the proposal was exciting and likely to be widely popular. For example: “The city’s edges buzz with contemporary one, two and three-bedroom apartments up to 10 storeys high, offering magnificent views of the parklands.”
Respondents could have been forgiven for concluding that high-rises along the inner edge of Adelaide’s parklands was a council idea but, except for the CBD high-rise, it’s not. It comes from listening to the State Government, driven by the 30-Year Plan released in 2009. Councils including Charles Sturt, Unley, Norwood, Payneham and St Peters, Burnside, Prospect, Walkerville as well as Adelaide have been given clear instructions that they must adapt to and re-write their planning policies to fit with this new blueprint, and provide for the redevelopment of precincts within their borders identified by the government.
Media stories through 2011 reflected various metropolitan skirmishes, covering resident fury at new high-rise plans for low-scale residential precincts. Seen more broadly, it highlights a profound proposed change across the inner suburbs. The original 1970s concept of orderly planning via council-run, widely consulted development plan evolution is being replaced with a top-down approach, with Planning SA identifying specific precincts within each local government area and prompting relatively sudden major future change to height and density allowances. The blueprint emerges as a ‘structure plan’. In at least one case, in the City of Prospect, councillors voted to give the planning minister full control to determine where and by how much change would occur in that city. The gesture was certainly more politically canny, even though the perception of capitulation was locally unpopular.
As the New Year begins, the Adelaide City Council is running hard to keep up with a very tight schedule set by the State Government. It has a huge workload. One of its many tasks late last year was to urgently respond to the government’s Housing Strategy Green Paper. A council briefing observed: “The opportunity to comment relates to the vision, lead proposals and key directions discussed in the paper...,” noting that the driver was the 30-Year Plan. Timing was so tight that it had to take the highly unusual step of providing its response before it was endorsed by all of the councillors. A less unusual feature was that instructions from council’s administration and endorsed by a subcommittee of councillors stated that the “submission not be made public”.
While the council position suggests that the agenda remains wide open, and that it is listening to its ratepayers, residents and workers, the behind-the-scenes agenda is already largely determined, with an eye on finalising all draft policy development within five months, by June 2012.
However, several political snags were highlighted in the paper (which remains secret).
For the city submission, administrators advised: [There will be a need to provide]: “A recommendation around the need for effective communication strategies to overcome likely community resistance to housing diversity in established areas; in particular, clear communication of the benefits (what people get in return) of an increased diversity of housing types and choices and more households in their neighbourhoods.”
They also stressed the need for “recognition of the particular challenge of creating sustainable 'high rise' communities and the 'cultural shift' required in Adelaide to generate demand for apartment living. In particular, there will be a need for clear communication of the consequences of particular forms of development to overcome adverse perceptions of apartment living, and for financial incentives to broaden the appeal of apartment living.”
The council decision that the “submission must not be made public” highlights the level of political unease about the rezoning and development. This year major rezoning plans will prompt change to the city’s existing 'Well Designed' and 'Liveable City' policy documents – despite the fact that Adelaide’s ratepayers have not asked for it. This theme is being replicated across other inner metropolitan areas.
There are likely to be more city public consultation phases early this year, but they probably won’t have effect on either the council’s or the government’s planning agenda. The big decisions have already been made. Documentation now being revised across council’s suite of development policies will be crafted to fit the political vision. In the past, the approach was the opposite: policies were written to reflect community desires and aspirations. It’s an interesting way of getting things done – very 21st century.
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It's just the Clipsal500 itself I have issue with. It seems to do more damage than good. But then again I tend to see it from the Rundle Street traders' point of view. It's the drunken louts that spill out afterwards, breaking things. Most of the race goers are fine, but Clipsal500 seems to attract the lout contingent more than any other event. If it were possible I'd have the F1 back, but the politics of that seem impossible at this time (Eccles no want Australian race any more).