In no particular order, here’s a bunch of ideas for
resolutions for 2012. Some are a bit tongue in cheek, some are impossible, but
maybe one or two just might be worth trying?
We live in a
democracy. Consumer preference should lead public policy, not the other way around.
Market forces and consumer preferences are now not just
largely ignored, but too frequently the subject of public policy disdain. Where consumer preferences don’t align with
some ideologically driven position, they become the subject of attempts to ‘re-educate’
the public. Stalin would be proud of how
far we’ve come. Instead, in 2012, let’s have some public policy settings that
actually ask the question: “what do the majority of people actually want?” You can’t - and shouldn’t in a free and
democratic society at least – impose unwanted ‘solutions’ onto an unwilling
public just because someone in a position of power has deemed it’s good for
them.
The suburbs are fine,
thank you.
If you live in a suburb of one of our cities you could be
forgiven for thinking you’re the root of all problems from traffic congestion
to obesity to rising seas and falling skies.
Anti-suburban intellectual snobbery isn’t anything new but lately perhaps
it’s been getting a bit too much air time? So in 2012, let’s hear a bit less
from the anti-suburban elites, and perhaps celebrate the fact that our suburbs
have proven remarkably successful as places to live, work and play. There’s a
lot that’s right about them, they’re popular with the community, and most of
our suburbs were delivered before highly deterministic planning schemes were thought
of. (How could that be?)
We can handle
the truth!
Gathering impartial evidence and examining the facts are increasingly
out of favour in public policy, at least it seems that way. It’s become quite trendy to recite slogans
and ‘truisms’ without asking for the evidence of whether they’re true and can
be readily substantiated, or whether they’re just some new form of urban
myth. Maybe myth-busting and healthy scepticism
should be taught in schools and universities, as opposed to the slavish
adoption of public policy fashion. So how about in 2012, evidence and impartial
factual analysis makes a comeback?
A bit less dogma?
‘Four legs good, two legs baaad.’ So bayed the sheep at
Napoleon the pig’s insistence in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm.’ Dogma is not
a good thing. But much of what passes for public policy is often little more
than dogma, designed to push, cajole or direct people toward some outcome that
they’re otherwise not fond of. The private car, for example, is not a bad thing,
but we are frequently told it is (or at least that’s implied). The detached
home is not a bad thing either. The backyard, likewise, is something we can
‘afford’ to have. The truth about dogma of course is that’s often a willing bed
partner of hypocrisy. ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than
others’ was where dogma led to in Animal
Farm. In public policy, it means ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ And there are
plenty of examples of that. Maybe in 2012, we could have much less of that?
Let’s give the word “appropriate”
a rest.
A pet hate of mine is the way the word “appropriate” (or
more often “inappropriate”) is used in justifying public policy assertions.
Just what do people mean, for example, when they say ‘this form of housing is
no longer appropriate’? Appropriate? You
mean it’s something you disagree with on a personal or philosophical level, and
you want to impose your thinking onto others by suggesting there’s something
fundamentally wrong with it? If that’s what’s come to be meant by the word in
the public policy context, let’s give it a rest in 2012. If you just don’t like
something, just say so and express that as your opinion, but don’t load it with
a value judgement by telling me it’s not ‘appropriate’.
A few less study tours to mediaeval towns or
frozen metropolises
In 2012, maybe we could question the relevance to Australian
cities of town planning study tours to Copenhagen, Venice, Paris, Portland, or
Vancouver (just some of the places cited as ‘cities we should be more like’).
For starters, the town centres of most Euro cities were designed and laid out
in the middle ages. Transport economics was unheard of. Private transport was
mainly by foot because most people were too poor for a horse. And they were all created before the advent
of ‘town planning’ as we know it. And as for more modern centres like Portland
and Vancouver, why choose some of the world’s least affordable cities as
benchmarks for Australia to study? We’ve got enough problems on that front
already. Then of course there’s the climate issue - cities designed for
freezing winters and very brief summers may not be the most logical case
studies to use? Why not instead visit cities in regions of similar climate, and
where affordability and quality of life and economic opportunity are all in a
healthy state? Maybe the junket factor for Houston, USA, just isn’t quite as appealing
as Hamburg? Or at the very least, if it’s simply impossible to resist the
latest planning study tour to Paris, try at least getting out of the ancient
and touristy centres of town, and away from the 5 star hotels and conference
rooms, and visiting the suburbs where the majority of Parisians live and work.
It’s OK to count
heads and ask what they do
I was surprised to be corrected about a recent article which
guessed that the $17million budget for the planning and assessment
‘directorate’ of the Sunshine Coast Council might indicate some 200 people working
in that department. I was wrong: the
figure I’m told is more like 270 staff. Just what do 270 staff do in a planning department for a local
council with a population of just over 300,000 people? That’s almost 1
planning department employee to every 1000 residents. According to the
Australian Medical Association of Queensland, the ideal ratio of GPs to
population is one to 1000, but we’re currently experiencing a shortage of GPs
such that the ratio is closer to 1:1500. Surely planners haven’t become more
important that doctors? These large planning bureaucracies spend a lot of
taxpayer funds, and have grown exponentially in size and power in the last
decade. But for what outcome? It is fair to question bureaucracy wherever it’s
found, and town planning bureaucracies are no different. The solution isn’t
more bureaucrats, it’s less red tape. Let’s start asking some questions in
2012?
When it’s not ‘our
land’– it’s private property
The legal rights and protections afforded to owners of
private property have been whittled away to the point that some landowners must
wonder why they bother. It might be timely in 2012 to start reminding NIMBYs,
bureaucrats, academics and sections of the media who make pronouncements about
what should and shouldn’t be done on someone else’s land, that it’s not ‘their’
land make decisions about: it belongs to the person holding the title, and
paying the taxes. Owners’ views ought to hold substantial sway.
Hyprocrisy on
affordability
Another little resolution for 2012 would be to ask that
local, state or federal governments simply stop pleading their concerns about
housing affordability if at the same time they continue to raise taxes, add
regulations, limit or delay supply and add to the complexity of construction
for simple housing development. You can’t have it both ways. If you are
concerned about affordability, cut the taxes, free up the constraints, and fix
what the industry’s been identifying as a huge problem for more than a decade.
‘Yes you can’ cut levies
On the subject of taxes, it is of course quite possible to
cut taxes on property and new development in particular. Upfront per lot or per
application development fees are tightly focussed on new supply, to the point where
new supply becomes prohibitively expensive. But at the same time, the
justification for these development levies seems to be that rates and other
general taxes can’t rise beyond inflation. Surely though if the community as a
whole benefits from a certain activity or infrastructure investment, the
community as a whole should pay? And if you want to provide new libraries and
pools, and cultural facilities for the community as a whole, it’s unfair to
expect only new development to pay for it. Cutting levies is possible, as is
raising rates, or reducing the scale of promises. It just requires more
political will. Maybe 2012 will provide some?
Demand some KPIs
A simple measure, easy to put into effect in 2012, would be
for new planning schemes, initiatives or regulatory mechanisms to have attached
some very clear and measureable KPIs. In short, if the regulation is intended
to produce a certain outcome, how will you measure that outcome? And if it
fails to measure up, scrap it.
Realism not heroism
Heroic assumptions are fine in their place, but maybe not in
public policy. Realistic, evidence-based approaches are far superior. For
example, I still don’t know (nor can anyone tell me) how we are going to create
138,000 infill dwellings in Brisbane, or 374,000 infill dwellings in south east
Queensland, in 20 years. Just where will
they go? 374,000 infill dwellings is the equivalent of 4,675 twenty storey
apartment buildings, or 212 such towers per year for 20 years. Sound stupid?
But that’s exactly the target contained in the SEQ Regional Plan. And if it realistically
just can’t be done, is it time to revisit those assumptions with something more
realistic?
Forecasting the
future?
Is something best left to gypsies. Some developers now
complain that it can take 10 years from site acquisition to the first sale, and
in that time, much changes. Ten, twenty or 30 year plans are OK for stimulating
the mind and provoking debate, but locking in public policy inflexibility for
something that may happen in 20
years’ time based on what we know today and
the assumption that things won’t change, seems odd.
Take a helicopter
view (we’re not running out of land)
To all those ardent believers of the view that we’re fast
running out of land, or at risk of ‘LA type sprawl’ my wish for you in 2012 is
a helicopter ride over south east Queensland. Look down. There are trees and
open land everywhere. We are so far from ‘running out’ that to suggest
otherwise is to refuse to believe what your own eyes are telling you.
Private enterprise
pays for public services
Basic economics 101 is the lesson that a healthy and
profitable private sector generates the wealth (taxes) that pay for the public
sector. Cripple the private sector and the public sector fast runs out of money
(or has to borrow it). This is something the Greeks and Italians forgot. Let’s
not forget the lesson here in 2012. Governments (dare I harp on but planning
departments included) could spend a bit more time on the ‘how can we help you
make money’ line of thought rather than the ‘making money from economic or
urban development is wrong’ culture. Without money, without the profit motive,
the music stops and tax revenues that pay for all public services dry up.
Developers create
things. Plans don’t.
Look around. Most of our region was developed and built
before modern town planning , as we now know it, came to such prominence. Developers made this happen. People who took
risks. Almost every house in every
suburb, every shopping centre, factory, office or workplace was created by a
developer taking risks to develop the land on which these things now sit. There
are some notable exceptions – SouthBank being one – where public sector
planning and development, using taxpayer funds, has created something positive.
But even here, it could not have been done without developers. They are not
the enemy. They create value. They create jobs and places for people to
live, to work and also to play. Planning regulations and brightly illustrated
planning documents or policies don’t create these things.
No more ‘initiatives’
that add cost
Here’s a wild idea. Every time some new ‘initiative’
designed to save the planet or achieve some public policy objective is raised,
the costs involved in doing so are subject to an affordability test. If
mandatory building code changes are going to add several thousand dollars to
the cost of a new project home, that test should ask “can young families afford
this extra cost on their mortgage.” If not, the proponents ought to have to
work much harder to get their ideas up. At the very least they ought to get a
thumbs up from the people who are ultimately being asked to pay.
The city is not a
museum
We’ve become very protective of our urban form, to the point
that NIMBYs have become replaced with BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing
Anywhere Near Anything). It’s almost as if we now have some collective desire
to see nothing much change. But that’s a strange way of thinking, because it
suggests that nothing we have today can’t be done better tomorrow. Our city can
evolve, grow and develop, improving the lives of its residents and meeting their
changing needs during their lives. But if we are being asked to place a giant
glace dome over the region and declare it all a museum piece to be preserved
for all time, then evolution won’t be possible and the quality and standard of
life will decline. It would be nice for
the positives of change to get some more air time in 2012, as opposed to this
sense of wanting to cling to everything as it now is.
Hope that lot got you thinking, please feel free to suggest
a few more.
Happy New Year!
