Our regional plan won’t end well.

Early versions of regional plans adopted by State Governments in the late 1990s to early 2000s were full of promise. Notable among these for its unbridled exuberance was the community consultation document for the “Draft Metropolitan Strategy for Sydney to 2031” which promised (on the cover no less): “A home I can afford. Great transport connections. More jobs closer to where I live. Shorter commutes. The right type of home for my family. A park for the kids. Local schools, shops and hospitals. Liveable neighbourhoods.” 

A more succinct shopping list of failed ambition would be hard to find. 

Regional plans for metro regions were created around the same time and were built on similar assumptions. The late eminent town planner Tony Powell AO lamented that the Melbourne 2020 plan was “superficial to the point of ridiculousness.”   “The proposition in the latest crop of metropolitan strategy plans that 50% or more of future housing development can be accommodated in existing suburban areas of the major cities is patently ridiculous. These are simply unexamined and unreliable hypotheses, not strategies ,” he said.

The precursor to the first of the Queensland regional plans was “SEQ 2001” a growth management project of the 1990s. By 2005 we had The South East Queensland Regional Plan 2005-2026 which included a foreword by then Premier Beattie, Minister Mackenroth and Lord Mayor Newman: 

“There exists an adage, ‘if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail’. Whilst many of us will have heard this, it is easily forgotten and often overlooked. The South East Queensland Regional Plan 2005-2026 will not be forgotten and will never be overlooked.”

It wasn’t forgotten and instead quickly updated with a regional plan for 2009-2031 under Premier Anna Bligh, Minister Stirling Hinchliffe and Campbell Newman (still as Lord Mayor). This one claimed that “As Australia’s fastest-growing state, Queensland needs a contemporary system of planning that is responsive to change and continues to deliver the lifestyle for which we are famous.”

“It’s a plan for smart growth, to manage our expanding population and tackle the issues of today like housing affordability, congestion and climate change. To manage growth, the regional plan promotes compact settlement by consolidating growth in existing areas which are close to public transport, to encourage reduced car use and help fight congestion. The SEQ Regional Plan ensures there is adequate land available for new homes, businesses and infrastructure to 2031, while safeguarding more than 85 per cent of the region from inappropriate urban development.”

Noble aims but few achieved. In some cases, the opposite. 

Now, over a quarter of century after the early ‘SEQ2001’ we are operating under the latest version: “Shaping SEQ 2023.”  It’s fair to ask what’s changed in response to the passage of time and major societal, industry and technological change. For context, the very first I-Phone was released in 2007. A lot has changed since then, except for some of the philosophical tenets of our regional plan. 

 ‘Shaping SEQ’ is the latest version of the regional plan for SEQ. But given massive social, economic, demographic and technological change are the underlying assumptions out of date?

In fairness, the latest incarnation of our regional plan was never intended as a fundamental rethink, only an update: the presumption being that the underlying principals were sound but fine tuning was needed. 

The terminology has certainly changed. From ‘compact settlement’ in the 2000s we moved to ‘missing middle’ and now ‘gentle density.’ But they generally mean the same thing: contained geographic growth via a growth boundary within which growth will happen, meaning in turn higher forms of density given reducing availability of land suited to - but not permissible for - development. 

But consider the market signals now screaming at us: a severe shortage of housing; tent  villages; worsening affordability (now some of the worst in the world); longer and more costly commutes to places of work, education or healthcare; lengthy hospital wait lists and ambulance ramping; worsening metro wide congestion; rising school shortages; questions around future water and energy supply; a construction industry incapable of responding to the pace of rising demand; record high construction costs; shortages of seniors care; shortages of child care; a planning system where obtaining the paperwork for a project approval can take longer than actually building the thing… it’s quite the list. 

Population growth is one factor rendering the assumptions in these plans now redundant. Australian population growth in the early 2000s was just 1% to 1.5%. It’s now over 2.5%. In raw numbers, growth (mainly due to the Federal Government’s immigration policies) has risen to 624,000 last year compared with around 230,000 in the early 2000s.  That’s a massive increase, never envisaged by regional plan authors. 

Rapid growth in demand requires rapid increases in supply – something we are failing miserably at, across multiple fronts. Not only has minimal extra land been ‘zoned’ for urban expansion  (growth boundaries remain largely unchanged) but our regulatory systems are now less fluid and less responsive. It now takes longer to gain approval from authorities for development, and the costs are also higher. Land capable of development is harder to find, and when you do find it, developers can face several years of pre-lodgement and assessment before a decision is made to allow or deny it. If allowed, it then needs to be built. 

Add to this the increasing reliance in our regional plan for higher density to accommodate growth. The realities of today’s construction market are such that the higher the density, the higher the cost. A two-bedroom apartment needs to sell for over $1million for it to be worth doing after all taxes, codes and compliance costs are added to the land and construction cost. Hence we are now mainly only building density for millionaires. The construction outlook is more benign in that further rapid increases are less likely, but prices are unlikely to fall. Building density will remain the more expensive housing form, and arguably also one that takes longer. 

60% of new housing is now expected to be a form of attached housing. Some 20% is expected to be high rise - clearly a fantasy given today’s reality – while nearly a third is expected to be above 4 storeys (medium and high rise). Is this even remotely realistic?

So our regional plan favours a form of housing that takes longer and costs more. In the midst of a torrent of demand thanks to accelerated immigration in times of a housing shortage, this is a very poor fit. Some will argue that outward expansion is more costly than infill (higher density in established areas) but that argument – while popular in its day – no longer stands up to scrutiny. The infrastructure upgrades associated with more people in existing areas – whether that is waste water treatment, road upgrades, more schools, hospital expansions, potable water supplies – is increasingly more costly than if it were built from scratch in new urban areas. (Cue howls of protest from the usual suspects). 

The regional plan is also not strong on recognising the massive changes in industry, employment and technology since earlier versions were authored. The plan is mostly intended for housing a future population. When it comes to jobs, infrastructure and transport, it - like its predecessors - is weak. Yet where the future jobs will be, and what people will be doing for work, and how they access things like schools, hospitals and other forms of social infrastructure – along with the infrastructure to enable those connections – ought to be a starting point for a regional plan. Start with these things, and plan housing around it. Are we doing the reverse?

The mismatch between where population growth is expected and where jobs are expected is a significant failing of the regional plan. Expecting future residents of Moreton, Logan, and Ipswich for example to commute elsewhere for work is setting us up for a future commuting nightmare. 

Regional planning is essential to give governments and the community a sense of future direction. The expectations now placed on these plans are different because no one could have envisaged things like the rapid increase in migration (except the Federal Government which enabled it) nor the fundamental shifts in the costs of delivering construction – be that housing or infrastructure, among other seismic changes over the years. But things have changed, irrevocably. The pressure points are increasingly obvious.

It's not just time for a new plan, but time to rethink all the underlying assumptions. We need planners, engineers, economists, demographers, builders, the developers and the community to put their very best minds together to find a new way of thinking about the future we want in our region. Times have changed. Time we moved with them.