Our Review of the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan Discussion Paper

Our passion for great planning results goes beyond helping our clients achieve their development dreams. We are also passionate about ensuring the planning system is moving us forward in our quest to create a better place for all of us to live, work and play. Development of the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan is currently underway, and a discussion paper has recently been released for public comment and consultation. We have recently lodged our submission for the discussion paper, and are making this publicly available, so you know where we stand on the biggest planning and land use issues going forward. Here are some of the key focus areas we feel State Planning Commission should dial in on:

Focus on jobs first.

To create better communities and neighbourhoods in greenfield areas, it is important ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Creating ‘commuter towns’ such as Mount Barker, results in poor social outcomes and communities often feel stale or empty of human connection. Any satellite city or greenfield development needs to focus on creating local jobs for all levels of education before they look to create new residential allotments. Incentivising businesses to relocate to these areas will result in residential migration to these communities in a more natural manner, and in turn create more natural feeling communities.

Review our Urban Greening and Urban Tree Policies.

Urban Greening is becoming increasingly important to ensure our metropolitan areas are liveable and thriving as we become more impacted by climate change. To achieve better results in this space, an overhaul of our current system needs to be implemented. The regulated and significant tree system will remain important in retaining the largest of trees, but a way to incentivise retention of mature trees that are not regulated needs to be further investigated. A valuation system which increases exponentially based on the environmental benefit of each tree would mean developers either have to retain these medium sized trees or pay up. This is just one option available to increase retention rates of mature vegetation and ensure that urban greening projects can be undertaken in suitable areas.

Limit urban sprawl and focus on satellite cities for new growth.

No one likes urban sprawl, and limiting urban sprawl should be one of the highest priorities of the Commission. Adelaide already features one of the lowest population densities of any city in the world, and this leads to many inefficiencies with urban systems such as transport. By limiting sprawl to the existing urban footprint, and focussing on growth of satellite cities the urban area can become more efficient. Most importantly, this will also ensure that food production and environmental areas are protected from urban sprawl and can continue to provide us all with their many benefits.

Create better communities and neighbourhoods

Currently our neighbourhoods in suburban Adelaide are often bland, unfriendly and unsafe places. Our roads are heavily designed around the use of the car and do not allow our children and vulnerable communities to feel safe when using these areas. We often have no shops, services or parks within walking distance which force us into the car for every movement. By allowing a better mixture of development in communities and making roads safer for pedestrians and active transport our neighbourhoods can once again become highly social places with a better sense of community.

Incentivise Carbon Neutral and Carbon Negative Development

To ensure that we are on the right path towards carbon neutrality, it is extremely important that we focus on incentivising development which progresses us towards our goal. The Greater Adelaide Regional Plan needs to identify ways to incentivise this development so that more developers take up the option on building more sustainable development. At the end of the day, most developers are driven by profit and may need a gentle push in the right direction through an incentive scheme. Developers will not change their winning formula unless an even better formula becomes available.

Our full submission delves into more ways we can improve the Adelaide Region through better planning and land use policies. Read our full our full submission to the State Planning Commission here: Greater Adelaide Regional Plan Discussion Paper – Submission

You can also read the full discussion paper and make your own submission here: Greater Regional Adelaide Plan Discussion Paper