Hi everyone.
There are some great things going on in this region at present, such as the upcoming bike ride, the community garden, the proposed sustainability precinct, the solar project we’ve had, the proposed windfarm, the organic shops and coop, the permaculture tour, a big group on the Greens ticket, the HiCub plantings, the sustainable housing tour this weekend etc etc. These give me great hope for the future. At uni there are some environmental projects (eg establishing the Master of Environmental Advocacy), and national campaigns being initiated, such as an NTEU campaign for ethical Unisuper. We’re hoping to facilitate a coal seam gas summit at UNE next year, which I hope SLA and the Greens will be part of.
A number of people, however – from the Liberals to Jack Arnold – have been saying that the last council stifled development, and that we need more growth. I’m concerned about this because I think we’ve had a good deal of very inappropriate development in the last few years (along with some good developments).
We’ve had a lot of new housing developments and approvals, including ones near PLC and at Kelly’s Plains which residents opposed, and another off Madgwick Drive. All of these consume a lot of resources (including unethical ones such as rainforest timbers), and some were built on threatened ecological communities or good farmland. Lots of backyards with large native or fruit trees have been bulldozed for flats – without an increase in playgrounds or bush for kids to play in (in fact the council is selling off vacant blocks). New developments are now permitted on koala habitat below the Rockvale Estate.
Other developments, such as on Rockvale Road, were far from solar passive. Some of these are near public transport; others are far from it. Some are better insulated than others, but few as well as European standards require. Some don’t have woodfires, but many do, and this has added to the woodsmoke problem we already have.
Under the last council, we also saw fast-tracked the introduction of Bunnings, a company responsible for a lot of Western Australia’s old growth logging, which some scientists believe has exacerbated drought in Australia except during El Ninos. We saw a windowless Centro introduced, with its policy of no local businesses, only franchises. This has decimated the mall, and pushed local businesses to the wall 9 (see ). Dan Murphy’s and a Woolworths servo are now here, part of the monopoly system of Woolworths and Coles, which many people have fought against (eg in Maleny and Murwillumbah). Dick Smiths Electronics is new; it has very dodgy environmental practices.
From this perspective, the last council was very pro-growth and big business and very little committed to the environment and to ethical, locally-owned businesses. The mayor, Ducat, seemed to have a finger in the pie of many of these developments, and the land now proposed for the tip (in the headwaters of a World Heritage Area) was bought in what seemed a very suspect process.
People also talk about our great water supply, but this is not guaranteed against blue green algae or similar. Our library is far too small. We pay high rates but this is economic mismanagement (eg investing in the failed US sub-prime market instead of local projects) and outmoded practices (such as maintaining acres of grass instead of low maintenance native grasses), rather than lack of a reasonable ratepayer base, as other council areas with similar populations charge less and do better.
I think, provided the uni is adequately funded, there is little danger of Armidale dying, especially as it gets warmer here with global warming. On the other hand there are many small towns which are dying get which are not supported well eg Ebor.
The whole ethos of continual growth is just not sustainable globally, and Armidale could provide a lead in saying we want stability and quality of life over constant new development.
Some new development would be ok, such as low capital but high employment ones like more organic agriculture, more renewable energy, more businesses that use the NBN and the uni, and best practice housing (such as Davis in California), and a new library, arts precinct and sustainability centre. But let’s do this carefully and in a sustainable way.
And let’s decide how big the town should be, both in population and in geographical size, rather than the mainstream ‘let’s just grow forever’. Let’s plan it properly. so we don’t lose the unique character of Armidale. My American friends tell me that similar-sized towns in the USA don’t have anywhere near as a much community spirit and culture as Armidale. What we have here is precious and precarious.
regards
Marty
This is something Alan Cunningham suggests as a growth control plan:
Armidale Growth control Plan:
- Implement transferable development rights:
- Inventory existing development approvals (& rights) Probably over 1000 housing units.
- Determine growth rate limit: 1%/yr.(?) 25,000×1%=250 people/2.3 people per household = 109 units x 3 year supply = 327 units, update annually.
- Adopt a policy/ordinance to approve new developments only when an equal number of previous approvals & rights are acquired and cancelled until existing development approvals are down to the growth rate limit.
- Eliminate all growth subsidies *
- Eliminate all development and relocation incentives.
- Eliminate economic development budget. (exception if local unemployment rate exceeds national by one point; also, tourism promotion should probably continue)
- Cancel Evocities and annual Rose Hill growth fair participation.
- Increase development fees to cover full per unit costs of past and future infrastructure. Probably approaches doubling current fee level.
- Address Uralla Shire problem: a significant share of ADC’s area of growth management interest is in Uralla Shire.
* If the Chamber of Commerce, real estate companies and others want to continue and fund these activities, they are of course free to do so.
By: Marty Branagan
