The debate arount density flared up again at the launch of Sustainable House Day at the CSIRO Discovery Centre on 8 September 2009, with the Australian Institute of Architects' ACT President David Flannery continuing his attack on suburbs in general and Gungahlin in particular. There was also a presentation by the ACT Planning and Land Authority's Director of Planning Services Kelvin Walsh on upcoming new suburbs.

GCC President Alan Kerlin has previously spoken out on these issues, including on ABC Stateline, and was invited to the launch to respond to these speakers. Following is the transcript of his responses.

Response to Australian Institute of Architects’ David Flannery:

There is much of the arguments put by the Australian Institute of Architects that is valid. There does need to be increased density in some areas closer to city centres—all of the city centres, not just Civic.

And there are certainly some areas of Gungahlin—altogether too many areas—that are truly cringe-worthy. There are places where I have to focus very intently on the road ahead of my while driving through them so as to avoid looking up in despair. But these areas are not our fault. They were created by politicians and planners and architects and builders both past and present. People bought them often because they were the only places available in a land-stock starved market.

But the AIA have mixed valid arguments up with an unfounded attack on the suburbs in which many of us choose to live.

As people who care about environmental issues, we get used to people from time to time calling us ‘greenies’. We don’t mind, our friends don’t mind, but the name callers are trying to invoke it as a derogative term, to somehow degrade the value or importance of those issues we care about.

So it is with the term ‘urban sprawl’. It’s used as a derogative to try to argue that suburbia is somehow evil.

But is it? Is the AIA’s call for more density based on solid evidence?

A 2005 study by Energy Australia found in fact that high-rise and medium density residential developments are far worse for overall greenhouse impacts than normal suburban housing.

And there are broader social and environmental aspects to the issue than just greenhouse effects. People have a right to choose to have a yard—for their children to play in, to grow some food, or just to function as a different form of living space. It’s ironic that in an era when we are finally starting to relish and value outdoor living, that the planners are denying our right to it.

Certainly there are examples of suburbia that are undesirable. The single city centre with everyone commuting in to a single employment base is a classic example of how to build a city wrong, and yet the planners and governments we have here right now are inexorably herding Canberra towards exactly that situation with their drive to centralise everything around Civic.

But in Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin had a different vision. He put forward the satellite cities concept that makes Canberra truly unique among Australian cities—scattered city nodes, localised and decentralised employment, and with these nodes connected by efficient and fast public transport. The reality that this vision has not been properly realised is an indictment on our politicians both past and present.

The AIA has called for a halt to further Greenfield development, a halt to further detached dwellings—because they say these suburbs are not dense enough.
Really?? Have they been out our way lately?

Recently it was revealed just how high the density is in Gungahlin—two to three times the levels of elsewhere in Canberra. Palmerston had a massive 3000 people per hectare.

And it is going to get worse. ACTPLA has just released a new Territory Plan Variation for “mid-sized blocks”. But they categorise this as blocks for 500 down to just 300 square metres!

Gungahlin residents are telling us through our occasional community surveys that they’ve had enough of this. Our survey responses are littered with “bigger blocks” comments. Put simply, Gungahlin is sick of being a social experiment for the ACT Government and the planning industry.

But it isn’t an either/or situation. The Gungahlin Community Council has been actively campaigning for (and winning) changes to increase residential densities around our town centre. Plus we have won a major increase to the woefully small amount of land around our town centre that is quarantined for office development, recently winning a rezoning of almost 40 hectares to CZ2 – Commercial Zone. This was land earmarked by ACTPLA’s zonings for more two and three storey townhouses, creating a virtual sea of these low density residences right up to the very town core itself.

Rather than continuing these unsubstantiated attacks on suburban living, the Australian Institute of Architects should instead I believe be defending people’s rights to an affordable block of land big enough for a yard if they want or need one.

The AIA should be educating clients about careful choice of the rooms they actually need in a home and the benefits of allowing for outdoor living.

The AIA should be lobbying for land releases across Canberra so people can buy near their workplace and reduce commuting congestion.

The AIA should join the efforts of ours and other groups to convince the ACT Government to get serious about providing a lasting public transport solution to adequately service our satellite cities and reduce traffic congestion—now not in 20 years time as they are currently talking about.

The AIA should be actively pursuing some serious employment out our way, so we don’t all have to commute out every day.

And the AIA should be delivering good design more affordably instead of only pursuing the cream at the very top end of the market.

The final words I’ll leave to Professor Brendan Gleeson from Griffith University’s School of Environment, when he spoke at a recent Sustainable Futures workshop here in Canberra. He said:

“It’s a rather self-defeating exercise to try to asphalt your way out of congestion problems.”

Response to presentation by ACTPLA on their planning for future development around Canberra:

Since I joined the Gungahlin Community Council, much of my focus has been trying to get the ACT Planning and Land Authority to throw out and start over with a number of the new suburb concept plans that they have sitting on the shelf.

Some of these were drawn up years ago, and they represent planning ideas of another decade. They have long circling crescents that rather than leading you in a logical direction, end up back where you started. They are like Giralang or Kaleen street layouts all over again.

And this sort of layout locks in inappropriate block orientation for most of the suburb’s blocks. And unlike the suburbs of old, the blocks we are being dished up by ACTPLA now are far too small to allow any skewing of a house on a block for better solar orientation. As each of these concept plans gets implemented, it locks in a solid ‘fail’ score for solar orientation for a hundred years or more.

To get an idea of the concern, we have on our website gcc.asn.au, the ACTPLA concept plan for the suburb of Crace, which the private develop threw out, and the subdivision layout the developer put up to replace it (just do a search on Crace concept plan). The difference is stark. The suburb being built now uses a New Urbanism approach with logical and permeable street layouts, with alignments that virtually guarantee good passive solar orientation.

That is why it is so disappointing to see ACTPLA’s concept plans for the new district (not just one suburb) of Molonglo. The plans shown by ACTPLA feature a major arterial road right through the district running at 45 degrees to the compass, virtually guaranteeing that 30, 40 or more per cent of the suburban streets than run off that road, and therefore the house blocks that line them, will also be poorly oriented. And again, with the likely very small block sizes, it is designing in failure.

ACTPLA can talk all it likes about sustainability, but until it gets serious about designing the very frameworks of all newly developing areas so that it is hard to NOT build for passive solar orientation, their talk has an empty ring to it.