Pressures on natural resources
Although the condition of some natural assets in the ACT has improved, other assets are suffering from a steady decline in condition. In rural areas for example, lessees have learnt more about managing stock density and pastures so that the land is better covered in drought, with ongoing benefits for land, water and biodiversity, as well as landholders. But pressures resulting from urban expansion, fragmentation of natural resources, climate change, pest plants and animals, exploitation of water systems and fire are continuing to degrade assets both inside and outside the city limits. Addressing the causes of decline (the pressures) is usually cheaper than having to repair the consequences later.
Urban expansion
Canberra’s early development was focused around Lake Burley Griffin. However in 1967 the then National Capital Development Commission developed and adopted the ‘Y Plan’ laying out future urban development around a series of central shopping and commercial areas (or town centres) that would be linked by freeways. The layout of this plan roughly resembled the shape of the letter Y – Tuggeranong is located at the base of the ‘Y’; Belconnen and Gungahlin are at the ends of its arms.
The Canberra Spatial Plan 5 (ACT Government 2004) goes beyond the ‘Y’ Plan by:
- specifying that 50% of future growth will be within existing urban areas, thereby promoting increasing intensification
- specifying that new greenfield developments are no more than 15 km from Civic and
- identifying two new areas for greenfield residential development – the Molonglo Valley and the Kowen plateau.
Challenge: The challenge for Canberra’s planners and developers is to maintain an effective balance between providing for continuing urban development (rather than expansion) and at the same time protecting the urban open space and adjoining natural areas with their environmental values that are closely woven into the fabric of the city.
Canberra is a planned city, and a conscious creation of an emerging nation. It is still only partly developed and it is still maturing. By international
standards it is still small.
In many ways, the city remains the Bush Capital, set into an environment as Australian as bush flies. It reflects both the imposition of European settlers’ ideals on to the harsh setting of the new continent, and, perhaps fortuitously, the gradual education of Australians in the ways of adapting to and respecting the environment which the earliest settlers, the Aborigines, had themselves learned over thousands of years.
During the next decade, in the lead up to the centenary of Federation, the National Capital needs to reflect and symbolise the changing and maturing character of the nation as a whole.
Foreword to the National Capital Plan 1991
Social statistics (ABS census data)
Population (2007): 340 800 with all but 0.3% living in urban centres
Annual growth rate: 1.3%
Average size of household: 2.6 (projected to decline to between 2.2 and 2.3 by 2026, the same as the national average)
Population is ageing as the birth rate declines so that the society is moving from a relatively young to a middle aged population
Median weekly income: between $600 and $799 (national average is $400 to $599)
High level of educational achievement: 49.1% have a bachelors degree or above (nationally it is 24.1%)
challenging us now and into the future
- The Canberra Spatial Plan is not a statutory planning document. Rather, strategic planning for the ACT resides with the National Capital Authority and is administered through the National Capital Plan – the ACT’s sole statutory strageic planning document.
