Community inputs carefully considered, but no change
", PN 557), whereas nothing could be further from the truth.
The Minister has now adopted the Central Coast Regional Plan 2041, and it is plain to see how carefully all community inputs have been considered.
The Minister has not stinted himself in presenting his ideas to us - a whopping 132 pages, full of words and pictures signifying nothing - but, if there is any significant change from the Draft Plan, I cannot detect it.
Obviously, nobody outside the Minister's office had anything worthwhile to contribute, which is how we have come to expect.
Of course, I have to confess that I barely made it to the half-way mark before the MEGO (my eyes glaze over) syndrome set in, and I'm a professional planner, so what would any layman make of it?
The writers have plundered the thesaurus to find objectives, strategies, contexts, actions and outcomes with which to dazzle us, but, in the end, none of it amounts to much more than statistical projections and pious hopes.
Parliamentary Secretary for the Central Coast Mr Adam Crouch says that the plan includes "initiatives to promote sustainability, improve the night-time economy and enhance connections to public space", but, if they're there, they are so well-hidden that I couldn't find them. (I couldn't even find what a connection to public space means.)
Mr Caine King from CKDS Architecture has "commended the focus on 'development ready' housing supply", but, if there is anything more in the document than a tedious reiteration of standard housing gospel, it escaped me.
There are obeisances to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the NSW Water Strategy and other sources but not one specific mention of how the Regional Plan responds to the issues that they raise.
The one thing that is obvious is that the Minister intends Central Coast Council to have a sideline role in the region's development.
The overarching responsibility will lie with a newly-formed Urban Development Program Committee, and who are the main members of this Committee?
Why, the Housing Industry Association, the Property Council of Australia, the Urban Development Institute of Australia, the Greater Cities Commission and the Land and Housing Corporation: no prizes for guessing the likely direction that this committee will take us.
There is not one member of the Committee with any concern for social benefits or community concerns, yet this committee might well be the only concrete outcome of the whole planning exercise.
I have no personal stake in this, as I'm not going to be around in 20 years' time, but anybody who cares about the future of the Central Coast and expects to have a place in it should give serious attention to this document.
A year ago, I begged everybody to comment on the draft plan, when it was displayed.
Probably nobody took any notice, but, if anybody did, the impact on the final shape of the plan was negligible.
Now that the plan is official, what recourse will anybody have when the new Committee sets us on a course that the majority of residents don't like?
SOURCE:
Email, 15 Nov 2022
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy