Should Sydney mirror Brisbane’s City Plan 2014?

The now commenced Brisbane City Plan 2014 offers up a number of lessons that could be applied to Sydney Metropolitan Strategy, according to Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson.

The new plan for Brisbane aims to provide a multi-centred city, with elements of a corridor city. The idea is to plan development around transport nodes and keep suburban areas intact.

“The 2014 plan responds to increasing population growth by focussing new development in the city centre, the inner city, around employment hubs, major shopping centres, around transport hubs and along nine growth corridors with rapid transport routes,” said Johnson.

Brisbane City Plan allows for more code assessment, to reduce planning timeframes.

“Clearly Sydney and New South Wales will be left behind if Brisbane has a simpler planning system that encourages development. Only a month ago Plan Melbourne was released by the Victorian Government which also included code assessable approaches to encourage new development,” he said.

He also pointed to Brisbane’s new interactive mapping service that allows buyers to simply understand planning constraints on any site.

“A few weeks ago Gold Coast City Council released its new city plan which went even further in support of future growth. Many areas are proposed to have unrestricted heights and density particularly along light rail and public transport corridors,” he said.

“The recent activity in city plans from Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast demonstrate the drive these cities are undertaking to encourage growth within their cities.”

Unfortunately, he said, Sydney’s strategy began as a discussion paper in May 2012 and “seems to have become a victim of the failed NSW planning reforms,” he said, noting it is making Brisbane and Melbourne better organised to accommodate growth.

{module Do you think Sydney should use some of Brisbane’s planning reforms?}