Planning Approval Processes

It is apparent that the city’s planning and approval processes are primarily designed to be administratively expedient. This does not always lead to equitable outcomes or indeed appropriate outcomes relevant to the maintenance of streetscapes, cultural placescapes and/or cultural landscapes a 'development' will have impacts upon.

Likewise, expedient development approvals may not always take full account of a range of issues that may have adverse impacts upon property owners within the area it is proposed that it take place and the amenity they expect to enjoy – indeed have a right to expect to enjoy. For this reason more than any other there are appeal processes in place, but not always.

Currently, there are Development Applications that need to be vetted by Councils Planning Dept. and then advertised and made publicly available for comment by other property owners and residents.

Then there are other developments that are dealt with exclusively ‘in-house’ where adjoining property owners do not get the opportunity to scrutinise the development proposal or comment upon it. These developments proceed on the say so of Council Officers without there being any real opportunity – informally or formally – for aggrieved property owners to present their case.

For a large proportion of cases this approval strategy works well enough but it does open up opportunities for poor outcomes given the contingency of 'human error' and ill informed proposals. In some instances there is likely to be unsatisfactory (inequitable?) outcomes and should the development be on a slightly different location there is case to be put that the outcome might well be different (better?).

An exemplar of this is where a development over the fence (the boundary) from a Scenic Management Zone can proceed without there being an opportunity for the neighbourhood to have an input into its appropriateness for the area – streetscape, placescape, cultural landscape, etc. Here trees can be removed virtually without restriction whereas next door they would need to be retained given that they are deemed to be within a protected skyline – and by-and=large subjectively.

Arguably, in such instances, this is less than best practice, and in worst case scenarios, it may well lead to an inequitable outcome. Whatever the reason there are good arguments to suggest that the outcome may well be poor – and likely to be inconsistent with the cultural placescape or cultural landscape.

Clearly this situation comes about out of a need to process Development Applications as quickly and as efficiently as is possible and practical. If that is the outcome well and good but when it is not there is every possibility that there may be paucity in the outcome that might have been avoided if there was some engagement with the Community of Ownership and Interest (COI).

There is a case to be put that there may be two planning approval processes:

• One where there is overt efforts made to ensure that a potentially contentious planning proposal is approved by-and-large in accord with the current Development Application process – instances where Scenic Management, heritage and/or other issues are clearly in the approval mix; and
• Another where a developer simply notifies adjoining property owners of an impending development thus allowing them to make representations to both the developer and Council planners in the event there is an adverse element in the proposed development.
  

In the first instance the current Development Application and approval process can be said to be working well enough given that the process has been developed over time and that it has within it checks and balances.

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In the second instance here, a Development Notification and approval process offers an opportunity for adjoining property owners and residents to be included in the planning approval process. For the most part the city’s planners would be the drivers of the process.

However, near residents would have a direct opportunity to protect the amenity of their neighbourhood, streetscape, cultural placescape and/or cultural landscape, when and if that were to become an issue. Currently these concerns are dealt with bureaucratically, and from a distance in isolation, and in ways that cannot be expected to be reliably ‘place sensitive’.

In the end every precinct/street/neighbourhood is a cultural placescape cum 'cultural landscape' • [2] that deserves:

• Sensitivity to the cultural determinants that shape the place;
  
• To give those who live and work within 'the place' a sense of belonging/ownership; and
• Respect for what residents and property owners have invested in the places they live and work in.

Planning processes that are 'bureau centric' are typically careless about the cultural imperatives of place and more concerned with decision-making than they are with placemaking. Increasingly communities are gaining the tools – Internet facilitated social networks etc. – to challenge inappropriate and inadequate decision making – particularly those that exclude constituencies from decision making processes.

Community wellbeing is largely dependent upon the capital it has invested in the communities and places people belong to – economic capital, social capital, cultural capital & natural capital. In the end 'civic planning' is to do with ensuring that a place's Community of Ownership and Interest (COI) is well served by civic decision-making and placemaking.