Scenic Management

At the outset it needs to be acknowledged that ‘scenic management’, as a concept, is subjectively determined and assessed. Given this, there is ever likely to be contested values when it comes to development proposals and placescape cum landscape maintenance and preservation issues – in both a wider and local context. The development and/or the management of a site/placescape/landscape inevitably involves the making of subjective judgements and typically by parties with different interests, sometimes conflicting interests. In addition, judgements would be made from 'narrative points of view' informed by various cultural sensibilities.

Collectively, the people making these judgements might be better understood as a site's, neighbourhood's, placescape's, precinct's and/or a landscape's Community of Ownership and Interest (COI).

In respect to ‘Scenic Management’ [1] • [2] , Launceston’s Draft Planning Scheme makes a set of assumptions that are arguably overly simplistic and largely unhelpful for a planning purpose that aims to deliver well-being outcomes to the municipality's constituents. For example, the points from which the ‘scenic values’ are assessed from are typically remote vantage points – that is geographically remote and by-and-large bureaucratically remote as well.

Given all this it must be acknowledged that the issues related to scenic management are more complex (more layered?) than those the scheme seemingly aims to address – and from the narrow perspective that it does.

Given this, there is a case to be put that this component of the scheme is inadequate to contemporary understandings of, and community expectations of, civic planning issues and current concerns relevant to good civic planning in a 21st Century context – along with the social and cultural issues a planning process needs to embrace.

That said, mono-dimensional bureaucratic assessment is of little or no assistance to a planning scheme that aims to avoid, rather than promote, the adversarial resolution of disputes – that is characteristically granting, or not granting, approval for contentious projects/development and standing back to wait for objections. A multi-dimensional cum multi-layered approach might well be one that takes account of ‘scenic issues’ from a distance, and at close quarters, and simultaneously accommodating different and divergent sensibilities – social and cultural.

A more inclusive and holistic approach to Scenic Management may well take account of various vantage points on 'low ground' and likewise from 'high ground' vantage points. 21st Century technologies facilitate a site's/precinct's COI assessing landscape planning issues via the Internet. This access is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

In a municipality like Launceston, scenic amenity should not be assessed exclusively from a distance and especially so given the city's history and heritage. Rather, the amenity needs to be examined from near quarters – a placescape, a streetscape, a precinct, a neighbourhood – as well as from a distance – a road, a tourism precinct, the CBD, Town Hall even. The Draft Planning Scheme tends to privilege the distant perspective – a Town Hall bureaucratic perspective. In the end, and as a consequence of this, the draft scheme is relatively careless about the cultural placescapes and landscapes these distant perspectives celebrate and include – and that the scheme might aim to protect, enhance and regulate.

For instance, ‘Scenic Management Areas’ in the draft scheme are bounded, and almost incredulously, by ‘hard borders’ which has the effect that a tall tree on the non scenically managed side of the ‘border’ is strategically deemed by ‘the plan’ to be outside the area of management. That is even if it is a significant feature on the scenic skyline that the plan aims to ‘protect’ – and one that is a valued landscape feature within the placescape/precinct/street/district/neighbourhood/landscape.

This may mean that a development on one side of a fence can proceed without planning restrictions or a need for consultation with near residents. It might have buildings with brightly coloured reflective surfaces while all the vegetation on the site may be removed – and with impunity. Yet on the other side, a totally contrary set of planning restriction will apply. This can happen, it would seem, without the precinct's and other placescape's other property owners having an opportunity to comment on a proposed development and its fitness for the cultural placescape and cultural landscape it will be a part of. This kind of development may well have a negative impact upon the amenity of the place/precinct – environmental, social and cultural – and an impact upon property values as well.

On face value the draft scheme is careless about this situation and seems to offer little in the way of mitigation when viewed from a cultural placescape cum cultural landscape perspective. Indeed, in the draft scheme a relatively minor anomaly on Trevallyn has arguably been translated into a more problematic and anomalous planning issue from a cultural placescape cum cultural landscape cum precinct amenity perspective. If this case exists so too will many others.

This instance is an exemplar of the overly simplistic perspective 'scenic management' is viewed from in the draft scheme. Here the scenic vista from Town Hall is privileged over and above cultural placescape and cultural landscape perspectives – if indeed they have been considered at all. Arguably, they appear not to have been taken into account.

To compound the issues/problems here the 'operating sensibilities' are likely to change over time as personnel within Council change and offer different subjective assessments of the issues. Likewise, the property ownership matrix is likely to change also bringing different sensibilities to bear on cultural placescape/landscape perceptions.

Arguably all this is problematic, anomalous and divisive even in worst case scenarios. It also points to a class of weaknesses within the Draft Planning Scheme and that arguably should be addressed in the plan given that these weaknesses have seemingly been either overlooked or ignored thus far.

In respect to the situation described above, an ‘explanation’ has been offered that the method used to determine the ‘borders’ of Scenic Management Areas is something described as a “Military Crest”. This concept may well have utility in determining military strategies but does it have any relevance to civic planning? Debatably it has little or no value in civic planning or civic planning strategies because there is no war/conflict to be won except for those generated by the planning scheme, rather there are cultural sensibilities to be accommodated and cultural placescape/landscapes [2] • [3] • [4] to be protected, preserved and celebrated.

In Scenic Management the utility that it seems is being regulated, and protected, is aesthetically determined, and subjectively, and for the benefit of tourists – people who for the most part live elsewhere. The narrow ‘point of view’ from which scenic management is perceived needs to be reviewed to facilitate better strategically driven, culturally sensitive planning strategic outcomes. There is more at risk in these placescapes/landscapes than the risk of offending the aesthetic sensibilities of tourists or visitors to the city and thus the income possibilities of tourism operators bureaucratically determined for the benefit of stakeholders rather than the precinct determined Community of Ownership and Interest (COI).