海角社区

Scheming Success: Mastering Planning Strategies

Thursday 11.15am-12.15pm

• Maree Domelow
• Kate Isles M海角社区 and Kate Burns
• Nathan Rule M海角社区

Maree Domelow
The City of Gold Coast Designing for flood major amendment to City Plan

The Queensland State Planning Policy (SPP) has been progressively updated since 2016 to incorporate a risk-based approach to land use planning for managing the four natural hazards identified in the SPP – bushfire, landslide, coastal erosion hazard and flood. Specifically, the SPP and relevant guidance material requires that local government authorities now, through a planning scheme and therefore land use planning, mitigate the impacts and risks associated with natural hazards, to people and property, to an acceptable or tolerable level. This requires a realignment of planning practices and approaches to incorporate risk-based planning in all aspects of planning – through relevant policy setting and application of assessment benchmarks in a planning scheme, to also calibrating zoning, height and density provisions where appropriate, to reflect the constraints associated with the risks of natural hazards. Risk based planning represents a significant departure from previous planning approaches, but facilitates a realignment of land use with more traditional land management practices, where land, water and natural resources were used in accordance with their capabilities and constraints.

The City of Gold Coast (City) is one of the first Councils in Queensland to independently apply the risk-based planning approach to developing a major amendment to the City’s planning scheme for flood risk. After significantly updating the City’s flood models, a new Flood risk awareness map was published on the City’s website in November 2022, followed by a Flood insurance map the following month.

Following completion of a city-wide, fit-for-purpose flood risk assessment in 2022 pursuant to the SPP requirements and guidance, the City prepared a draft ‘feasible alternatives assessment report’ (FAAR), that outlined the possible alternatives and current initiatives and works undertaken by the City to mitigate flood risks. A communications strategy was developed, and other relevant materials intended to demonstrate how the state interests have been met were collated. The City then commenced the statutory process for making a major amendment to a planning scheme for flood by submitting a proposed amendment package for state interest review in December 2023. This included drafting updates to the Gold Coast City Plan that reflect the City’s policy settings, as well as a new ‘Flood risk assessment and guidelines’ policy document for City Plan to support the proposed amendments. While the City proposes to maintain long held policies in relation to for example supporting disaster management responses and maintaining flood storage through balanced cut and fill, the City is now proposing for the first time, that land not be located simply ‘in or out’ of a flood overlay map (i.e. not just subject to a flood overlay code or not) – it is now proposed that flood risk categories apply to land geographically, and depending on (i) the risk category applied to the land; (ii) the vulnerability of land uses proposed; and in some cases (iii) zoning, that appropriate and relevant assessment benchmarks be applied to the assessment of proposed development.

I now present an overview of the Gold Coast ‘Designing for flood’ City Plan major amendment project to date.

Kate Isles M海角社区 and Kate Burns
From Bunnings and Beer Coasters to Open Sessions and One on Ones:- A case study in how Lockyer Valley unlocked authentic and meaningful engagement for its draft planning scheme

In an era dominated by digital communication, the Lockyer Valley Regional Council embraced the transformative power of authentic engagement to shape its planning future. The LVRC story is one that needs to be shared and highlights that any council no matter its size and budget can deliver positive and meaningful engagement with its community. Often planning talk is complex and jargonistic, however LVRC was able to unlock an approach, channelled through grassroots thinking, that created quality conversations and discussions and importantly built rapport and respect. Going beyond the traditional and standard approach that ticks the notification requirements, the council took a dynamic approach by developing a dedicated 10-week consultation that saw the team cover the whole of the region and provide every opportunity for the community to get involved. From weekends to weeknights, from pop-up events strategically aligned to where the people would be, to dedicated one-on-one sessions at their convenience - the team had all basis covered, all topics covered, and it worked. From the outset the council adopted the analogy “A final draft has been given to our editor and that editor is you the community. As an author we need to be open to our Editor’s thoughts and comments and perhaps revision of chapters will be needed.” This simple message resonated and the community as a result felt heard and it enabled a quality engagement program to be delivered. Join us as we share the layers of this innovative yet grassroots approach, demonstrating the profound impact of authentic engagement in steering the course of planning for a brighter, more inclusive future.

Nathan Rule M海角社区
Our road to resilience: Ipswich’s journey to a climate friendly future

Climate change and increasing extreme events has demonstrated that a ‘business as usual’ approach of simply having natural hazards as an overlay within a planning scheme is no longer suitable to address the emerging challenges of insurability, financing, recurrent reconstruction obligation, and investor confidence in at-risk areas. Developing a resilient settlement pattern will enable a resilient economy to flourish and safeguard community wellbeing.

In 2020, Ipswich City Council embarked upon a full review of its natural hazard, risk and resilience policy settings, sparking the creation of a comprehensive program of natural hazard risk assessments and climate-resilient land use policy development that addresses flooding and bushfire hazards planning policy using an innovative new policy framework approach.

A core theme of that review was to strengthen the resilience of Ipswich’s communities to the changing climate and natural hazards.

The award-winning work resulted in one of the most comprehensive fully risk-based policy approaches to natural hazards in Australia – which means the land use policy settings of Council now do not simply view hazards as a constraint to be managed at a site level, but risk is now fully informing the City’s settlement pattern and built form.

To support the technical investigations, a bespoke risk-based planning framework developed by Meridian Urban was utilised. This framework is a significant innovation in land use policy development given it elevates the issues of climate change, dynamic future scenarios of risk, and our static land use policy mechanisms into a strategic consideration of how the existing and future settlement pattern can flex over time to respond to these dynamic pressures.

This presentation will explore the risk-based approach to natural hazards underpinning the new Ipswich Plan 2024 and how council planners took councillors and the community on the journey towards a climate friendly future. Come and be inspired by this nation-leading work on climate-resilient land use policy development, what challenges we faced and the lessons learnt along the way.