Posts Tagged ‘employment’

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No strategic centre planning in retail policy

May 26th, 2009 by Georgia Moore

The NSW Draft Centres Policy focuses on providing for the needs of consumers in an efficient and competitive manner. However, it lacks detail on how to plan for centres that are driven by demand from external markets – vital for economic development and regional job growth.

The policy states that it should be read in conjunction with other policies, such as those relating to residential development and employment lands. However, the State Employment Lands Plan deals with traditional industrial land and business & technology parks containing higher order jobs, while the Draft Centres Policy is supposed to cover all retail and commercial employment including ICT, finance and business services.

The policy identifies a network of centres, including local centres to cater for the population, and strategic centres, which are considered crucial to the economic, social and environmental function of the state or region. The latter covers global Sydney; regional cities such as Parramatta; and centres with a special economic function such as airports, ports, universities and hospitals.

Apart from identifying the centres’ hierarchy and ensuring land is zoned appropriately for business uses, the policy does not address important planning considerations for strategic centres, such as:

  • Links between knowledge industries and traditional employment lands; 
  • Lack of high-order job provision in regional areas requiring long journeys to work; 
  • Maximising leverage from investment in infrastructure through co-location.

The policy’s focus on zoning sufficient land parcels for retail and commercial uses does not reflect the need to attract export-oriented and knowledge-intensive industries and jobs to the residential growth corridors.  

Jobs in population-driven industries, such as retail and entertainment, can only do so much to achieve the sustainable development aims of the NSW State Plan, which prioritises increasing business investment in regional areas and providing jobs closer to home.

The bulk of the policy concerns the provision of retail and commercial floorspace, with demand tied to population growth and household spending; and location and scale dependent on assessment against a set of suitability criteria. In terms of population-driven ‘retail-focused’ centres, the policy has many valid points which could enable industry and government to work together to ensure that centres expand and develop in a sustainable way.

In contrast, the Western Australian Metropolitan Centres Policy (currently under review) aims to ensure an equitable distribution of centres so that consumers can access goods and services close to home. However, the use of retail floorspace caps as a method of control restricts overall supply, leads to dispersed retail rather than concentrated centres, does not enable centres the flexibility to innovate and grow in a sustainable way, and reduces healthy competition.

The Draft NSW Centres Policy highlights the importance of flexibility and competition in creating the most benefit for consumers, with people able to make choices based on factors such as price, convenience, access and quality. It advocates:

  •  Responding quickly to consumer demand;
  •  Letting the market determine the need for additional floorspace;
  •  Allowing the planning system to assess development applications on external costs and benefits, rather than demand (or arbitrary retail floorspace caps).

Further examination of how to measure the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of a development is required. This is particularly important for the sustainability of a centre in terms of opportunities for working close to home, public transport accessibility and the ability to access a diversity of activity with one trip. 

It is also vital that when determining the economic or net community benefit of a retail development, the importance of employment in higher-order export or knowledge industries is prioritised. This will ensure that strategic sites are maintained as valuable employment lands, crucial for long-term economic development.

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Posted by Georgia Moore Tags: , , ,
Posted in Activity centres, News | 2 Comments »


Regional cities: Growing up wiser

February 9th, 2009 by mknight

If regional cities want to be viable centres in the future, they need to take a good look at themselves and determine the answers to two fundamental questions:

What do I want to be when I grow up? And what do I need to do to get there?

Historically, this is not territory many have had to navigate. Regional centres have sprung up around driver industries such as agriculture or resources and, to a degree, population has followed.

But in order to ensure a city that is sustainable in every sense of the word, there needs to be a much better understanding of the nature and role of key economic drivers in regional development.

People need a reason to move into a regional area - and for population growth to occur on a large scale, that reason is invariably employment.

Economic growth generally involves a relatively high percentage of export oriented driver industries, such as big infrastructure or resource projects that are significant generators of employment.

However, sustainable economic growth requires careful planning to ensure that a city develops knowledge intensive producer services around those key drivers and does not put all its eggs in one basket. 

Typically there will be a high rate of wholesale and retail employment in regional towns and there will also be service sectors such as education and health. 

But those things are in response to population growth, not the other way around. A retail led economy or a community driven by government services is not the answer to long-term viability. That requires a diversified economy.

This is something the City of Geraldton understands very well. With a population of 33,000, it wants to be a city of 80,000 to 100,000 residents in 20 years’ time. So the city’s custodians want to know, how do we get there in a sustainable way?

The City is relying on a number of big, strategic projects, such as the development of a port and associated rail infrastructure at Oakajee, 22km north, and the Square Kilometre Array telescope bid. 

To a large extent what happens with these is out of their hands, but what the city’s planners can do is determine how best to leverage off the projects if they go ahead. 

Rather than be subject to the cyclical nature of commodity markets, which we have seen to devastating effect in recent times, they want to know how to build a vibrant regional city with a sustainable, diversifed economy.

If you have a big employment driver such as the port and rail infrastructure proposed for Oakajee, what else can the city do to make the most of it?

There’s a vacant industrial park adjacent to the Oakajee site. What can that be used for? What you don’t want to do is fill it with population-driven services such as spray painters and airconditioning companies and the like. This is not sustainable.

Planners must determine how to build a high value chain. If the park, for example, were to be used for extraction and processing for commodities brought from elsewhere in the Mid-West, what components would be required? What technical specialists would be needed? What technology? What infrastructure would you have to put in place to attract those higher end users?

The basis of sustainable regional cities is understanding how employment generation works. There is not necessarily a linear connection, but a web of factors that need to be brought together.

Fundamentally, if something is not economically sustainable it is not sustainable in any sense because there simply won’t be people living there.

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Posted by mknight Tags: , ,
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A three-tiered approach to employment planning

December 23rd, 2008 by Georgia Moore

  

 

Residential development is growing rapidly in the coastal suburbs of the North West and South West corridors, yet working residents have no major employment base (on a metropolitan scale) within the region and many must travel to the inner sector each day for work.

 

To attempt to alleviate the problems of urban sprawl and low employment self-sufficiency in outer sectors of the Perth Metropolitan area, there are three potential areas of focus for the planning system.

 

1. Increasing residential density in the inner and middle sectors enables people the choice to live in closer proximity to their place of work. This also maintains a focus on the CBD as the primary strategic employment centre in Perth, strengthening industry and employment to compete with other capital cities in the global economy.

 

2. Boosting transport infrastructure spending to improve existing rail and bus services, as well as adding new services, enables people living in regional areas to efficiently and effectively access their place of work.

 

3. Targeting specific strategic industries or new projects in the outer sector, and improvement to supply chains for existing industries, increases the diversity and number of businesses locating in the sub-regions where the largest residential population growth occurs. This results in a net increase in high quality job share for outer residents.

 

A combination of these three approaches is required to achieve the best and most feasible results for the Perth Metropolitan area. Increasing residential density in inner areas can only contribute so much to solving the problem due to land constraints, affordability and differing views on what constitutes ‘lifestyle’. However, a dedicated focus on achieving Network city aims may bring about opportunities for increasing density in inner urban areas on existing public transport routes with good access to amenity centres.

 

Improving or adding train and bus services can reduce private time and monetary costs involved in travelling to work each day. However, provision of train lines and stations is costly and constrained by the large public sector investment required. In addition, evidence from around Perth shows that even in areas reasonably well-serviced by public transport, often less than 30% of commuters will actually use this method of travel.

 

Completely decentralising strategic employment away from the Perth Central Area diminishes agglomeration benefits for businesses, including economies of scale for specialisation and trade; proximity to clients, suppliers and competitors for spontaneous innovative exchanges and face-to-face networking opportunities; and proximity to specific infrastructure such as universities and transport hubs. This market behaviour makes it difficult to encourage industries to locate in outer local government areas without a concentrated effort to make the move beneficial.

 

Agglomeration benefits can be fostered on a smaller scale in regional centres; however they need a critical mass of activity to be successful. This requires certain centres to be designated ‘strategic’ – as places in which strategic employment is encouraged and closely monitored and prioritised in terms of transport and infrastructure spending.

 

Decision rules about which centres should assume this role must be agreed upon and made explicit under the Activity Centres Framework. These can include factors such as an existing employment base, physical infrastructure or natural advantage and relative return on investment.

 

Decisions as to the types of industries to target should also be made on a region-wide or preferably state-wide basis. This supports specialisation and the development of economies of scale, reduces the need for major infrastructure duplication and allows specific industries to be fostered in the regional area with the greatest existing or intended advantage.

 

Weighing the financial, social and environmental costs and benefits is a necessary step in determining how much of each approach should be implemented. How can we measure and prioritise these factors?

 

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Posted by Georgia Moore Tags: , , , ,
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