THIS week Tony Trobe talks to Dorte Ekelund, Director-General, ACT Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate.
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TT: If you were asked to pick the key policy challenges for your directorate and the ACT, what would they be?
DE: I believe that our major challenges are about long-term sustainability - both as a city and community, and as an organisation that needs to use its resources wisely. If you break that down a bit further, I see two key challenges: achieving a more compact urban form where more people choose to use convenient public transport, walking or cycling to get around; and ensuring we can provide quality outcomes without requiring government involvement at every step.
TT: These are certainly big challenges. How are you responding?
DE: The government is committed to pursuing sustainability through the strong policy platforms in the ACT Planning Strategy, Transport for Canberra and Action Plan 2 - our response to climate change. These strategies are all focused on ensuring that we make best use of resources as a society, and in terms of urban form, point to the merits of a greater proportion of our community being able to live in town and group centres and along transport routes where access to services and facilities as well as jobs are very convenient.
TT: A key role of planners is to help communities manage change. What are your thoughts on change in Canberra?
DE: Change tends to be an issue that is of great interest for parts of the community, particularly when that involves urban intensification, and there are a lot of valid reasons why that is so. Change is something that people react to differently, and we are usually keen to protect the things we like or are familiar with in our neighbourhoods.
But there are very considerable changes happening to the demographics of our communities and people are seeking a diversity of lifestyle options, some of which happen to support sustainability better than others. For example, there is an increasing number of couple households (rather than larger family households) and people who are living by themselves at both the younger and older end of the age spectrum.
Providing a range of housing types in a range of places to ensure improved access to services, shops, transport, tertiary education, entertainment, and the like is a very valid policy response to these kinds of changes - and it also happens to be a more sustainable approach to the growth of our city.
TT: Urban intensification is often viewed negatively and as something that produces poor outcomes. Why do you think that is?
DE: The reality is that not everyone wants to live in a single dwelling with a backyard and that some of our older housing stock is less than energy efficient. But what we need to do is ensure that the provision of different types of housing - including apartments, townhouses, dual occupancies and the like - meets the broader expectations of the whole community and is supported by quality across key areas such as access to transport and services, street amenity, site landscaping, building design, traffic and parking and energy and water efficiency.
If we do not get this right then people will, understandably, not respond well. I think that the directorate needs to continue its work with the community and the development industry to ensure that we can advise the government on how best to accommodate housing types required by all parts of the community, whilst also ensuring that change produces positive outcomes.
■ Part two of the interview with Dorte Ekelund will be published next Sunday.
Tony Trobe is Australian Institute of Architects ACT president.
