by Shane Sody

The State Planning Commission is seeking your advice, on (among other things) what parts of Greater Adelaide “should be protected from future development.”

The Commission is part of the State bureaucracy, describing itself as “South Australia’s principal planning advisory and development assessment body” which is charged with “providing advice to the Government on administration of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016.”

On 23 September the SPC released a draft 30-year Greater Adelaide Regional Plan, which outlines where and how Adelaide should grow over the next 30 years, and provides an overarching vision for land use, infrastructure, transport and “public realm”.

Media coverage of the draft Plan focussed on how it proposed to accommodate Greater Adelaide’s population growing from around 1.5 million today to 2.2 million in 2051. The draft Plan proposes areas for an additional 315,000 houses, mainly by expanding the size of suburbs in Adelaide’s north, and allowing higher apartment blocks alongside inner-city main-road corridors.

In a letter to the Adelaide Park Lands Association, the State Planning Commission chair Craig Holden says:

“We are particularly interested in your views on key priorities, including:

• “The location of new housing and employment;

• “Major infrastructure required to support growth; [and]

• “Specific areas that should be protected from future development.”

As you would expect, APA will certainly respond to Mr Holden in relation to that last dot point.

We will be pointing out that if nothing else, the State Planning Commission should urge the State Government to stop its relentless attacks on your Adelaide Park Lands, and identify infrastructure sites within the other 99.8% of the Adelaide metropolitan area.

We will be urging the State Planning Commission to propose or recommend:

• real, robust legal protection for your Adelaide Park Lands, to end the “whack-a-mole” game under which Park Lands development proposals keep popping up;

• better zoning protection, to stop future Planning Ministers from simply tearing up the rule book, to authorise ad hoc Park Lands development; and

• an end to the indefinite “protection procrastination” which keeps your Park Lands in the firing line, allowing successive governments to keep chipping away at your world-unique treasure.

To view or comment on the draft Greater Adelaide Regional Plan, visit yoursay.sa.gov.au/greater-adelaide-regional-plan

Submissions will be received until 5:00pm Monday 4 November 2024.

The author of this article, Shane Sody, is the President of the Adelaide Park Lands Association and the editor of the semi-monthly newsletter, "Open Green Public".

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