Tony Trobe: Time we had a 'roadmap for change'

How would you describe Canberra’s current approach to planning?

To be frank, my personal opinion is that it’s just a little directionless, turgid even. We have recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of the competition that gave Canberra its clothes. When comparing the current state of play with the boldness of those who gave birth to the idea of our capital, one is inclined to weep.

Some say “you can have old planners and you can have bold planners, but that you cannot have old/bold planners”. I’m inclined to disagree: old and bold is good! I think the time is right for some, as yet unidentified, champion to step forward to tilt at windmills. Unfortunately this endeavour appears as a poisoned chalice from which politicians rarely drink.

Elizabeth Farrelly wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald a few years ago: “Canberra the city is much less charming, partly because the intellectual content has been strained out of it by successive amendments, like flavour out of an old teabag”. The planning document she refers to and that encapsulates Canberra’s ambition seems incapable of delivering the vibrant liveable/lovable city we all yearn for.

Over years the ACT Planning code has expanded like an ex-rugby player on chocolate cake. I don’t think you can you even buy the Territory Plan as a single printed document anymore, it’s all online. Although not as vast as Jorge Luis Borges’ infinite Library of Babel, it is a biggie – somewhere upward of 100MB and 1200 pages of dense rules, maps and criteria.

I attended a conference where the commissioner of parks for New York complained bitterly about the size of the mere thousand pages of their planning document; and that for a city of 8.4 million. The whole of the Australian Constitution by contrast can be downloaded from the web as a 92Kb, 44-page document.

Previous planning document encapsulated some higher order aspirational performance-based ideals, which seem to have sunk into a fetid swamp of numbers since. There is a void in the planning system and a palpable lack of a big-picture view of the territory. This may be hopelessly optimistic but I feel we need to articulate this big-picture view more clearly to enable Canberra to flesh out the fabulous bones it has been bequeathed. Good design is merely a bag of liquorice allsorts or ornamental litter if not underpinned by the footings of a truly liveable city.

It might be time to upset the apple cart and offend a few vested interests. If one were to transpose the names of some of Canberra’s precious inner suburbs with places names like Passchendaele, Somme or Ypres one might get a sense of the sort of trench warfare that is manifest between the vocal superannuated half of community and the rest; that other younger quieter portion that perhaps are less addicted to the motorcar and suburbia.

It is almost certainly a certifiably naive view but one is almost tempted to consider dropping of the whole current gargantuan planning document holus-bolus into the recycle bin, force the community and developers to sit down with a big fat pen, some butter paper and decide once and for all on solid and clear big-picture imperatives. This exercise might provide a blueprint for a city that future generations can thank the current generation for. Although Bill Clinton failed miserably with a Middle East peace plan I loved his concept of a ”roadmap for change”. Let’s have one of those too.

Tony Trobe is director of the local practice TT Architecture. Is there a planning or design issue in Canberra you’d like to discuss? Email tonytrobe@ttarchitecture.com.au.