An overview of planning and environmental justice in Queensland

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An overview of planning and environmental justice
in Queensland

• Jason Byrne
• jason.byrne_at_griffith.edu.au
• Aysin Dedekorkut Howes
• a.dedekorkut_at_griffith.edu.au

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Overview

• What is planning?
• Role of planning in environmental (in)justice
• What are the key issues?
• Who is affected?
• Two examples
• Parks
• Oil vulnerability
• What might be done?

Park sign on Pacific Coast Highway, L.A.
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Land use planning defined

• Future-oriented activity for creating and
  managing places
• Guiding private land and property development
• Directed towards state goals and objectives
• Partly reflecting community aspirations
• Ordering the use of land for efficiency
• Preventing land-use conflict
• Minimising environmental impacts
• Enhancing quality of life and amenity
• Preventing avoidable deaths (e.g. sanitation)
• Pursuing social welfare equity

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Three scales

• Local land use planning (Council schemes)
• Regional Planning (e.g. SEQ Region Plan)
• State-wide strategic projects
• Two types
• Statutory planning
• Strategic planning

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So, what can planning do?

• Guides future development and resource use
• Anticipates development impacts and seeks to
  manage them
• Seeks to prevent or minimise negative impacts
• Notionally aims to achieve sustainability
• Rationalises development patterns
• Ensures minimum standards are met
• e.g. drainage, building heights, road access,
  sewer connection, access to sunlight,
  overshadowing etc.

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Environmental justice in Queensland

• Planning has not responded well to environmental
  justice imperatives (risk management framework)
• Other peoples business
• Need to understanding who is vulnerable to what
• Who are they?
• Where do they live?
• What factors make them vulnerable?
• Mapping vulnerable locations
• Devising potential solutions
• Modifying practices
• Working with vulnerable people to devise responses

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Vulnerability indicators

• Physical

• Social (after Cutter 2006, 122-3)

• Proximity to coastline
• Height above sea level
• Topography
• Density of built form
• Patterns of industrialisation
• Location within floodplain
• Proximity to dense vegetation
• Age of building
• Proximity to freeways
• Proximity to airports
• Access to green space
• Distance to supermarkets

• Female
• Female head of household
• Single parent
• Large number of dependents
• Unemployed
• Low education
• Homeless
• Low income
• Seasonal worker / service sector employee
• Migrant
• Non-English speaker
• Very old very young
• Renter (insecure tenure)
• Non-White
• Caravan or mobile home dweller
• Primary industry occupation
• Proximity to transport and medical services
• Disability
• Welfare dependent

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What were the historical issues?

• Inner city contamination from heavy industry
• Discrimination against Aboriginal people
  spatial segregation
• Lead petrol lead paint
• Dumping
• Gasworks and petrochemical industries
• Landfill sites treatment plants
• Light industrial areas

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What are the current key issues?

• Climate change impacts (e.g. heatwaves, flood,
  drought)
• Food, water energy security
• Urban redevelopment / densification
• Access to green space
• Land contamination asbestos exposure
• Wild rivers
• Mining (e.g. coal seam gas and uranium)
• New port development
• Remote Aboriginal communities
• Public participation cutting green tape

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Causes/drivers

• Intentional targeting (less likely no evidence)
• Land markets (seems to happen)
• Unequal law enforcement (likely)
• Biased decision-making (probably)
• Limited public participation (definitely)

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Roadblocks/impediments

• Planning is reactive and not retrospective
• Failure to recognise race/ethnicity/inequality
• Legislative change is limiting powers further
• Lack of consultation
• Ministerial call-in powers circumventing process
• Funding withdrawal from agencies
• Expedited approvals open for business
• Lack of recognition of EJ issues
• Difficulty in accessing information
• The dominance of hazards/risk rhetoric

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Some big challenges for QLD planning

• Coal seam gas
• Contaminated sites
• Climate change
• Food water security
• Remote Aboriginal communities

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Data problems

• Availability of data
• Cost of data acquisition and processing
• Incomplete datasets
• Poor record keeping
• Scale of analysis (body, household,
  neighbourhood, region, state)
• Silo approach to knowledge
• Lack of agreed uniform measures
• Issue with data custodians (e.g. Federal vs.
  state)

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Findings on park distribution

• National standard of 3 ha (7 acres) per 1,000
  residents
• Queensland has a generally accepted standard of 4
  5 ha per 1,000 residents
• Gold Coast has a desired standard of service for
  between 3.7 and 5.1 ha per 1,000 residents
• We found Gold Coast has
• 2.3 ha / 1,000 for local parks
• 0.81 ha / 1,000 for city parks
• 0.5 ha / 1,000 for district parks
• 0.84 ha / 1,000 for foreshore parks
• 4.53 ha / 1,000 for all park types
• Unequal distribution and poor accessibility by
  public transportation
• Now DSS and contribution have been slashed

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Evaluation of methodsNetwork vs. buffer

• Cover different areas
• Buffer exaggerates travel difference
• Network accounts for street connectivity
• Network more accurately depicts catchments
• Both may miss informal paths / trails
• Ground-truthing required

500m
800m
2500m
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Dependent Variable Local Parks City Parks District Parks Foreshore Reserves All Parks All Parks-Foreshore
Total CDs in Gold Coast City Council 859 859 859 859 866 866
CDs with a Park 626 14 18 208 866 658
percent of CDs with a Park 72.9 1.6 2.1 24.2 100.0 76.0
Total Area 10,973,853 2,627,667 5,626,773 3,799,462 23,027,755 19,228,293
Average Park Size 17,530 145,981 27,052 271,390 26,591 29,222
Park area/capita (sq m) 23.3 8.1 5.6 8.4 45.3 36.9
ANOVA (SEIFA Independent Variable)
Adjusted R Square 0.008 0.001 -0.00067 -0.00114 0.0072 0.0086
t Stat 2.82 1.36 0.65 -0.1627 2.684 2.909
P-value 0.0049 0.172 0.5158 0.87 0.0074 0.0037
Parks with bus-stops 266 8 11 96 580 484
percent of parks with bus-stops 42.5 57.1 61.1 46.2 67.0 73.6
total number of bus-stops 816 35 44 305 1582 1277
average number of bus-stops / park 3.1 4.4 4 3.2 2.7 2.6
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What might be done?

• Changing planning schemes, ordinances and
  regulations (but not retrospective)
• Upgrading building codes (Commonwealth issue)
• Monitoring (other government departments)
• New Laws (difficult in current political climate)
• Citizen action (Thats what changed things in the
  USA)
• Example of Chinese makers
• Better integration more power

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Questions?