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New Urban News

New Urban News provides substantive and concise information for professionals and lay people with a strong interest in the New Urbanism. New Urban News is published eight times a year, and each issue is full of articles covering a wide range of topics connected to the New Urbanism.

Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb

Levittown has long represented the paradigmatic postwar American suburb. Yet very little in the way of good critical work has been done on the history and significance of this American cultural icon.

Cyburbia - Urban Planning Community

The Cyburbia Forums is the oldest and most active English language urban planning message board on the Internet, and one of the small number of online communities where members enjoy intelligent, troll-free discussion. Cyburbia has hundreds of active members, yet is a strong community full of creative, friendly, and occasionally offbeat planners, planning students, architects, urbanists and other like-minded people who care about and/or help shape the built environment. Cyburbia Forums members enjoy a sense of community and camaraderie that is unmatched by any planning-related web site.

Resources for Urban Design Information

An independent unbiased service, the Resource for Urban Design Information (RUDI) is the largest web resource dedicated to urban design and placemaking. RUDI commissions, researches and creates materials for professionals in the public and private sector.

Urban Design Forum

Urban Design Forum Incorporated is a not-for-profit initiative formed with the following statement of purpose:

to encourage the better design of our cities and towns and regions;
to provide a forum where ideas and comment about urban design can be expressed;
to produce, publish and distribute a regular publication;
to be involved in other activities which contribute to the above purposes; and
to co-operate and liase with any individuals or groups who have compatible purposes with the above.

Headspace

Headspace, The Australian Broadcasting
Association’s monthly Arts and Culture Magazine

Society for Responsible Design

Design is a process of creation and problem solving that goes far beyond form or structure and final styling or graphics. As such, great opportunity exists to intervene or change current process and end products to add greater value in many criteria and enhance the concept of sustainability.

The SRD combines the efforts of society and industry through environmentally and socially responsible design practices to make products and services significantly better. There is much room for improvement that will ultimately provide major long term benefits for all. YOUR support and input is invited.

Butter Paper - Greaseproof Architecture Resources

Australian and New Zealand Architecture and Resources. Butter Paper - Greaseproof Architecture Resources.

NSW Legislation

This source site for NSW legislation has been developed by the Parliamentary Counsel’s Office and contains the following features:

NSW legislation in force, both Acts and statutory instruments (regulations etc and environmental planning instruments) that is constantly consolidated and kept up-to-date—the In Force database

historical versions of legislation, including repealed legislation—accessible via the In Force database
an archival collection of NSW legislation as made since 1990—the As Made database
advanced searching and browsing facilities.

Northern Rivers Social Development Council

The Northern Rivers Social Development Council (NRSDC) provides peak representation of the community and social welfare sector in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. The Council is an incorporated body under the NSW Association Incorporation Act 1984, and has been in existence since 1976. The area covered by the Council includes the local government areas of Ballina, Byron, Copmanhurst, Grafton, Kyogle, Lismore, Maclean, Pristine Waters, Richmond River and Tweed.

NSW Department of Planning

The Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources (DIPNR) seeks to, coordinates and streamlines land-use and transport planning, infrastructure development and natural resource management in New South Wales.

Northern Rivers Performing Arts Association

NORPA (Northern Rivers Performing Arts Association) is Australia’s most successful regional arts organisation.

Australian Institute of Project Management

The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) is the peak body for project management in Australia. Formed in 1976, as the Project Managers’ Forum, the AIPM has been instrumental in progressing the profession of project management over the past 25 years.

Parks and Leisure Australia

Parks and Leisure Australia has a strong history of over 75 years service to the industry through its predecessor organisations - the Royal Australian Institute of Parks and Recreation and the Australian Leisure Institute. PLA has built on the strengths developed through its past traditions, projects and networks to offer a progressive, dynamic Association, which promotes the values and benefits of parks and leisure within Australian society, whilst actively supporting its strong national membership.

Mayne Investments

Mayne Investments Limited was formed in June 1968. In the years since its establishment, Mayne Investments Limited has expanded to meet the investment needs of North Coast residents across a broad field.

The Fund manages over $164 million in investments.

Invest Northern Rivers

Invest Northern Rivers is the mechanism established by the Northern Rivers Regional Development Board to assist in the promotion of the region. This promotion is carried out in conjunction with partner organisations in the area to engage the investment community and to communicate the opportunities available in the region.

Planning Institute Australia

“PIA is the peak Australian Planning professional organisation that seeks the general advancement of Regional and Town Planning, and promotes development of regions, cities and towns..”

News

Judge says to act on defamation allegations, The Industrtial Commission of NSW. August 17, 2010

THE Industrial Commission of NSW has recommended that Wagga Wagga Council take legal action for defamation over criticisms of its senior planners.

The deputy president of the commission, Justice John Grayson, said the council should seek legal advice as to whether the developer Peter Hurst and the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser had defamed a council employee.

“I recommend the general manager [Phil Pinyon] prepare a letter to the complainant, Mr Hurst, expressly rejecting the allegations made by the complainant in relation to personal gain, breaches of the code of conduct and alleged attempts to deceive by incorrectly reporting development applications,” Justice Grayson said.

The Development and Environmental Professionals Association brought the case after Mr Hurst had lodged a written complaint with the council and the Advertiser had run a series of articles about complaints by developers about the council.

A blog from a reader on the paper’s website described one planner as a “cancer”. Mr Hurst’s five-page letter made a series of allegations against two senior officers and called for their immediate suspension.

An independent audit found no basis for an allegation that staff had manipulated undetermined development application numbers for personal gain in the form of bonuses.

Justice Grayson said the council’s rebuttal of the allegations had not been reported by the local media, had not drawn any apology from the complainant and had the potential to inflict damage to the reputation and professional standing of people named in the complaint.

He said councils had a “significant obligation of duty of care” to protect employees. Mr Hurst should apologise to those named in his complaint and that apology should be published in the local media, he said.

A union secretary, Ian Robertson, said the commission’s decision was an important signal to developers and councils that they must respect the integrity of employees “doing the job the community expects them to do”.

Guidelines could kill off coastal building, Kelsey Munro and Matthew Moore. August 20, 2010.

THOUSANDS of NSW coastal development sites may never be built on under new government guidelines directing councils to limit construction on beachfront and lakeside land under threat from rising sea levels.

The NSW Coastal Planning Guidelines, released today, encourage councils to reject development and rezoning applications on land deemed at risk.

The guidelines define hazard areas and urge coastal councils to take a strategic, risk-based approach to plan for the impacts of climate change.

Homes in at-risk areas may need to be relocatable so they can be moved to higher ground.

Councils are strongly discouraged from intensifying development or rezoning land from rural to urban in high-risk areas ”unless the impacts of sea level rise can be effectively managed”.

Adaptation strategies could include structural protection works, but councils should prioritise ‘’soft engineering options” such as beach nourishment or re-establishing barrier dune systems over the construction of seawalls or sandbagging, which might redirect erosion if poorly designed, the document says.

The Minister for Planning, Tony Kelly, said: “It is vital to properly plan for sea level rise to ensure homes are not built too close to hazard areas.”

The guidelines cite flooding in coastal lakes and rivers as a key issue of concern.

Councils are to map hazard areas on the basis of the state government’s benchmarks for sea level rise, which anticipate a 40-centimetre rise by 2050 and 90 centimetres by 2100. Such rises would be associated with projected coastal erosion of between 45 to 90 metres, the guide says.

A NSW Planning spokesman said that while the guidelines were not statutory, similar documents were regularly used to inform land-use planning.

But it was not clear whether councils that disregard the guidelines could be held liable for allowing development on at-risk areas that in future were damaged by sea level rise.

”The department would prefer not to be giving legal advice on liability issues as it is not possible to pre-empt or predict the wide variety of circumstances in which these issues might arise,” he said.

Insurers have been pressuring governments to clarify where responsibility lies for damage associated with climate change.

The Insurance Council of Australia has not seen the guidelines, but a spokeswoman said: ”We welcome any initiative that provides greater clarity … in [coastal] risk management.”

The Sydney Coastal Councils Group welcomed the guidelines, which took into account 90 public submissions on a draft released in November.

The group’s spokesman, Craig Morrison, acknowledged restrictions on development in coastal areas could be controversial. ”We’d see the solution to that being the state government supporting councils in the implementation of the guidelines so they’re done consistently and appropriately throughout NSW.”

The Australian Coastal Society president and University of Sydney emeritus professor, Bruce Thom, welcomed the policy as the most advanced of its type in the country. ”It clarifies for council what they can do and can’t do.”

The policy will be reassessed if reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the CSIRO indicate changes to projected sea level rise.

From ghetto to grove, a housing success story, Louise Hall. April 29, 2010.

THE Gordon Estate in Dubbo had long been a ghetto of welfare dependency, hopelessness and crime when it gained national notoriety with an alcohol-fuelled riot on New Year’s Day 2006.

That night, scenes of up to 100 Aborigines attacking two detectives, setting fire to a police car and destroying houses forced the NSW government to initiate one of the most ambitious social policy changes in years. Continue reading

Population growing at twice global average, Jacob Saulwick. March 26, 2010.

AUSTRALIA’S population is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the world, after crashing through 22 million late last year.

A demographic report shows the population grew at 2.1 per cent in the year to the end of September, outstripping the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. The world population grew 1.1 per cent in the same period. Continue reading

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