Excellent place to live but future growth is a problem

A national survey shows Brisbane is an “excellent” place to live … but it also highlights issues with the city, with the main issue residents have being described as “deeply concerning”.

BRISBANE is an “excellent” place to live according to a national survey launched today.

The Property Council of Australia has released a national survey on attitudes towards population growth in major cities ahead of next week’s COAG meeting in Adelaide.

WHAT SOUTHEAST WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2043

OUR BOOMING POPULATION HOTSPOTS

THE MAJOR ROADS TO BECOME NIGHTMARES

Property Council Queensland Executive Director Chris Mountford said 90 per cent of Brisbane respondents rated the city as a “good place to live”, with a quarter describing it as “excellent”.

How the city’s changed. Brisbane, Australia — September 25, 2016: View of Brisbane city skyline and Brisbane river in late afternoon

While that was a resounding tick for liveability, the survey also found 79 per cent of people believed issues with growth were due to a lack of good government planning.

“Australians generally like the cities where they live, but clearly reckon we could be doing a lot better on planning and infrastructure to manage their growth,” Mr Mountford said.

Brisbane slips in liveable city rankings

Experts call for action on traffic congestion nightmare

“We haven’t done a very good job in the past of planning for growth and our cities are feeling the pressure now which is giving rise to concern about the rate of growth.

“This survey shows Queenslanders are not against growth, but they want it better planned and managed.”

GET FULL DIGITAL ACCESS FOR 50C A DAY

Mr Mountford said concern about growth was real and steps were needed to address the root causes.

“In a SEQ context, the link between land use planning and infrastructure delivery is not only weak, it’s incredibly fractured and poorly communicated to the community.

“With the population of SEQ expected to boom by a further 1.8 million over the next 25 years, we must take steps now to build public confidence in the management of future growth.”

Veteran Brisbane real estate agent Paul Liddy said the Brisbane City Council Future Blueprint was an example of planning that was “deeply concerning”.

Mr Liddy said the Future Blueprint was an example of a “particularly vague” planning tool which could substantially impact developers, owners of large home sites in developable zones and the buying public due to increased development costs.

He said the city needed a “clearer plan” because the vast majority of property owners did not understand what was happening across the city.

“Generally across the board Brisbane has a lifestyle that is hard to find elsewhere in Australia.

But I think the biggest problem is that Government and Council are knee-jerk reactors. A lot of things are floated for political purposes.”

Mr Liddy said the biggest issue with the City’s liveability was traffic.

“The climate is spectacular, we live in the lucky country but the one thing is traffic and how it’s catered for.

The planning has certainly been short term and to fit with a budget and politically correct.”

Multiple cross civer bridges and tunnels would make the city a “far more fluid” place to live, he said.

“One of the great difficulties is that the three levels of government don’t have to comply with each other and we really need less levels of government.

Roads should be independent of politics.”

He said looking to Europe to solve issues of how to integrate scooters and other modes of transport was key to keeping the city’s liveability.

Survey highlights 70 per cent of respondents believe governments are failing to plan for future growth.

• 60 per cent of Brisbane respondents thought the city was growing too fast.
• 70 per cent of respondent agreed the problems faced by growing cities came down to government failing to plan properly
• 65 per cent agreed politicians were guilty of blaming migration for their own lack of planning causing congestion in cities.
• Nationally, almost all respondents (96%) thought the federal, state and territory governments had a very important or fairly important role in making their city a better place to live, followed by local government (94%), development and construction companies (92%), local businesses (92%) and community groups (88%)

* The online survey of 2,936 respondents was conducted between 13-23 November and included respondents in all state and territory capitals except for Darwin.