The Property Council of Australia (PCA) has called for the nation’s governments to ‘step up’ efforts in areas such as planning, to further invest in population growth as the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) nation-wide population clock nears 25 million.
Australian cities are growing at a rapid pace, with three-quarters of the population growth occurring in just four of Australia’s largest cities. The PCA has made an announcement outlining that Australia ‘needs to learn lessons of how to grow cities successfully’.
“Population growth, including immigration, has been an essential part of the Australian story and has delivered real economic and social benefits, contributing to the development of a modern, confident and globally connected nation,” explained Ken Morrison, Chief Executive of the PCA, earlier this morning.
“Population growth in itself doesn’t produce bad planning. Bad planning produces bad planning,” he said.
Issues have been raised regarding how Australia plans, invests and manages its cities as the population continues to change and grow. Infrastructure and services need to support newfound nation-wide growth, whilst sustaining the quality of life which Australia is known across the world for.
“We face a clear choice between good growth, supported by the good planning, better governance frameworks and more investment in infrastructure, or bad growth which will come from ad hoc decisions made for the short term and poor investment decisions,” Morrison shared.
Recent research released by the PCA presented Australian cities risked heading toward a low amenity and low liveability future unless all levels of government, business and the community work together to rethink and refresh how we plan, build and manage our urban areas.
‘Creating Great Australian Cities’, another newly released research document by the PCA reasoned that Australian cities ‘are not well equipped to face the remainder of this metropolitan century. The document presents evidence outlining that as Australian cities continue to attract more population growth, it will eventually surpass the capacity of city-wide infrastructure systems, housing supply and metropolitan governance, and thus fall behind the rest of the world.
“Other countries have shown that urban growth can be positively managed to deliver significant economic and social benefits. With the right policies and mindset, a growing Australia can be a catalyst for a successful and prosperous future instead of something to be feared,” Morrison said.
To combat this, two sets of recommendations have been presented by the PCA. Firstly, governments and industry leaders need to continue to build momentum, by expanding and deepening ‘promising’ current developments, and secondly, it has been proposed that Australia should continue to foster new innovations and tools.
The full ‘Creating Great Australian Cities’ report by the PCA can be accessed here.