April 2010

It's hard not to be cynical. Especially when a developer lobby claims giving the government power to force people to sell their homes - to developers - is for "community benefit", as the chief of the Urban Development Institute did last month.

It's universally agreed that developers have nothing but the interests of the community at heart.

Anyway, that's the proposal of the state government: to set up a government planning authority with the power to compulsorily acquire property and hand it to private developers.

The developers will then build higher-density housing - one house replaced with nine - and flog them off at a profit.

THE state government's plan to set up a development authority with powers to compulsorily acquire private property for resale to developers is anathema to elected representatives of local government, but not necessarily to the professional planners who work for councils.

The elected councillors view another planning authority as a further dilution of their powers and responsibilities. But many council planners see it as the ultimate outcome of the failure of current development processes.

Potential sites to house Sydney's burgeoning population are disappearing fast and the government's plan is to increase density in established suburbs. This is cheaper than greenfield development on the city fringe which requires huge expenditure on new infrastructure.