A SPACE to live, raise a family, enjoy our retirement. A space to call our own.

Space for the environment, agriculture, for tourism, to conduct business, construct critical infrastructure and space to breathe.

Space has become a premium commodity in a city that arguably enjoys the fastest growth rate in the nation with a predicted influx of more than 350,000 new residents by 2041.

To accommodate that growth, the state government’s South East Queensland Regional Plan (SEQRP) reveals 158,900 new dwellings will need to be built.

According to a report by Zone Planning Group (August 2019), the SEQRP is severely challenged by existing community expectations, current regulations in land use and natural boundaries.

How much space do we want

and how much do we actually need? Resolving this question is part of what will determine whether the government’s target becomes achievable.

The underlying reality in respect to the pressures of future growth is that it must.

Effective land use remains a challenge we desperately need to address. This will require significant change at community, government and bureaucracy level with respect to expectations, regulation and culture.

We need a change in thinking. A change that will require certainty for owners, investors and developers, factors in hard and soft infrastructure, allows for tourism growth and in the process, ownership.

This will require constructive and objective discussion at all levels where community, political and bureaucratic differences are

put aside. Too often those differences were allowed to cloud and inhibit the real objective, which, as a consequence, has left us where we stand today.

Modern technology and construction methods allows us to use available land space more efficiently without necessarily sacrificing the privacy and lifestyle we all cherish.

Vertical densification is one solution but it is not for everyone.

Neither is the quarter acre block viable if we are to deal effectively with expected growth.

It’s time for a broad review, thinking outside the current box that has not served us as well as it should or could.

But that will take an openminded approach prepared to objectively listen to and consider all possibilities.

Who is up for that challenge? BOB JANSSEN, GOLD COAST