I in no way want to defend the proposed developments on left bank road but when someone quotes “Good principles of town planning indicate …” to support small acre subdivision it has be responded to. Small acre subdivision both in practice and theory has been possibly the most environmentally and socially destructive form of land division in this country. It inevitably is expensive and therefore not affordable, so in the case of Byron Shire would only be available to people coming from elsewhere, not those growing up here or wanting to grow old here. It alienates productive agricultural land without the benefit of providing somewhere a larger density of people can live. In practice it is incredibly energy intensive, in
terms of lawn mowing, in terms of quantity of infrastructure required per person. It does not provide sufficient density to support community social infrastructure. It is the ultimate piecemeal approach, as it normally has no integration between landowners. It generally works against not for environmental regeneration. The increased fences create opportunity for further weed invasion because of birds perching and shitting, therefore a need for greater energy use to manage weeds. What it does successfully, is create wealthy garden suburbs where neighbours need never talk to or see each other and community values are completely subsumed to private ones. On the plus side the occassional beautiful native garden is created, but for every one of these there is 5 with massive areas of grass to be mowed. I don’t support typical small lot subdivision but it at least supports greater affordability. However there are other better development models, just look at Sienna Court on Cemetery Road or the development at the end of Keats Street in Byron Bay if you want to see developments that demonstrate density as well better environmental and social practice.
Malcolm Price
19/9/2009
