The exposure draft of the Natural and Build Environment Bill just does not expose enough to understand how it will create a flourishing environment with thriving communities. One would have hoped that you could read the bill and understand the purpose and its related provisions. The bill falls seriously short in the beginning with the lack of clear transparent built environment definitions in Chapter 3: Interpretations.
You know something is fundamentally wrong with the interpretations when there is a raft of ‘natural environment’ definitions but no corresponding ‘built environment’ definitions. For example, there are definitions for natural environment -coastal water, geothermal water, lake, land, mineral, natural environment, natural hazard, river and water. So, my question is why are the no definitions for built environment, urban area, transport link, communities, diverse activities, resilient urban form, housing supply and affordable housing?
If you don’t put built environment definitions in the bill and expose those definitions to debate and analysis you will rely on expensive, both in time and money, litigation to define these extremely important parameters of the bill. Or you will fall back on other legislation that may define these terms already in quite a different manner.
There, is a definition for ‘structure’, anything from a fence post to a massive building made by people and fixed to the land. There is also a definition of ‘urban form’ which is a circular definition of what an urban area is including shape, size, density and configuration of the urban area. You know a definition is not right when shape, size, density and configuration could be describing anything from the underground pipes to the overhead wires of the urban area. But you do need the shape, size, density and configuration of the urban form to be resilient (also not defined). Oddly, it appears that urban form has no connection to the definition of structure.
Urban areas though they are not defined must be well-functioning and responsive to growth. Our planning systems should not just be considering an urban environment growth paradigm. There may be a desire to stop growth in areas due to both natural and built environment constraints.
I support the need to include diverse activities (wanting this to mean mixed uses) and resilient urban form (if it was better defined) but you only need ‘good transport links’ (not defined). You don’t’ need quality transport links or sustainable transport links only ‘good’ transport links. I can see every regional council in the country coming up with a different definition of ‘good transport links’!
Are we only interested in ‘housing supply’ in our built environments? A housing supply that provides ‘choice to consumers’ (no definition), contributes to ‘affordability of housing’ (also no definition or how this connects to ‘good transport links’) and then meets the diverse housing needs of people and communities (also no definitions).
My big questions is surely there is more to urban areas than a resilient ever growing housing supply? What about how people live work and play in urban areas? The Bill needs to seriously make a great drafting leap into the world of a ‘quality built environment’ starting with exposing a comprehensive set of clear quality built environment definitions.
