DCC Spatial Plan Submission 2012

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Scott Willis
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DCC Spatial Plan Submission 2012

10 January 2012

The Chief Executive
Dunedin City Council
PO Box 5045
Dunedin

Submission on the Dunedin City Council 2011 Draft Spatial Plan

Submitters’ Names: Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust (attention: Scott Willis)   
Address: 31 Hill Street, RD2 Waitati, 9085 Dunedin District       
Phone (day): 03 4822048   
Phone (evening): 03 4822249
Email:    waitatienergy[at]gmail.com   
Table of contents
1    Introduction    2
2    General Recommendations    2
2.1    Highlight the challenges and ensure that responses to them are woven through the strategic framework and action plan    2
2.2    Confirm and approve the ‘Preferred Development Option’ and provide greater process detail (how it will work in practice)    3
2.3    Specific Areas – the Opeke and Orokonui examples – and maintaining productive capacity    3
2.4    Planning for energy resilience – the Blueskin Energy Project  and other energy projects    4

3    Detailed Recommendations and Suggested Actions    5

3    Other Submissions and Initiatives we endorse..............................................................5

We, Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust, wish to speak to our submission.
1    Introduction

Thank you for this opportunity to submit to the Dunedin City Council 2011Draft Spatial Plan.

The Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust (BRCT) is a registered charitable trust formed in 2008 out of the need to support local sustainability and transition initiatives in a planned and structured way. In 2009 BRCT was selected to be one of five national Climate Change Hubs supported by the Hikurangi Foundation. Our core activity is supporting the development of a resilient energy system in Blueskin Bay  and we act as an umbrella organization for a number of community groups working to build local food production and sustainable transport. Jeanette Fitzsimons is our patron.

We congratulate the Dunedin City Council on this comprehensive and well referenced Draft Spatial Plan with its clear highlighting of future challenges and opportunities. We are confident that with some careful adjustment the Spatial Plan will help guide delivery of a city that is a more resilient place in terms of energy, food production, transport and local communities (see Section 2). We also support the key points of a number of recommendations that are outlined in submissions from other groups. Our full submission will be presented to council via the submission hearings process in February 2012.

2    General Recommendations
2.1    Highlight the challenges and ensure that responses to them are woven through the strategic framework and action plan
We applaud the Dunedin City Council’s recognition of the significant challenges we face (Climate Change, Peak Oil, Natural Disaster). As new research, particularly on the effects of Climate Change and Resource Peaks (including Peak Oil) comes to light, the magnitude of these challenges is becoming even more apparent. Therefore planning and preparation is now crucial as we anticipate ‘transformational’ change happening whether we are ready or not. We will of course be required to adapt to the new environment with fewer resources to hand, and the Spatial Plan must ensure that decision makers are guided by the best strategic thinking available. As an integrated policy document, with Dunedin’s significance to the region, and with the city’s growing reputation around the country as a city asking the hard questions and finding innovative solutions, the spatial plan opportunity is an opportunity to provide greater resilience for the city and surrounds, and will provide a national example. We must emphasise not only a strong assessment of the challenges we face, but also indicate the pragmatic pathways ensuring solutions can be implemented. Full preparation by the city for climate change and peak oil is critical to avoid the waste of time and energy that will result in attempting to address these issues if they are not foreshadowed.

2.2    Confirm and approve the ‘Preferred Development Option’ and provide greater process detail (how it will work in practice)
We are strongly supportive of the preferred option of “Distributed Development” that supports increasing the resilience of existing townships through various mechanisms. There are many well established international examples of this type of strategy that have proven extremely successful in establising a diverse and prosperous local economy on the basis of strong and successful communities. However to ensure success of this option for Dunedin, implementation strategies will need to clearly defined, and we anticipate that there will be an enhanced need for community engagement process to ensure support for “Distributed Development” and strategies leading from it, while also facilitating greater community responsibility in townships and community centres. Dunedin residents have a strong sense of civic responsibility and value opportunities to participate in the evolution of projects and developments that will have an effect on their lives, so it is imperative that as we pursue “Distributed Development”, we do so with a careful eye and ear to the resilience of local communities and in particular through ensuring decisions are reached through a transparent and accessible process. The Spatial Plan and its preferred option will be delivered through existing and future strategies and plans and we encourage foreshadowing an effective community engagement strategy modelling a DCC – community partnerships.

2.3    Specific Areas – the Opeke and Orokonui examples – and maintaining productive capacity
Within the Blueskin area a number of land developments have in recent times altered the nature of Blueskin communities in unpredicatable ways, without the benefit of any overall vision to ensure successful outcomes for the townships/communities to which they are attached. While there has been nil population growth over the last two census’s in the Blueskin area, the “Distributed Development” model uses the median population growth scenario: a scenario which we also support. With this in mind we wish to assert the incredible value of productive land within existing townships that have as yet unused residential capacity. Two high profile and controversial examples of productive land that owner/developers may wish to break up into new residential blocks are Opeke along Doctors Point, and the cluster of properties within the general Orokonui area. These are only two areas (and not an exclusive list) within the Blueskin area that demonstrate the pressure to turn productive land (rural zone) into residential land, despite the ready availability of pre-existing residential sections. We wish to emphasise the incredible strategic value of maintaining productive land within existing settlements where they already exist, for food production (livestock, horticulture), resource production (wood, bio-fuels) and green services (clean water and air). We acknowledge that there may be occasion to achieve compromise solutions to allow for flexibility for smaller lots sizes where there are positive benefits, however we wish to ensure that productive capacity within or in close proximity to existing settlements is not lost. As in point 2.2 above, we believe that a good collaboration and engagement process will allow comprehensive community participation and ensure good governance.

2.4    Planning for energy resilience – the Blueskin Energy Project  and other energy projects
The rural environment is not a purely productive zone nor a purely protected landscape. The rural environment in and around Dunedin is a multifunctional landscape, incorporating real and potential energy production services alongside farm, recreation, and cultural values and eco-system services. In order to successfully address the challenges that climate change and peak oil present to the city, the Spatial Plan will need to ensure careful management to allow a maximum of values and services can be delivered by the rural environment in as collaborative and transparent a way as possible. There is an urgent need to control the “expansion of rural-residential development and/or extension of existing urban areas onto rural land” , to ensure the other values and services can be maintained and enhanced. While there is a need to allow greater flexibility in rural and rural-residential developments (perhaps through the promotion of ‘hamlet’ developments ), there is also an urgent need to ensure peaks and other high landscape features are not uncritically encroached upon by residential dwellings, both because they may provide sites for capturing the wind resource (like Porteous Hill in Blueskin Bay) or have significant cultural identity (like Mihiwaka in Blueskin Bay), or even both. Over time, and with the appropriate planning provisions, such projects as the Blueskin Energy Project and proposed forestry/biofuel projects present the potential to become city attractions and a holitstic demonstration of the collaboration between runaka, community, the university, the council, industry and business, enhancing city infrastructure and facilities. We would like to see the inclusion of a subject area titled “Energy Infrastructure” within Part 2 (Our City) of the Spatial Plan, addressing provision for city energy infrastructure.

3    Detailed Recommendations and Suggested Actions

We will provide futher detailed information when we present our submission formally to the council in February.

4    Other Submissions and Initiatives we endorse

Due to the timing of the consultation period (December – January) we have been unable to effectively collaborate with other community organisations, or the business and tertiary sectors. Consequently we will detail the other submissions we endorse at our formal presentation of our submission in February.

We thank you for your attention to this submission

Yours sincerely,
BRCT

Please note: this is NOT our final submission, but an earlier draft, however it is 'substantially equivilant' ; )

Please also note: this is a macro perspective - we're hoping for wide input to allow productive precision on detail in the formal submission process.

Scott Willis
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DCC Spatial Plan - my hopes

The DCC's draft spatial plan has been conidered by councillors including consideration of public submission and is being "tweaked" (http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/200848/dunedin-spatial-plan-be-tweaked) at present, before being signed off next month.

My expectation is that climate change and peak oil will feature strongly and I am hopeful that "An environmentally sustainable and resilient city" will emerge as the first and most important theme of the Spatial Plan, with resilience woven through the plan itself.

I have been impressed by the DCC PROCESS in developing the Spatial Plan, which involved engagement with a wide variety of representatives in the very early stages, most prominantly through the Your City Our Future and other forums/workshops.

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