Katoomba Charrette Outcomes Report - Blue Mountains City Council

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Katoomba Charrette Report & Town Centre Strategy such as the RAPI Planning News, as well as even in the Newsweek Bulletin. Several Charrettes have won local, state and national planning and urban design awards. Such recognition is quite valuable to stoke local enthusiasm and, especially, to encourage politicians to move forward decisively with continued or increasing support of the Charrette outcomes. Consider submitting articles and putting in for awards. Get Organised To Implement Hopefully the Charrette has unleashed a great deal of positive activity for Katoomba. How this activity gets managed, and by whom, is crucial. This is explained in Section 15, entitled Setting Priorities, Funding, Phasing, & Who Implements. Implement The Economic, Employment And Visitors Strategy A key fulcrum of the revitalisation leverage is jobs. A task force should be formed very soon to commence the Economic, Employment and Visitors Strategy in Section 12 of this report, as soon as possible. This strategy should capitalise on the forthcoming Olympics-driven visitation. Note that the lead-time is often quite long to adjust tourist programming and marketing. Retain And Support The Client’s Charrette Team Even this quite detailed report and the Charrette Briefing Booklet represent only the tip of the iceberg of the information and rationales behind the Charrette outcomes and how to implement them. Because the Client’s Charrette Team was so deeply involved in forging the outcomes during the Charrette, they should generally be encouraged to stay with the project through its implementation, and often their skills and authorities should be enhanced. The Waitakere (western Auckland) City Council Charrette Team have not only carried the ball brilliantly to implement their New Lynn Charrette over the past three years, but they have also led new design workshops for other areas in their local government area, with increasingly stronger skills and less dependence on ESD. 13.2.2 Review & Reform Regulations to Support the Charrette Objectives Several past Charrettes have catalysed reform both of local government regulations and of their approaches to development reviews and approvals. Several local and state government clients have recognised that their own ‘rule books’ were partly causing their problems. As a result of their Charrettes, the Shire of Swan (Midland Charrette) and the Waitakere City Council (New Lynn Charrette) have both restructured their organisational approaches, emphasising place-based multi-disciplinary council team approaches to replace departmental and less place-based organisations. Both local governments also re-worked their statutory planning documents. With the Blue Mountains local government area in particular, it may be appropriate to consider a more place-based Katoomba Local Environmental Plan and related Development Control Plans, as well as expanding and refining some of the key site Project Design Briefs. This is because its towns are distributed generally along in a linear form along the Highway ridge, rather than in a single mass of urbanism such as in Western Sydney. Compared to Western Sydney, this linear configuration makes each town operate more as its own catchment, suggesting that each town may have its own place-based set of challenges and opportunities, which should be dealt with by specific LEPs and DCPs. 124
Katoomba Charrette Report & Town Centre Strategy Be More Proactive, Less Reactive As a result of past Charrettes, several local governments have also restructured their regulatory approaches to be much more proactive and less reactive. Compared to before the Charrette, BMCC and Katoomba now have much clearer plans of action and community support for Katoomba’s revitalisation, supported by strong rationales and indicative designs, with which to be more proactive and decisive. Make this change known to the community. Charrette Design Advisory Service A Charrette Design Advisory Service should be a key tool in proactively negotiating proposals into real projects which support Katoomba’s revitalisation. Such a service should be Councilstaffed and answerable to or advising of the Implementation Task Force (see Section 15). This service should interact with development proponents and other stakeholders, for both design revisions and for testing of development feasibility, to help proponents profitably to attain their Project Design Briefs. Recognising a lack of in-house expertise, the Waitakere City Council in western Auckland hired Kobus Mentz (a Katoomba Charrette ESD team member based in Auckland) to lead up this design advisory service and to train their staff to take over the job, once they had developed adequate skills to do so. Mandatory Site and Context Analyses Because virtually all possible projects associated with the Town Centre have adjacent neighbours, which would be impacted by proposals, it will be important to institute requirements for mandatory ‘Site and Context Analyses’ as part of any Development Application for the Town Centre. Designers for proponents should be required to submit early such an analysis not only of their own site but of adjoining sites that may be impacted. The City of Newcastle has been using such an approach now for a couple of years with considerable success in town centre contexts. Refer to their Mixed Use Compatibility Development Control Plan, written by ESD; BMCC may be able to use the same component of that document. 13.2.3 See Clearly, Think Laterally & Adapt Despite the apparent clarity of the many indicative Charrette designs, there is no clear path to revitalising Katoomba. Underlying circumstances of ownership and other redevelopment dynamics will change. Most development proposals will deviate, for one reason or another, from the indicative Charrette designs. Some will be better solutions than those of the Charrette. Some will respond to new or differently understood design and development criteria. The implementation team will need to discern these differences and respond accordingly. Stay In Touch With The Fundamental Revitalisation Objectives Each new proposal must contribute to Katoomba’s revitalisation. That is the bottom line. The implementation team and project proponents must understand how their projects will physically affect Katoomba, in terms of personal and property safety through passive surveillance, in terms of jobs generation, of raising Katoomba’s image, of impacts to neighbours, etc. Beware of verbal claims of compliance by project proponents; assess what the actual built project will do to its context. The revitalisation objectives must function collectively, like a chain. Sacrificing one link can weaken the whole system. There will be many contests between alleged project costs and the 125
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Katoomba Charrette Outcomes Report - Blue Mountains City Council

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