THE proposed coastal community of Jindee off Marmion Avenue was last week presented as an Australian case study for a better way of town planning.
Co-delivering the annual Stephenson-Hepburn Oration at UWA, Ellenbrook principal designer and Subiaco Redevelopment Authority deputy chairman Mike Day suggested Perth planning had to become more flexible to allow for overlapping land uses and diverse housing.
“Most land uses can comfortably co-exist and yet we have perpetuated the separation of these uses which compels people to drive everywhere,” the founding partner of planning consultancy Roberts Day said.
He recommended learning afresh from WA planning luminaries Gordon Stephenson, George Seddon and Margaret Feilman whose vision could be further realised through adapting development to the form of the land in so-called transect coding being piloted at Jindee.
Joint-speaker and visiting American architect and urban designer Ludwig Fontalvo-Abello, who has worked with Perth developer Estates Development Company on Jindee, outlined how the physical characteristics of ocean, sand dunes and bushland had determined the six transect zones guiding development at Jindee, “from the natural to the urban.”
The audience of planners, designers, architects and planning students at the UWA University Club auditorium responded enthusiastically to a video of the proposed coastal community.
In question time, visiting Canadian planner David Gordon asked how best to adapt the North American transect system, adopted this year by the whole of the City of Miami, to an Australian context.
Former State Planning Minister Alannah MacTiernan was told Rottnest Island was an example to Jindee of tailoring development to the topography of the land.
And urban designer Linley Lutton questioned how Jindee could be built into a fragile environment without destroying it.
Mr Fontalvo-Abello said the foreshore and nature reserve area (transect 1) would be preserved while there would be minimal disturbance with the building of houses in the ‘natural living’ transect 2 (T2) zone.
City of Wanneroo chief executive Daniel Simms and planning director Len Kosova, who will eventually have to consider any Jindee plans submitted for a council decision, were present along with Yanchep’s Capricorn Village Joint Venture chief executive Russel Perry and former City of Wanneroo CEO Charles Johnson. Estates Development Company sponsored the oration and managing director Fiona Roche gave an introductory speech.
See speech extract, page 3