Pick of the week
BENDIGO’S residential Strategy will be reviewed because of greater than expected growth.
The State Government has announced a grant of $50,000 to carry out the review.
The review is needed because, according to the State Government, 40 per cent of the forecast growth between 2006 and 2031 had already been realised.
Regional Development Parliamentary Secretary Damian Drum made the announcement this morning.
Mr Drum said the Bendigo Residential Strategy Review would deliver greater community and investor certainty, helping the region grow.
“The Bendigo Residential Development Strategy was adopted in 2004 and is currently being audited because of the faster than anticipated growth that has occurred in Bendigo in recent years,” he said.
“Strong residential growth has many flow-on economic benefits and having a clear framework for future development will position Greater Bendigo City Council to undertake more detailed, place-based planning in the future.”
Deputy Premier Peter Ryan said about 40 per cent of the forecast growth between 2006 and 2031 had already been realised.
The Residential Strategy impacts directly on where and how property developments use “infill” parcels of land, range of housing styles and also on housing affordability.
“This project will review the strategy, assess current and estimated land supply and demand and consider various legislative and policy changes,” Mr Ryan said,
“It will also consider the latest demographic data and establish a new strategic framework to guide the long-term residential growth of Greater Bendigo.
“The project will result in a revised residential strategy that will give developers, the community and service providers greater surety and confidence about where land can be developed for residential purposes, and that sufficient land is available to accommodate the City of Greater Bendigo’s future growth.”
Mr Ryan said a contemporary strategic planning framework was essential to the economic development of a large regional centre like Bendigo.
“Clearly identifying future growth options and supporting infrastructure needs will enable the Greater Bendigo City Council and other infrastructure providers to plan their capital works programs well in advance,” he said.
“Identifying long-term growth areas will enable the council and other service authorities to start planning for the delivery of services, thereby minimising the lag time between when residential development occurs and when the services need to be in place.”
| Bendigo Weekly | 06-May-2011 1am
Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks (HarperCollins)
Geraldine Brooks has long been interested in fleshing out the bones of history. Moving from reporting to a kind of reportage, her first books were about the lives of the people she interviewed in her role as a foreign correspondent, and then she stepped across the boundary between the real and the fictional to write the amazing Year of Wonders about a woman who defies accepted belief about what causes the plague and learns for herself how to fight the disease that decimated 17th century societies.
Her latest novel is also set in the 17th century, and picks up a true story about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. It was a brief life, and little is known about this man who was the son of a Wampanoag chieftain, but with her sharp imagination, Brooks has gone backwards from the point at which Caleb eventually graduated from the university to the events that might have made it possible.
She creates a woman character who is just as unusual within her own white-settler community as Caleb is in his, and she parallels Bethia’s trials with his.
The history is, as always with Brooks, surprising, reminding us how little we know beyond the official accounts of wars and rulers.
I didn’t find this account as engrossing as Year of Wonders or March (which picks up the story of Little Women and elaborates it from a different perspective). It is a thinner book, too, than her much-admired People of the Book, which was an ambitious mystery story.
Brooks is one of the most disciplined and ethical of our writers. She works hard to get us to see and hear her people, to respect them even as she moves them around societies far removed from us. In many ways, Caleb’s Crossing is a sad book, reminding us how strongly customs and beliefs can stultify and even destroy independent people.
But there is satisfying optimism within it too, and a kindness that marks all Brooks’s work.
BENDIGO’S residential Strategy will be reviewed because of greater than expected growth.
The State Government has announced a grant of $50,000 to carry out the review.
The review is needed because, according to the State Government, 40 per cent of the forecast growth between 2006 and 2031 had already been realised.
Regional Development Parliamentary Secretary Damian Drum made the announcement this morning.
Mr Drum said the Bendigo Residential Strategy Review would deliver greater community and investor certainty, helping the region grow.
“The Bendigo Residential Development Strategy was adopted in 2004 and is currently being audited because of the faster than anticipated growth that has occurred in Bendigo in recent years,” he said.
“Strong residential growth has many flow-on economic benefits and having a clear framework for future development will position Greater Bendigo City Council to undertake more detailed, place-based planning in the future.”
Deputy Premier Peter Ryan said about 40 per cent of the forecast growth between 2006 and 2031 had already been realised.
The Residential Strategy impacts directly on where and how property developments use “infill” parcels of land, range of housing styles and also on housing affordability.
“This project will review the strategy, assess current and estimated land supply and demand and consider various legislative and policy changes,” Mr Ryan said,
“It will also consider the latest demographic data and establish a new strategic framework to guide the long-term residential growth of Greater Bendigo.
“The project will result in a revised residential strategy that will give developers, the community and service providers greater surety and confidence about where land can be developed for residential purposes, and that sufficient land is available to accommodate the City of Greater Bendigo’s future growth.”
Mr Ryan said a contemporary strategic planning framework was essential to the economic development of a large regional centre like Bendigo.
“Clearly identifying future growth options and supporting infrastructure needs will enable the Greater Bendigo City Council and other infrastructure providers to plan their capital works programs well in advance,” he said.
“Identifying long-term growth areas will enable the council and other service authorities to start planning for the delivery of services, thereby minimising the lag time between when residential development occurs and when the services need to be in place.”
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