Comments on: Redrawing council borders in Sydney

By: Nick C

Nick C — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:57:08 +0000

Andrew, I was looking at this in the historical context, and noting that there would seem to be a strong link between older suburbs developing around ‘town centres’ and the fact that those areas had their own council. Generally speaking it makes sense to assume that, unless they specifically commit to doing otherwise, each council, regardless of size, will tend to focus on having one commercial hub in their area. Hence larger LGAs in more recently developed areas have not developed suburbs around ‘town centres’. Obviously the growth of car ownership has paralleled this trend, but I would argue they were mutually reinforcing – locating more residential development further from jobs and services increases car dependence as much as more car ownership encourages people to be happy to live further away from jobs and services.

I was drawing on a document I’ve got titled ‘Which Sydney Suburbs Work’ which I believe was prepared in connection with the Sydney Metropolitan Strategy. It’s a very interesting document which compares those older suburbs with newer ones. I can’t find a copy of it on the web though. It was sent to me about 4 years ago by a (now retired) councillor whom I was on a council transport committee with.

Having said all of that, I do think that these days larger councils utilising appropriate planning controls can theoretically achieve any of these benefits just as well as smaller councils, which is why Ben’s convinced me on the merits of larger councils, at least under the current configuration of our three tiers of government. It was a very interesting post as it seemed that I’d had the same thoughts as Ben on most of this, except that I’d leaned towards smaller councils. I’d never discussed it with anyone else though, so I found Ben’s perspective very useful, and it did alert me to the fact that my preference for smaller councils was probably because my thinking on this was linked to my thinking on replacing the states with regional governments.

By: Hamish Coffee

Hamish Coffee — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:39:18 +0000

“White – Less than 50,000 residents”

Fewer than 50,000 residents.

*Pedant*

By: Ben Raue

Ben Raue — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:54:21 +0000

Andrew, both my maps are deprived from my LGA map, which you can download from the maps page. I don’t usually keep these maps that I make.

It is incredibly easy to change colours of the background and borders of these. If you want to merge them together, the easiest way is to group polygons into folders according to what the map would look like, then change the colours so all the polygons in the one folder share the same colour. That’s all I did on that second map.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:45:28 +0000

Ben, Is there any chance of posting your map as a KMZ (Google Earth layer)?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:42:05 +0000

I agree withe the 9 councils concept, not only for the cost benefits gained from efficiencies fo scale, but for the future town planning and sustainability reasons. Others have commented that smaller council areas encourage smaller village style communities and are thereofre more sustainable. If you track the growth in car ownership, you will probably fin that the change in density has had more to do with this than the size of the LGA’s, ie the suburban density and by definithion the LGA size may be more a product of car growth. SO while the idea of smaller councils with village centres, I don’t think this would apply today. On the other hand, what Sydney has at the moment is a series of small councils competing for rates, much of which comes from business.

In this regard, the zoning maps have been drawn to allow commercial development in each LGA, when this might not produce the right outcome. We could look at the major centres (Cty, Nth Syd, Parra Liverpool etc) and only allow commercial growth in these areas, but under the current system, Councils such as Marrickeville, Strathfield etc would have no right to commercial development and the associated rates. The almagamation would allow each council access to an establishd CBD for growth. Where does this lead? Ultimately this would untangle the current randomness of the road network / commuter routes, by focussing on a limited number of centres, not a commercial spread. Public transport can then function in relation to each hub, rather than attempting to link all people to all places at all times (which the car is great for).

By: Ben Raue

Ben Raue — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:37:27 +0000

Sure, the City of Sydney has a huge amount of businesses in their area so their rates would bring in a lot more money. But that is even more reason why a larger electorate should control that budget.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:17:20 +0000

Sydney Council does play with a lot of money though, perhaps a lot more than much larger councils? Not sure.

By: Nick C

Nick C — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:58:12 +0000

The Lord Mayor of Sydney also gets paid a sh-tload more than other Mayors, so they should have more responsibilities to reflect that.

btw Ben, good luck with Powershift. I was interested in going, but can’t. I hope it goes really well for you and everyone involved.

By: Ben Raue

Ben Raue — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:18:18 +0000

And they also do something similar in Wales and Northern Ireland. The 40 Welsh seats in the House of Commons are also used to elect the 40 constituency seats in the Welsh Assembly. The 18 Northern Irish House of Commons constituencies also elect 6 MLAs each for the NI Legislative Assembly, similar to how Tasmania does it.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:08:27 +0000

Victoria did this (two Legislative Assembly seats for each House of Representatives seat and also using the House of Representatives boundaries for the Legislative Council) from when Cain Senior introduced it for the 1955 election until Bolte changed it for a zonal system in 1967.