What do we want of our Bush Capital? A city in the bush or bush in the city?
The ACT Natural Resources Management Council draft report, Bush Capital Legacy: Iconic City, Iconic Natural Assets (''Danger of losing the bush in capital, new report says'', September 2, p3), suggests limiting expansion by increasing population density within existing boundaries.
We should be very careful about how we plan to accommodate increased population as denser populations are more stressed populations and stressed populations need places to de-stress.
A weekend trip to the surrounding bushland is no substitute for having the bush and open spaces threaded through our city. In the long term, infill may not be the right way to go.
Increased density puts pressure on remaining bush and open space within the city. Some beautiful aspects of Canberra's bush and garden character have already been lost. A drive from the airport to Civic used to be through bush now it is houses (and ugly ones at that) almost all the way.
The small park between Barry Drive and the first part of Boldrewood Street used to provide some grassland relief between Civic and Belconnen now it is an urban infill eyesore.
City Hill lost its eastern blossom trees to car parking, and the ubiquitous commuter car is now rapidly consuming parkland at Acton Park.
Are we making our city better by putting more and more vegetation under tar and cement?
Meanwhile, Claire Hinton (Letters, September 2) laments the destruction of Polly and Peter Park's ''roomed garden'' on Mugga Lane destruction no doubt to make way for an increased urban density development.
What aspects of our city do we truly value? And when all the infill is done and the lungs of our city are choked what then, expansion?
Penleigh Boyd, Reid
Care of plans
It is unfortunately necessary yet again to respond to an article (''Data centre not allowed on planned site: lawyer'', August 30, p9) that paints the process of development assessment as a black and white science when it isn't.
In fact it would be nice to think it could be this simple on occasions. However, if it were, governments would face a whole different set of criticisms and commentary from the community in terms of the prescriptive and restrictive nature of certain policy settings. It is not the ACT Planning and Land Authority's ''job to protect the Territory Plan''. Its role in this respect is to administer the plan and make decisions on its interpretation of various provisions and policies that resides within the plan. It is a function of the Act and a responsibility of the planning agency to do so, and commonplace to all planning systems around the country.
On occasions, particularly where a proposal can be expected to attract significant community interest, the authority may seek additional legal advice in respect to its interpretation.
The fact that other lawyers may offer a different opinion reflects how precarious planning can be at times, not the least for those who work within the system and become the focus of interest as opposed to the merits of what is proposed.
If the article correctly represents the views of spokesperson Susan Penny, then it is necessary to point out to her and the group she represents that the authority did not simply rely on the proponent's interpretation of the definition and it would be wholly irresponsible to do so.
I in fact went to some length several months ago, when meeting with a delegation from the Canberrans for Power Station Relocation to explain what our interpretation of the Territory Plan definition was for the facility.
The authority stands by its interpretation, but understands that this can be subject to challenge, as occurs on other projects from time to time, but let's be clear, that is how the system works, not a fault of those who administer it.
Neil Savery, chief planning executive, ACT Planning and Land Authority
City Hill mess
It doesn't have to consult at all, but the National Capital Authority is giving us until September 19 to comment on the developers' indicative plans for the west side of City Hill.
Initial impressions are that its architects have tried hard to make something of the authority's sad, diagrammatic development guidelines.
Under John Howard, it dumbly responded to Jon Stanhope's developer-driven taskforce's demand to maximise the commercial value of the subject land, ''owned'' by the ACT, but part of, and crucially important to, the world-renowned, campus-like central national area's visual expression.
City Hill (inside London Circuit) needs to be of a different character to the rest of Civic, and possess, as Walter Burley Griffin indicated, a symbiotic relationship with Capital Hill.
Simply put, the current plans are for an unbalanced, bulky, sun-less, intrusive, amorphous, out-of-scale-and-character, prospect-destroying, cringing and town-centre-compromising pile. And, because it's virtually impossible, the ostrich-like NCA still hasn't topographically resolved the connection of Edinburgh Avenue to Vernon Circle, something it demanded in the development, to supposedly calm the circle's traffic.
Naturally the developers have washed their hands of that. This mess is not entirely their fault. Kevin Rudd has got to call it off. We need an exemplary master design for the whole City Hill precinct in the form of the binding winning entry in a properly constituted competition, based on a sensitive, comprehensive brief, compiled by all interested parties including the community. Sensible parcels of land would then be released based on detailed design/monetary tenders.
Jack Kershaw, Kambah
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