RADICAL PLAN: Sites for the proposed supercities.
THE beginnings of three new cities will rise out of Queensland's booming southeast by the end of next year under radical plans by the Bligh Government to manage population growth by accelerating key housing developments.
The Government's powerful land development body will take control of three greenfield areas in the region's west and southwest to quickly deliver new masterplanned communities set to be home to an extra 250,000 people.
Construction is likely to start in the three areas at Ripley Valley, west of Springfield, and Greater Flagstone and Yarrabilba, in Logan's south near Jimboomba, before the end of next year.
Premier Anna Bligh said the new "model cities" would "work better than anything we have seen in Queensland before".
She said the model cities would allow children to walk to school, workers to catch public transport and families to enjoy ample green open space. But fast tracking development of these areas may add to the region's urban sprawl, with the new satellite cities located up to 40km away from the centre of Brisbane.
They will require the Government to expand its much-vaunted urban footprint and may add pressure to existing transport links while new infrastructure, such as the Springfield rail line, due to be completed in 2015, is built.
The move also contrasts with the spirit of the Southeast Queensland Regional Plan, which dictates that most of the forecast 750,000 new homes the region needs over the next 20 years should be built in existing suburbs.
Fast tracking development of these areas on the region's urban fringe means that at least one in every four homes on greenfield sites in southeast Queensland would be built there.
The Urban Land Development Authority's takeover of these development areas is the centrepiece of the Government's response to its growth management summit, which highlights the challenges of dealing with the region's predicted rampant population growth.
The ULDA will now take planning control for the identified areas from the Ipswich and Logan councils to assess their capacity to deliver more than 100,000 new homes.
The authority will have about four months to put forward the sites as Urban Development Areas, and another 12 months to bring the first housing lots to market – a timetable that could lead to construction before the end of 2011.
The ULDA now controls nine significant development sites throughout Queensland, including key parcels of land in Mackay, Townsville and Gladstone as well as large landholdings at Bowen Hills, Hamilton and Fitzgibbon in Brisbane's north.
The Government is hoping the authority will allow development of affordable and medium density housing to keep pace with population growth.
An extra two million people are expected to call southeast Queensland home over the next 20 years, bringing its population to 4.4 million by 2031.
