I ATTENDED a forum last week at the Innovation Centre, at Sippy Downs, hosted by the Sunshine Coast Business Council titled “Evolution of the Sunshine Coast'”. Various speakers talked about what makes a great place or a great city and compared these traits with
the current and developing attributes of the Sunshine Coast. Kate Meyrick from the Hornery Institute was particularly impressive discussing the creation of directed intent as opposed to just more space, and how this has worked for various urban areas. Continuing
themes were identity and connectivity. Ironically, the Sunshine Coast has previously been characterised as being a collection of separate villages which might dissipate a uniform identity, but these are concocted environments. Alternately the region still has a high level of natural beauty from coast to hinterland.
The built environment that we put in place to accommodate a doubling of our population over the coming decades might reinforce these aspects of identity, or it might wipe them out! Connectivity has a hard side which is the realm of transport, and a soft side which is social and civic. The current great revelation that cities around the world have been dominated by transport and are savage to the human condition is critical in our current planning phase. So, leave
our natural areas as truly protected, and design urban areas to be more people focused. It seems fairly obvious really, but it also seems a lot of vested interests get in the way. Finally, I note that almost all of the major business interests from the Coast were represented, including the Noosa Mayor and some Noosa Councillors, but none at all from Sunshine Coast Council. They must have had something better to do?
