Citizen-led Collaboration

Description

Local governments are tasked with incorporating significant numbers of new dwellings in existing developed areas in order to help implement strategic planning objectives for a more compact and sustainable city. Innovative approaches are needed to help local planning achieve this particularly in areas which often resist this change (think Not In My Back Yard or NIMBY). One such approach is to develop policy in conjunction with the community’s wishes and needs, what we might term Citizen Led development rather than the conventional ‘deliver and defend’ method focussed on achieving higher densities.

A Citizen-Led approach was created collaboratively between City of Fremantle, Creating Communities and AUDRC as a way to bring community and government together to create positive change around housing diversity and density in the ‘precious’ burbs of Fremantle. The ‘Freo Alternative – Big thinking about small housing’ community engagement process resulted in the successful approval by Council of a ground-breaking local planning scheme amendment for urban infill on March 28^th.