Planning attention is timely

After years of agitation from the Peninsula community, the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (DUAP) is setting up a Gosford office.
It was refreshing to hear the Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning, Dr Andrew Refshauge, nominate the current state of development on the Peninsula as one of the main reasons for the establishment of the Gosford office of DUAP.
This is timely as local residents are getting increasingly desperate at what they see in the streets around them.
Recently, Council held three Urban Design Framework meetings designed to encourage the community to discuss development and to nominate which characteristics they valued in the built environment.
The meetings were very well attended by local residents and the overwhelming feeling was that the Peninsula was being covered with concrete to the detriment of our lifestyle and amenity.
Local residents don't like medium density housing in local, narrow streets meant for one house per block and are sick of seeing trees felled to fit these gun-barrel developments onto tiny blocks of land.
The Peninsula was rezoned in the 1980s to take 90% of the medium-density development in the Gosford shire and the results are plain to see.
The very character of the Peninsula is now being changed and more and more we are in danger of becoming the "Western suburbs by the Sea".
All this is happening without the necessary infrastructure like decent roads, kerb and gutterning, drainage etc and we are getting further and further behind while our population is rapidly increasing.
I have met with DUAP representatives on several occasions and have shown them Peninsula streets where block after block is covered with badly-designed villas and townhouses with minimum landscaping and no trees.
I think they have been less than impressed and therefore, in conjunction with council, have moved to intensively investigate the current planning system as it relates to the Peninsula to see how things can be improved.
I am unsure how these investigations will take place but I urge everyone with an interest in the matter to take the opportunity, when it arises, to have a say on the planning of the Peninsula.
I would like to thank all those who attended the Urban Design Framework meetings and also those who have contacted me since to express their dislike of the current situation.
I think we have an opportunity to change things for the better and we should all be prepared to get involved and make our views known.