As Logan City Council explained on their website the South East Queensland Regional Plan 2009-2031 has identified the Bahrs Scrub locality as a Local Development Area. Council residents and land owners had an opportunity to input into the SEQRP and the area of Bahrs Schub has been selected by state government and targeted or 'identified' as an area to be developed for urban purposes and in doing so help Council achieve the dwelling targets allocated to it in the regional plan. It is not council that set those targets - but state government which is heading down the path towards bigger population targets for SEQ - and Logan City Council is very supportive of the state's targets.
Council must now prepare a more detailed Local Development Area Plan for this locality. This plan will identify those areas suitable for urban purposes and those areas required to be conserved or managed for a variety of purposes.
The plan will also identify the range of necessary infrastructure needed to support development of this locality.
Council has now commenced this plan making process. The final plan and its statutory components will then need to be integrated into Council's planning scheme.
Council is currently in the initial scoping stage. This stage is intended to identify the range of issues that need to be addressed during the plan making process. As part of this process Council is consulting with a range of stakeholders, including State Government Agencies and landowners as to what they see as the significant issues for developing this locality. These issues will then be feed into consultancies briefs for further studies to be undertaken. The outputs of these studies will then be used to formulate a range of land use options that can then be further tested and refined.
The big questions to be asked here are - what are the benchmarks for sustainable development?
This map, LG1 Bahrs Scrub, shows the cadastral parcels of land within the urban footprint - expanded from the previous SEQRP. There are as yet no roads or other services - necessary infrastructure - to service residents in this area.
The challenge will be to ensure that any development protects and enhances the liveability of the region - the stated aim of the South East Regional Plan 2009-31.