Townsville Action Learning Partnership (IRP3)
Introduction
Towards the end of 2017, the CRCWSC worked with Townsville City Council to develop a Water Sensitive Vision and Transition Strategy for Townsville. The vision for Townsville as a future water sensitive city depicts the values and outcomes to be secured over the next 50 years: Townsville is an attractive, resilient city that manages water to enhance healthy ecosystems, embrace dramatic natural water cycles, drive world-leading innovation, and support citizens who are proud of their dry tropical identity.
Townsville City Council recognised that in order to make advancements towards their vision of a water sensitive Townsville, further attention needs to be given to institutional arrangements, particularly planning and service delivery functions, which can pose a barrier to innovative practices and alternative servicing approaches. Accordingly, the Townsville action learning partnership was established in July 2019 between the CRCWSC and Townsville City Council. The collaborative partnership seeks to explore the institutional challenges limiting the achievement of water sensitive outcomes.
A three-stage program of activity has been proposed to enable productive interactions among stakeholders to collectively unpack and resolve key urban and water planning challenges. By engaging with key government and industry stakeholders, the program sought to:
- identify and resolve current policy constraints to the delivery of innovative development or servicing outcomes;
- encourage stakeholders to cooperatively plan, assess and approve innovative approaches for the delivery of water sensitive communities; and
- identify pathways for the implementation of innovative solutions through planning, regulatory and asset management systems.
Workshops
Over the next 20 years and beyond, Townsville will face a number of water-related challenges that provide impetus for a new approach to urban planning. Choices will need to be made about water security, drought and flood cycles, urban greening and urban heat, and the health of waterways and coasts. These choices can be implemented – in part – through urban planning. The CRCWSC and Townsville City Council have partnered to deliver a collaboration workshop to ask what these choices could look like.
This workshop forms a part of the CRCWSC’s Research Synthesis series. Taking a co-design approach, the workshop will combine the CRCWSC’s research with local expertise to develop:
- water sensitive development options at densities and configurations relevant to Townsville
- alternative water servicing options that improve sustainability, resilience and liveability outcomes.
The workshop will focus on greenfield growth in Townsville.
This the second and final workshop associated with the Townsville action learning partnership, an initiative of the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities and Townsville City Council that is considering the urban planning, water servicing and governance arrangements needed to deliver water sensitive greenfield development in Townsville.
The objectives of the workshop are to:
- share key learnings and outcomes from the project to date, and
- co-develop pathways to support the implementation of water sensitive greenfield development in Townsville.
Further reading
- Enabling water sensitive greenfield development in Townsville (IRP3), which examines the institutional arrangements, particularly planning and service delivery functions, that can impede water sensitive urban development practices. Our analysis identifies 14 opportunities to strengthen Townsville’s planning and governance systems to advance its water sensitive agenda.
- Ideas for Townsville: Greening the public realm in a dry tropics city, which explores a range of ideas to redefine what good urban development in Townsville could look like, when considered with water management in mind.
- Vision and Transition Strategy for a Water Sensitive Townsville (IRP1), which describes the 50-year water sensitive vision for Townsville, and provides a summary assessment of Townsville’s current water sensitive performance and its progress towards its vision. High level strategies to address priority transition needs are also outlined.