CH Smith Building Representation

Foreword 

The development before the City of Launceston Council is in broad terms a welcomed development. The proposal is of the kind that has significant impacts upon the city’s ‘cultural landscape’. These impacts will resonate across the city and arguably into peri-urban environment. It needs to be understood that the scale of the development is such that within ‘the wider city precinct’ there will be impacts upon:

• The city’s amenity and facility; 
• The cultural sensibilities and sensitivities that inform its sense of place – its ‘placedness’; not to mention 
• The city’s fiscal and economic environment. 

These things need to be taken into account collectively and as far as can they can be achieved in a practical sense, in balance.

Consequently, while in a broad brush sense the development is welcomed the “devil will always be in the detail”.

Another aspect of this particular development deserving of serious consideration is the fact that the city’s almost 30 thousand ratepayers are ‘conscripted underwriters’ of the development and to the extent of $9million. Ultimately each and every rateable property owner will have a $300 investment in the project or something of that order – albeit payable over 5 years. Thus the city’s residents and ratepayers are actively engaged in the development and the dividends flowing to them need to be considered – tangible and intangible dividends.

In fact the reality of the project’s Community of Ownership and Interest, and the ratepayers’ layer within it, is unlikely to be any less contestable.

DEFINITION:
• Community of Ownership and Interest: (compound noun/proposition) an all-inclusive collective/community of people, individuals and groups, who in any way have multi layered relationships with a place or cultural landscape and/or the operation of an institution, organisation or establishment – typically a network.
• Usage and context: cultural geography; civic and environmental planning; and community administration • REFERENCE: Dr Bill Boyd, SCU et al

CONTEXT NOTE: Used in opposition to ‘stakeholder’: one who has a legitimate interest, stake and/or pecuniary interest in an enterprise, endeavor or entity. Also used to demonstrate inclusivity as opposed to the exclusive implications attached to ’stakeholder’. Click here to read more 

A close examination of the ownerships and interests in places – albeit cognitive ownerships – would surely reveal confluences and conflicts in ownership claims. If we abandon the notion that there can be a hierarchical or a ranked structure to the ownerships of place it is possible that the governors and managers of ’places’ begin:
• To work towards accommodating and celebrating ownership claims in the context of coexistent cognitive ownerships;
• To resolve conflicts and tensions over usage and access; and • To establish more appropriate and inclusive, – participatory even – policy sets, planning processes and management systems.

The ratepayers direct involvement in, and fiscal engagement with, this development proposal lends the status as ‘stakeholders’ and variously as COI members.