"Is there anyone within the NCA’s world who thinks it is a good idea to insert another set of traffic lights on Commonwealth Avenue to allow the tram to enter every couple of minutes," asks "Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN.
Paul Costigan
"Community councils are frustrated with the process whereby developers and their consultants show up at meetings to present on their latest development. The exercise is usually a blatant waste of community time," writes PAUL COSTIGAN.
"The lack of care by the planning directorate in how it approves knock down rebuilds in established suburbs has been devastating for the older suburbs," writes "Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN.
"While developer-friendly voices carp about how the residents are anti-development, the residents have shown yet again that it is not so," writes "Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN.
"The ACT government used to be reasonably good at using designers. Not anymore. The results today are usually very amateurish and quickly removed," writes "Canberra Matters columnist PAUL COSTIGAN.
Another year and yet another announcement about the progress being made with the ACT government planning reforms. It has become an annual event, writes "Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN
"There desperately needs to be a complete change to the approach to planning. Biodiversity – plants, trees, shrubs, water, animals and insects – need to be the priority consideration," writes "Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN.
Live and in person the Chris Steel boy band gave the Woden Valley Community Council an hour of spruiking and spin, reports "Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN.
"Canberra Matters" columnist PAUL COSTIGAN writes in tentative praise of the NCA showing some planning spine over a vast development proposal in Yarralumla.
Columnist PAUL COSTIGAN has come across a development application by ACT Housing that flies in the face of everything the ACT government has announced it is doing to bring back the biodiversity and greenery in the suburbs.
"Taking away an open space and delivering less greenery and biodiversity should not be an option that this ACT Labor/Greens government should be condoning given its rhetoric on trees, urban forests and climate change," writes PAUL COSTIGAN.
"The latest report points to how the present planning ministers and bureaucracy operate. They tick boxes and then have meetings and morning teas while their communication staff issue meaningless press releases," says PAUL COSTIGAN.
