Growing pains ‘real’ as Logan council looks to change shape of the city

LOGAN City Council will aim to “change the shape of the city” by incentivising developments in areas that already have essential shared services like public transport, water and sewerage.

The city is growing by about 4% a year with a population that could sit at around 412,000, according to mayor Jon Raven’s quick calculations based on data from the Australia Bureau of Statistics.

We’re growing faster than almost everywhere else in the country – proportionately and in raw numbers.

But it begs the question: is this level of growth sustainable? 

Cr Raven says yes, but we should prioritise building in areas of the city that already have access to essential services and infrastructure.

Currently, the city’s fastest growing areas are the Greater Flagstone and Yarrabilba priority development areas (PDAs) in the city’s west, which are managed by the Queensland government. 

With limited roads that are growing more congested by the week and a small number of schools quickly approaching capacity, land in that area is the most expensive to develop as it requires a larger amount of new shared infrastructure like roads, water and sewerage to be built.

“It’s not smart to build out in those satellite areas because it’s going to cost a lot of money to get out there, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Cr Raven said.

He said 78% of Logan’s population lives in the city’s north.

“We’ve got this big, dense section to the north and to the east of the M1, down to Carbrook and then Beenleigh. Then there is a middle section that is designed to grow for the next natural sequence, but we’ve got these two out-of-sequences bits which are the PDAs.”

Cr Raven said council should incentivise infield development where there is already public transport, sewer, water, parks and other services.

“The big part around the [upcoming] planning scheme is changing the shape of the city… and saying, ‘let’s incentivise you to build higher-density places where we’ve already got infrastructure. So instead of building new infrastructure, you can just use what’s already there’.”

Nevertheless, the state government wants its Logan PDAs to house up to 71,500 dwellings and 188,000 people in the next 30-40 years.

But council says it can’t afford to keep up, so in early July, the government gifted the city a $136 million lifeline to build a new wastewater plant that will ultimately service about 60,000 homes.

Over the weekend, the government announced it has bought a block of land in Greenbank to build a new high school critical to servicing Greater Flagstone. Currently, the area is serviced by two schools the government says could reach capacity by 2029.

“Everyone wants infrastructure to keep up. We know there will always be a lag, but that shouldn’t be any bigger than it absolutely has to be,” Cr Raven said 

“These growing pains are real. We know it’s real and we’re working to address it.”