News Release:
'Eco-civic' areas for local government proposed
| Date 11/3/04 No 048/04 A report tabled in Parliament late yesterday recommends that 49 "eco-civic" regions replace the current 126 (non-metropolitan) Local Government Areas (LGAs) across NSW. "The boundaries of LGAs must change across all of rural NSW to represent local interactions and residents' community of interest more accurately," said Professor David Brunckhorst, Director of the University of New England's Institute for Rural Futures. "Boundaries also need to reflect the natural resources that local communities use, manage and identify strongly with." The 49 regions recommended for future LGAs are the result of an eco-civic regionalisation of NSW that the NSW Department of Lands asked the UNE Institute to develop. The independent research uses a methodology that has already been hailed by international experts as a new, world-leading approach. The eco-civic regionalisation of NSW is a resource that can inform decision processes when adjustments to administrative regions or service delivery are being considered, said Professor Brunckhorst's co-authors Ian Reeve and Phil Coop. "Communities of interest can be identified at several scales and mapped," Mr Coop said. "The spatial layout of LGAs has its roots in patterns of settlement in the late 19th century," Mr Reeve said. "Modern transport, communications, services and changes in the nature of social and economic interactions have resulted in communities of interest and place-attachment that bear little similarity to the original patterns of settlement."
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The UNE Institute's analysis identifies the smallest possible regions suitable for local government that reflect the areas of most interest to local communities, their interactions, and their natural resource base. The report says the Government’s reform agenda provides the opportunity to achieve congruence between boundaries and administrative arrangements. This would provide a wide range of benefits to local communities, as well as efficiencies to the Government, while maintaining and building civic interest and support. It would also raise regional planning and natural resource management to a whole new level of integration that would make NSW a world leader for integrated civic and ecosystem arrangements for local government, regional planning and natural resources management. Media contact: Professor David Brunckhorst, Institute for Rural Futures, University of New England, Armidale (02) 6773 3001 or 6773 2220, or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 3049. A photograph is available for download. It shows (from left) Phil Coop, Professor David Brunckhorst and Ian Reeve holding a map showing the 49 non-metropolitan Local Government Areas they are proposing for NSW. |
