Re-assessing the value of non-retail employment centres in master planned communities in South-east Queensland

Pamela Wardner

Developers of large-scale greenfield master planned communities (MPC) in South-east Queensland (SEQ) have been 'mandated' to provide employment opportunities in their greenfield development project sites. While not explicity written into legislation, it has been heavily promoted by state and local governments and urban planning theory in practice. Three large-scale MPC in SEQ have provided these employment centres, particularly those that cater to non-retail (including the office sector), and have been suffering a higher than average vacancy rate compared with that in surrounding commercial areas (Colliers International 2010; Day 2010). The higher level vacancy is not due to lack of firms' interest to locate outside the CBD as more than 70 per cent of businesses are located in the middle to outer suburbs (Forster 2006) where these large-scale MPCs are located; paradoxically they are just not located within them. This further affects the MPC residents themselves, who now only have a one-in-ten chance to work where they live compared with someone living in a tradional subdivision who have a better one-in-six chance to work in the same suburb (Skinner, Iichi & Williams 2009). The encouragement of mixed-use concepts contributes to the achievement of two economic objectives sought by local government - maximising local employment opportunities (self-sufficiency); and encouraging the local capture of employment (self-containment) (Urbecon Publication 2005). However, the current experiences exacerbates cross-suburban travel (Dodson & Sipe 2010) instead of minimising state and local government's journey-to-work objectives (Department of Infrastructure and Planning 2007). Therefore, if the concept of 'live, work and play' provided in a complete MPC is philosophically a sound urban objective, why then does this situation not manifest itself as envisioned by the state and local planners and MPC developers? Hence, this thesis assesses the value-add of 'mandating' these employment centres to be incorporated in large-scale greenfield MPCs. To provide an understanding of the market processes and operations in creating a successful MPC employment centre, an extensive literature review was conducted, then supported by semi-structured interviews and observations to develop a theoretical framework. After which, the Delphi technique was employed to distil expert opinion to achieve consensus. Using critical realism as a philosophical standpoint to qualitatively analyse this real world issue, a conceptual framework is proposed to explain the causal mechanisms of the above phenomena. In the end, the creation of an MPC employment centre is intrinsically two distinct projects, an economic development project and an urban development project. While MPC developers can provide the urban form and an environment conducive for firms to locate, the underlying economic fundamentals to attract firm locators to the area are beyond the scale and reach of MPC developers which will ultimately drive the success of any employment centre. Therefore, this thesis establishes that there is no evidence of value-add of an integrated employment centre within a MPC to non-retail commercial firms. While it is the prerogative of developers to provide the market with a complete MPC, the current demands of state and local authorities to 'bundle' the delivery and provision of housing with employment centres does not achieve their ultimate goals.

Re-assessing the value of non-retail employment centres in master planned communities in South-east Queensland

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