A Critique: Launceston Interim Planning Scheme

A critique from a senior planner that has been provided to the Ratepayers Association

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......... the Launceston Interim Planning Scheme belongs to the Launceston City Council and it is their responsibility to make it accessible to the public. In response to a complaint from an ex-Alderman and my own exploration of the Council’s website, the following points should be communicated to the Council (and the Commission, since the Commission may be publicly seen as sharing responsibility):

1.     The link to the Interim Scheme introduction is not prominent or easy to find; it is buried at the bottom of the page after going through the Home>Services>Development>Planning links;

2.     Once there,  we find another 8 links for the scheme text (totalling some 10MB) and a choice of links for the maps – two via a ‘dropbox’ website for the zones or overlays, two for other viewing platforms These are also problematic.

a.    The zone maps from https://www.dropbox.com/s/dgwk63lws1iymy8/Zoning_A1L_linked.pdf  imply that you have to set up a Dropbox account. (Some people might be wary of that, even though it looks to be free for the first 500MB. The ex-Alderman didn’t even want to contemplate downloading large files.)

b.   You don’t actually have to set up a Dropbox account, you can hit the ‘Download’ button/Direct download but the zone file (pdf) is nearly 18 MB and contains 44 pages which are organised sequentially by map number. There is a point and click selection of detailed maps from the first (index) page, but no  ‘search for this address’ capacity. 

c.    Once in a detailed map there is no scroll wheel zoom or pan function. The clunky alternative is to use the + and – buttons to magnify the image and then the side bar and bottom bar slides. Generally you need to magnify to 200% to see smaller residential titles (such as strata) clearly.  The bottom slide bar takes you smoothly across the page, but the side slide bar quickly takes you to the preceding or subsequent maps (in numerical order, not north or south) and you can easily lose your place. The only way I found to overcome that was to use the top and bottom arrows on the side bar which enables slightly finer tuning of vertical position. In other words the map displays are not ‘seamless’ as you might expect.

d.   Displaying at 50% shows the whole map sheet but not all the legend or the index – you have to go to 43.2% to get those. At that magnification many of the street names are barely legible, depending on background colour

e.    Zooming to 100% displays about one quarter of the full sheet, but you cannot simultaneously see the legend or index, unless you are looking at a small part of the south west corner. Street names and lot boundaries are now generally clear BUT THERE ARE NO STREET NUMBERS or Property ID numbers !!

3.     The overlay maps at https://www.dropbox.com/s/22q4ra8jkdwztcv/Overlays_A1L_linked.pdf are on an even larger file (54.8MB) but with the same organisational and navigational problems as the zoning file, noted above.

4.     The smartphone app at http://www.launceston.tas.gov.au/lcc/index.php?c=574 gives quite a good seamless city map (‘Launceston City Council Map Data) with zoom and pan functions and the ability to add a number of layers, including zones and overlays. This also provides street numbers at high magnification (Hooray) and maintains the legend in a side box at all magnifications. This is probably the most accessible digital version of the planning scheme, although the search function doesn’t seem to work. (Entering my home address gave the LCC home page and response ‘Your search for (my address) has returned 1 result’  but did not take me to a map showing where it was! Searching for many street names gave a null result.

5.      The GIS webpage at http://launceston.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/basicviewer/index.html?appid=b7904081b140436fbe1a55c362a91599 <http://launceston.maps.arcgis.com/apps/OnePane/basicviewer/index.html?appid=b7904081b140436fbe1a55c362a91599> is laughably inaccurate and scours the world for places with Launceston place names. Examples- Normanstone Road started a search for Normanstone Park, Washington DC; Denison Road returned ‘Denison Rock, shoals, Canada’, Wellington returned ‘Wellington New Zealand’, ‘Road’ started to search for ‘Raz, Zanjan, Iran !!! (No maps were displayed for any of these searches, but hours of fun or frustration can be had looking for places in Launceston.)

6.     I finally found a map of  Launceston Tasmania but it displayed the zone layer as a collage of coloured triangles that looked like a Picasso painting! See below.

click on the image to enlarge

All this leads to the simple question – ‘How is Jane Public going to identify her property and find out what  zoning and overlay restrictions may apply to her address?’ 
From my recent experience, it’s not going to be easy!

Tasmanian Professional Planner