City of Darwin 2030 Suite of Strategies
City of Darwin
Land of the Traditional Owners: City of Darwin operates on Larrakia Country and acknowledges the Larrakia people as the Traditional Owners of all the land and waters of the Greater Darwin region.
This award recognises an outstanding strategic planning project that demonstrates vision and innovation with relevance to the planning profession at large. The City of Darwin’s 2030 Suite of Strategies were the standout nomination in this category.
The suite of strategies includes a Climate Emergency Strategy, Movement Strategy and Greening Strategy. The judges all agreed these strategies represented a brave and innovate approach to tackling critical climate issues in the built environment.
The judges were also impressed at how the strategies, using an evidence-based approach, created a cohesive vision for a cool, clean, and green city. Together the lead documents create a shared understanding, set of objectives and sense of ownership throughout the Council as opposed to traditional approaches that see compartmentalised responsibilities for strategic planning translated and applied with narrow, segmented accountabilities.
The Transport Strategy seeks to move away from what is currently a car dominant city, to a people first philosophy, which includes prioritising infrastructure that enables and encourages active transport modes. The judges acknowledged the challenges to this vision with an existing car-oriented community and praise Council for taking this bold approach which is grounded in a contemporary understanding of good city making.
The judges also observed the transferability of these principles and framework to other climate local government areas and hope to see this strong focus on sustainable planning and development adopted by other Councils in the Northern Territory.