Our desire for Canberra is for it to be liveable, sustainable, resilient and open to all. This means that it is easy to get around and easy to access work, education, services, leisure and activities. Canberra is a knowledge city that can attract and retain talent and investment, can develop the education and training jobs of the future, allows business to diversify, grow and partner. Most importantly, it means Canberra supports diversity, equality and accessibility.
The 2018 ACT Planning Strategy sets a vision ‘to be a sustainable, competitive and equitable city that respects Canberra as a city in the landscape and the National Capital, while being responsive to the future and resilient to change’.
Future cities use data and technology to achieve sustainability, efficiencies, economic growth and enhance wellbeing factors for the people who live, study and work there. These cities are easy to get around in and are places where it’s easy to access work, education, services and leisure. A future city uses seamless technology to enable connection and innovation. To be a future city, is to put the wellbeing of the community as the top priority, it’s digitally connected and inclusive.
Data is core infrastructure that enables everything else. It helps us understand how the city is working today, predict changes that need to be made to address hotspots, cater for emerging needs, provide better services and understand if changes have been effective.
The Canberra of the future will be co-designed. With the community, and teams within and beyond government accessing expertise across the range of amenity, from lived experience, engineering, parks and wildlife, utilities, traffic, water, sustainability, community services and technology. This is needed to ensure we plan and design our major initiatives to achieve all the things we want from a new or renewed development.