Page updated:
Friday, 7 September 2007

SOCIETY - fresh ideas...

Booming coastal population calls for housing innovation

The Sydney Morning Herald writer who penned those sentiments was a little peeved that Byron Council had raised the idea of a tax on visitors to fund council works. What he succeeded in doing was to highlight an issue certain to become common as Australians flock to the coasts.

At issue is who pays for the provision of services in beachside towns. Locals, through higher rates, or the visitors who are the economic mainstay of many town economies?

A visitor tax, whether applied as a 'bed tax' on accomodation or in the form of higher parking charges, is an issue with the potential to split opinion in towns and to create an electoral headache for local government.

Resentment no secret

It is no secret that some of Byron Bay's residents resent having to pay for the facilities that visitor's enjoy. It should also come as no surprise that accomodation providers would equally resent the imposition of a bed tax, as would others who directly benefit from tourism, such as cafes, restaurants and take-away businesses, were some added economic contribution asked of them.

Behind such sentiments lies the love/ hate relationship with visitors common to residents of popular tourist destinations. There is no doubt that residents benefit from the demand for goods and services that the annual influx of tourists creates, and then there is the employment, even if it might be seasonal. What residents resent are the changes brought to their town by the tourism economy. They know, too, that tourism can increase the local cost of living.

Commercial development has reshaped Byron Bay. Visitors of the late 1980s would see a changed town centre today, thanks to the development of retail and the hospitality industry, particularly the proliferation of cafes and restaurants and backpacker accommodation. While the town has succeeded in retaining some of the atmosphere of past times, it now offers high quality restaurants, late-night entertainment and accomodation that, with the influx of thousands of budget backpackers, has changed the culture of the town. The streets and beaches, especially in summer, are dominated by visitors.

At the same time, the town's sewage treatment system has gone from adequate to ailing as high visitor numbers overload the system in summer. Traffic has increased as the commercial centre has spread along the main street - the only route to the residential areas and towns further along the coast - and, at certain times of the week, almost comes to a standstill. It is harder for locals to find parking. Shops are taking over from homes.

Demographically, Byron started to change in the 1970s and the process has accelerated ever since. Through the 1960s and into the early years of the following decade Byron was a quiet holiday resort for families. Then the surfers discovered it and moved in, eventually setting up a sizeable board manufacturing, clothing and retail industry. Around the same time, elements of the 'alternatives' moved in, making Byron their home and imparting an ambience that can still be found today. Their legacy is the high number of organic food stores and art and craft shops. Later, retirees started to move in, swelling numbers and increasing pressure on the civic infrastructure.

To cater for the newcomers, new residential development filled out the Suffolk Park beachfront area and spread along the other side of the highway; housing was developed in the area adjacent to the Arts and Industry Estate and even Lennox Head, a beachside village twenty minutes drive south of Byron grew into a town. Bangalow, a picturesque village in the hills behind Byron, started to experience an increase in land values as new residents discovered the virtues of small town life in the subtropics.

In the 1990s came the backpacker industry and Byron is now one of the more popular waypoints along the East Coast backpacker trail. Their arrival dramatically increased the visitor population at the same time that Byron was experiencing increasing popularity as an inbound tourism destination and was attracting short-term visitation through events such as the blues festival. This population boom, both permnanent residents as well as visitors, has produced the crisis in town infrastructure that is so controversial today.

Demographic change comes to coastal communities

Byron Bay is a sign of things to come. Its pattern of development is being repeated, though in a less extreme form, all around the Australian coast. Drawing on his own research and information from the 2000 Census demographic analyst, Bernard Salt, identified the trend to beachside living in Australia. He said the country is heading into a boom in coastal living.

According to Salt (2001; The Big Shift; Hardie Grant, Melbourne), the move to the coasts will lead to the development of a vocal and politically influential 'beachside culture'. Behind the move is a search for 'lifestyle' that is fuelled by both real and imaginary images of coastal living. At present, it is led by retirees who are swelling the populations of coastal cities like Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie in NSW, the Sunshine Coast and Hervey Bay in Queensland. Within a generation they will be joined by more working-age people seeking escape from what is expected to become an increasingly frantic pace of city life. The real estate industry should do well though the case of Byron stands as a warning to state government and coastal councils in regard to town infrastructure.

Coastal population growth is both an exciting and fearful prospect for local government. Exciting because the influx will boost local economies, employment prospects and the number of ratepayers; fearful because the new residents will increase pressure on roads, sewage systems, waste disposal, health care, sporting and recreational facilities, public amenity and - increasingly - the need for aged care. Irrespective of whether local government imposes some kind of visitor tax, as has been proposed for Byron Shire, increasing visitor and resident numbers are likely to bring higher rates for residents.

Somewhere to live

When the Herald called for innovative thinking instead of visitor taxes, it identified the only process that can accommodate the coastal population boom to come. Such thinking will be needed in the Byron local government area, where development is hemmed in by a narrow coastal strip bordered by ocean to the east and by an escarpment only a few kilometres to the west. Fortunately, council is now showing an ability to look beyond the established solutions to urbanisation.

In a rare bout of innovative thinking, Byron Council in February 2001 adopted legislation that may contribute to a solution - though not completely solve - the challenge of accommodating more people on less land.

The process started when Byron Council's environmental and planning services director, David Kanaley, travelled to Europe on a Local Government and Shire Association Albert Mainerd Scholaship to investigate 'ecovillage' development. Ecovillages are settlements designed according to high environmental standards to provide cheaper access to land and a sense of community. The outcome of David's study was that council would grant development approval to 'ecohamlets' - small ecovillages, essentially - as a means of accommodating more people on a limited area without the sprawl of conventional subdivision.

The hamlets would consist of clusters of freehold dwellings on shared common land with a percentage of native plants as habitat for local biodiversity, the onsite treatment of wastewater, dwelling designed to reduce energy consumption and the potential of ecohamlets to include economic activity and create local livelihoods. This last point is important in a region boasting the state's second highest rate of unemployment (the IIlawara coast south of Sydney has NSW's highest unemployment rate at around ten percent).

Ecohamlets and community living, however, will not appeal to everyone; there will have to be a certain amount of conventional, detached dwelling development. Well-designed town houses and low-rise apartments could relieve some of the population pressure on local infrastructure and ecosystems.

A prototype?

The Byron bay area will prove useful as a prototype for coastal development if the council stays open to innovative ideas. Whether it does will depend on the attitudes expressed by its largely well educated and sometimes electorally volatile residents.

That they are fearful of both urban and commercial development was shown in the 1990s when local action effectively blocked plans by Club Med to build near the town. Other developments have attracted a lesser but similar reaction. At the basis of local fears is that the Gold Coast, with its high rise, about an hours' drive north along the Pacific Highway, will spread south and obliterate Byron as it is.

But Byron is already being changed. There may be no residentail high-rise, but Byron is not the town it was a decade ago. It is how the town and its council handles change that will determine Byron's value as a model for Australia's booming coastal settlements.