2021-03-25
Almost one in five Canberrans lives in Gungahlin.
Or to be more accurate, one in five Canberrans sleeps in Gungahlin.
More than 25 years after the first houses went up in Ngunnawal and Palmerston, there’s still no cinema (you’ll have to wait another year), no hospital (unless you’re a pet) and not nearly enough jobs for the 76,088 residents who call Gungahlin home.
This is a problem, but I see it as a great opportunity.
Recent surveys of Gungahlin residents have focussed mostly on what people don’t want – more badly laid out apartment blocks with not enough green space - but not a lot of attention on what we do.
Is it more services? Aged Care? More jobs? Community gardens? Is it not just more tree cover – we definitely need that – but what about path lighting around Yerrabi Pond to help everyone feel safer? Or thinking outside the box - what about music venues, destination dining and fantastic public events? Something that inspires people to get on the light rail in the opposite direction.
As Gungahlin residents, let’s not just live here…
Let’s LIVE here.
Live it up.
Live large.
Let’s start with the Celebrate Gungahlin Festival. Spread over nine days, lets celebrate the culture, community spirit and talents of Gungahlin’s people, community groups, and businesses. Support local businesses who have been doing it tough over the last 12 months, participate in hands on activities and learning experiences and make new connections with the people around you.
I will be there with the Possibilitree, inviting everyone to write down their ideas and vision for Gungahlin on a leaf and then attaching it to the tree. This is an opportunity to give the community the power to decide what their neighbourhood needs. It might not seem like much, but this collective space is the start of a shared vision of Gungahlin.
Let’s imagine new job opportunities in the Gungahlin, especially ones that create a multigenerational, multicultural sense of community. I’m thinking of a music school, a dance school, aged care residences, outdoor entertainment options and more.
The thing about a vision, though, no matter how positive – it doesn’t happen automatically, or all by itself. A shared and coherent vision, backed by real thinking and work, is always going to be stronger.
We need disparate groups to join forces. We need bold, imaginative ideas for how to use our spaces to create a Gungahlin that works for everyone, not just two or three but twenty or thirty years from now.
We need to show that the best planning decisions don’t have to come top-down from government, but can sometimes come bottom-up from the street-level vision of our diverse Gungahlin community.
We need to celebrate as a strength that Gungahlin is still in the process of defining itself. As the final packages of land in Gungahlin start to build out, we have a great opportunity to shape the future of our district.
I invite all Gungahlin residents to think about it too, and if you have ideas for how to make our unique part of Canberra more vibrant, more livable and more welcoming, then please make them heard.
Lets start LIVING in Gungahlin.