By Olivia Usien & Garner Clancey, with funding from Western Sydney Area Assistance Scheme, NSW Department of Community Services. 2007. 21 pages.
Contents
- Young people and shopping centres
- Development applications
- Some successful approaches
- Promising initiatives
- Course of action
- Recommended approaches
- Overcoming the obstacles
- The way forward
- Where to get help
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Shopping Centres: Considering youth issues in shopping centre development applications PDF 630KB
Introduction
This resource has been developed as a guide for local government to use during consultation with shopping centre management and development companies when shopping centre re-developments / expansions are proposed.
Its primary aim is to provide guidance to local government to ensure that the needs of young people are appropriately catered for during centre re-developments, namely through the development application (DA) process.
Initially, the project intended to identify successful approaches that councils had adopted to ensure that young people were considered and accommodated for in development proposals. Following preliminary consultation with councils where there had recently been substantial re-development of a shopping centre, it became apparent that few councils had managed to incorporate youth issues in development applications. The approaches that were successful will be detailed in the resource alongside a list of proposed recommendations that council is encouraged to advocate and adopt when developments are being discussed and proposals put forward.
Despite the limited use of the development application process to address youth issues, there have been and continue to be many successful approaches operating within shopping centres in Western Sydney (as well as nationally) that work towards improving relationships between young people and stakeholders.
Previous initiatives such as the Social Belonging Project in Penrith Plaza, the development of a Public Space Youth Committee in Westpoint Blacktown and the Equal Space Project in Stockland Wetherill Park (just to name a few) were all positively evaluated and well received by participants (Turner 2002). There are also a multitude of other initiatives operating within shopping centres, such as youth protocols and youth spaces, that have neither been documented nor evaluated but which warrant acknowledgment as they too have significantly improved local partnerships.
Acknowledgements
This resource constitutes part of the larger Hanging Out Together project as auspiced by the Youth Action Policy Association (YAPA) and funded by the Western Sydney Area Assistance Scheme from the Department of Community Services.
Five Western Sydney Councils were consulted throughout the development of this resource. These councils were selected due to the recent completion of major redevelopments/ expansions of shopping centres within their boundaries. We would like to acknowledge and thank the relevant personnel from the following local government areas for their time and valuable contributions:
- Bankstown City Council
- Baulkham Hills Shire Council
- Blacktown City Council
- Parramatta City Council
- Penrith City Council.
The conclusions gleaned through this research have been accumulated in this resource to provide local government with suggestions and prospective solutions to adopt in their work with shopping centre re-developments. We anticipate the information provided throughout this document will prove both useful and insightful in future work endeavours.
