Our role as guardians

What does being a guardian mean to you? (asked at the Youth Summit)

  • Participants shared that a “good” guardian takes initiative, thinks about impacts from their decisions, connects with community, is open minded and makes positive change.

Reflecting on the way people live and what they need

Summit participants discussed where they live, work and play (mapping movements), and access to facilities and services. Pinch points, or issues that can impact adversely on accessing those things, that were frequently mentioned included:

  • Public transport
  • Reliance on cars
  • Connectivity of the active transport network
  • Commute times
  • Traffic and congestion
  • Parking availability

Reflecting on where future residents would ideally like to live

Summit participants used a range of different personas to think about the needs of different members of the community.

  • 75% of tables suggested a non-traditional housing type for their persona,

When thinking about the best suburb, town or village for their persona;

  • 84% of suggestions were for suburbs in Central Cairns and surrounds,
  • 30% of all suggestions were for Edge Hill
  • 15% of all suggestions were for Cairns North

When asked about the kind of compromises that the persona may need to make when considering their housing aspirations, tables mentioned;

  • Housing affordability
  • Availability of housing
  • Safety
  • Noise and amenity
  • Tenure options, and
  • Transport options

Mapping growth

Participants brought together all their learnings from the day and mapped where they would add the 72,000 new residents in 2050. The exercise included a variety of housing types for more detail on how they thought the area could be planned and developed.

Participants were also asked to add their qualifiers for growth; these could relate to infrastructure, services, shops or other facilities that would need to be in place to accommodate the new residents.

The results showed that summit participants:

  • would like to see growth spread across Cairns, rather than in a single area
  • would like to see diverse housing options across Cairns
  • considered areas impacted by natural hazards and limited population growth in these areas
  • placed the largest number of new residents in the Southern Corridor.