Industry Leaders EP22 with Jess Noonan

Be Inspired Podcast
Be Inspired Podcast
Industry Leaders EP22 with Jess Noonan
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Episode Summary

Jess Noonan never meant to be a town planner — she wanted to be a nurse, or an accountant. Twenty years on she is a Senior Principal at Tract, co-hosts the PlanningXChange podcast, and tells host Seton Walsh-Rose that Victoria’s planning system has been reshaped in four or five years. Her verdict is mixed: rezoning land is not the same as building housing, and while roughly a dozen taxes erode feasibility, the homes do not follow the zoning.

Episode Chapters

  • 00:11 Episode introduction
  • 02:38 Not the usual planner origin story
  • 03:11 The thread her father spotted
  • 04:11 Planning began as a health problem
  • 05:13 From Bendigo to Melbourne
  • 05:32 Industry involvement as a social crutch
  • 05:54 A cadetship on census boundaries
  • 07:27 The colleague who opened the door
  • 07:47 Ten to fifteen years with the Institute
  • 08:26 Why getting involved matters
  • 09:18 Access to decision makers
  • 10:30 “What is a podcast?”
  • 10:52 Recording into the void
  • 12:22 One microphone on the corner of a table
  • 13:19 The path to Tract
  • 13:55 An industry that used to be static
  • 15:32 What the reform is trying to fix
  • 16:20 Bold policy, faster decisions
  • 16:45 Planning moves to centre stage
  • 17:24 Centralisation of power
  • 18:00 Code assessment arrives in Victoria
  • 19:23 Queensland’s giant LGAs
  • 20:33 Pros and cons of a bigger LGA
  • 22:12 Population growth as the lever
  • 22:38 Economic development as an approval pathway
  • 25:13 Feasibility is still broken
  • 25:33 Roughly a dozen taxes
  • 26:22 Rezoning is not building
  • 26:42 You still have to get the finance
  • 28:24 Planning takes the blame
  • 29:10 What PlanningXChange became
  • 30:00 Biggest audience is now the US
  • 31:28 Planning is not boring
  • 32:23 A Master of Public Health
  • 32:48 The health cost of isolation
  • 34:35 Density and connection
  • 35:41 The US as testing ground
  • 39:38 States converging
  • 41:14 AI and the submission that vanished
  • 41:45 The human element in planning
  • 42:09 Advice for people coming through
  • 42:50 Supporters, not just mentors
  • 44:05 Keep educating yourself
  • 45:24 Good work nobody hears about
  • 45:47 Voice is not self-promotion
  • 46:32 You will not get it right
  • 47:07 Give it a go
  • 47:50 Almost no negative feedback
  • 48:59 Leaders who ask “are you sure?”
  • 50:35 The people at the edges
  • 52:06 Life in the trenches
  • 54:27 Closing thoughts

Key Takeaways

  • Town planning started as public health
  • Careers do not need a straight line into them.
  • Getting involved early compounds
  • The industry was static, and now it is not
  • Reform has moved decisions upward
  • Rezoning is not the same as building.
  • Roughly a dozen taxes erode the numbers.
  • Planning is only one part of the housing story.

Sound Bites / Quotes:
“Really the genesis of town planning comes from a health problem, you know, needing to segregate land use into different areas so that you didn’t have disease.”
— Jess Noonan, ~03:11

References & Resources

Connect and Follow Jess Noonan
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/noonanjessica
Website: https://tract.com.au/

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