Karratha revitalisation community workshop

The Karratha Revitalisation Plan is a project being undertaken by the Shire of Roebourne to improve the liveability and amenity of Karratha’s oldest neighbourhoods – Bulgarra, Pegs Creek and Millars Well.  The Strategy is being undertaken in the context of the town’s transformation as a City of the North and will deliver plans for these suburbs to guide future development in coming years. To do so, the project will consider the capacity of existing infrastructure, transport networks, existing amenities, housing supply, social and cultural values  and economic and environmental conditions specific to Karratha.

Just as important is understanding how the local community of Karratha would like their town to develop. As part of this process, the first of three community workshops was held on 12th February 2014 at the Karratha Leisureplex. The purpose of the workshop was to obtain input from the Karratha residents on how their neighbourhoods could be improved and made more liveable, particularly in the context of population growth, economic changes associated with the resources sector, local environmental conditions and social values.

Karratha townsite (Source: Shire of Roebourne)

As leader of the project team, Shelley Shepherd represented Essential Environmental at the first workshop, which received an overwhelming response with over 80 community members in attendance.  Shelley, together with some of the other members of the consultant team – Scott and Fiona from UDLA, Ryan from Arup and Neil from PCA, lead the discussions during the packed 2 hour workshop, encouraging residents to sit in groups within their own suburbs and exchange views on issues such as housing density, improvement of public open space facilities, verges, road networks, drainage reserves and pathways, amongst many others. Tables for each of the three suburbs were identified using the colours of local footy teams the Karratha Kats (Millars Well), and Karratha Falcons (Bulgarra), as well as Pegs Creek Primary School!

Community members at with Karratha Revitalisation workshop, 12th February 2014

The well attended first workshop demonstrated the commitment of Karratha residents to their town and has provided an excellent start to cultivating future development scenarios for Bulgarra, Pegs Creek and Millars Well over the next month or so.

As part of the focus on community engagement for this project, an online collaborative map has been made available as an innovative way in which community members are able to provide comments and suggestions on how they would like to see key areas of Bulgarra, Pegs Creek and Millars Well developed into the future.

Snapshot of the Karratha Revitalisation online collaborative map

This nifty online tool allows residents to record their suggestions for the town whether they were able to attend the workshop or not, and read comments made by other residents. Check out this link to learn about the types of changes the Karratha community would like to see happen in their town:

https://www.collaborativemap.org/KarrathaRevitalisation/

The next stage of the community engagement aspect of the Karratha Revitalisation project is to consolidate the feedback received from the first workshop and from the collaborative map to create a number of future development scenarios, to be discussed at the second community workshop. This workshop will be held on 5th March so stay tuned to read about how the project is coming along!