Client: Northern Territory Government, Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics

Macroplan were engaged by the Northern Territory Government to provide an assessment of Greater Darwin’s activity centres framework within the Darwin Land Use Plan 2015. This considered a complete audit of all activity centres, their competitiveness across the Darwin area and providing a broader review of national policy and centre structure to consider an optimal outcome for activity centres within the Darwin region.

Along with determining the likely timing of Greater Darwin reaching certain population thresholds, this understanding of the performance and structure of the current centre hierarchy across Greater Darwin would then be used to inform the delivery of future activity centres, most notably within the Palmerston growth corridor (known as the Holtze to Elizabeth River Subregional Land Use Plan (HESLUP)). Macroplan’s analysis and detailed projections, with clear methodology presented, was able to ascertain what provision of retail floorspace was required over the forecast period for each population threshold.

This analysis was ultimately able to confirm to what scale, distribution and hierarchy of centres would be needed within the HESLUP region, without undermining the viability of other core activity centres, such as the Palmerston Primary Activity Centre.