Will south-east Queensland produce enough new jobs for the extra two million new residents wanting to make the region home over the next 25 years?
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Or will we have more and more people simply driving backwards and forwards to Brisbane along the motorways north, south and west to work as the trains fail to keep pace with population growth?
That is why you should have a good look at these graphs to make sense of the pages of information contained in the South-East Queensland Regional Plan released on Thursday.
1. Population
Brisbane will take almost one-quarter – or 409,800 - of the extra 2 million people moving into south-east Queensland in the next 25 years.
Ipswich appears to be on the edge of a new boom time. Its population is predicted to more than double over the next 25 years; from 193,000 to 520,000.
Expect to hear the name of the suburb "Ripley" a lot in the next 10 years.
Extra people living on the Gold Coast (extra 372,400), Logan (extra 277,000), Moreton Bay (extra 229,000) and Sunshine Coast councils (extra 207,500) will all hug the Pacific and Bruce Highways.
2. Where are all the new homes going to be?
Of the more than half a million new homes needed in the next 25 years, 223,000 of them will be in Brisbane.
But almost all of them will be small apartments, duplexes or townhouses built on existing lots of land.
This is called "infill" development and 94 per cent of new homes in Brisbane will be infill. Think of the new face of riverside West End. That's infill.
Almost 80 per cent of new homes on the Gold Coast will be infill (79 per cent).
If you want your own block of land head to Ipswich and its new Ripley development, which will be home to 30,000 people, or head to the Scenic Rim, Lockyer Valley, or Somerset councils outside Ipswich. Plenty of room for brand new blocks of land out there.
3. What will we be doing where we live – specialised precincts
The buzz phrase is precinct development.
That means congregating similar types of industries around each other to get economies of scale and to try to group workers with similar skills closer to these areas.
The emerging precincts:
A - Chermside – It is a growing health and education region with Prince Charles Hospital, Medical Engineering Research Facility. The replacement for the former Barrett Youth Adolescent Centre will be built here.
B - Pinjarra Hills out past Kenmore – This will grow as a technology and mining research centre with CSIRO and mining centre for excellence.
C - Coomera – No surprises. The Village Roadshow Studios make it a film and media centre, but not a residential area. More likely to see people live in Brisbane and Gold Coast and drive.
D - Sunshine Coast's Sippy Downs, north of Caloundra – With the University of the Sunshine Coast and the Sunshine Coast Innovation Centre and the nearby Sunshine Coast University Hospital, this is a genuine education and technology centre.
E – Redlands' Cleveland area – an emerging health and health technology precinct based around the Redlands Hospital and the Mater Private Hospital.
South Logan
Caboolture East
Southern Thornlands (Redlands Shire)
Beaudesert East
Upper Mt Gravatt to Beenleigh
Yatala and Stapylton, Robina to Varsity Lakes, Southport to Broadwater and Coolangatta
North Lakes and Mango Hill in Moreton Region
Maroochydore, Buderim North, Kawana, Caloundra, Nambour and Caloundra South.
4. Problems are already emerging (Table 14 – Regional Growth)
A – The report lists the giant proposed residential development on the Sunshine Coast at Halls Creek as a potential residential growth area.
Yet Sunshine Coast mayor Mark Jamieson, the new president of the Local Government Association of Queensland, on Thursday already ruled it out because it cut into the green space between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.
"This is too important an asset to see it further reduced – which is why council will not support Halls Creek – to the south of Aura – for future urban development."
B – South-east Queensland needs future job generators.
There is conflict between the rising population of the regions ringing Brisbane and the number of jobs needed in these areas to stop residents simply flocking back into Brisbane's CBD for jobs.
Ipswich's population will grow by a staggering 327,000 by 2041, but surprisingly the report suggests it needs only an extra 65,000 new jobs. That is more jobs than existed in Ipswich in 2011.
Moreton Bay Council's population will increase by 229,000 people and it needs an extra 74,400 new jobs by 2041. That is almost as many jobs as exist today.
Logan's population will increase by 277,000 by 2041, but needs an additional 70,400 new jobs to cope.
Redland's population will grow by 38,000 by 2041, but it is still predicting the need for an extra 24,400 jobs.
5. Summary – Potential Future Growth areas
Although the report indicates job generators in each of these regions, state and and council policies must be directed to the overall picture to meet the demands of the report.
Planning and Local Government Minister Jackie Trad said the plan was about "riding out" the good times and bad times in economic indicators.
"This plan is to ride out any boom and bust cycle that might happen," she told reporters on Thursday.
"It a plan for the long-term, for 25 years. So in that time we will see a lot of economic indicators go up and a lot of economic indicators go down," she said.
"But this plan is about riding them all out to make sure that we have the best south-east Queensland region we can have."
