Planning for disaster
- July 15, 2012
- Michael Buxton
Melbourne already has 30 years of land supply but Ted Baillieu and Matthew Guy want more.
Illustration: Matt Davidson.HOPES have faded that the Baillieu government would continue the moderate approach to land use of former premier Sir Rupert Hamer. Instead this is government in the Jeff Kennett style.
The Baillieu administration is rushing to change the Victorian planning system, with radical deregulation changing Melbourne irrevocably for the worse.
Planning Minister Matthew Guy has advantaged a select group of landowners by adding their 6000 hectares to the recent 43,000-hectare increase in Melbourne’s area. Guy cynically dubbed this process ”Logical Inclusions” but it is wholly irrational.
A land glut has been created as demand for outer urban housing has crashed. Developers quickly added new home subsidies to the price of housing. Subsidies encouraged new home buyers to borrow heavily in the belief that land prices would always rise. Now they are falling, potentially trapping the most vulnerable in a debt crisis.
Melbourne has 30 years’ land supply at world’s lowest densities. Yet Guy perseveres, adding land to potentially enrich a few at the expense of the many. Melbourne cannot afford premiers and planning ministers who get land markets so disastrously wrong.
Almost every outer urban council has chronicled a growing catastrophe of inadequate infrastructure and jobs. Governments cannot afford to meet the rising costs of outer urban infrastructure. This failure and car-dependent urban design levies crippling running costs on to many outer urban householders.
Baillieu and Guy show a single-minded intent to finish the job Kennett and his Planning Minister, Robert Maclellan, started. This is part of a systematic confrontation. Melburnians should get ready for a rough ride – the planning battleground until now will be just a skirmish to this coming war.
New planning zones will protect relatively small areas of historic housing, open up other residential areas to major growth and leave much of Melbourne with little protection against piecemeal redevelopment. The government clearly thinks it is clever to satisfy some influential resident groups while giving the rest of Melbourne and Victoria over to developers.
New commercial zones will lead to a retailing and commercial free-for-all. Much of Melbourne’s historic strip shopping centres will be demolished or distorted to facades in front of medium and high-rise development. Struggling centres will feel additional pressure from a broad range of allowed uses and expanded bulky goods complexes.
Another blow is directed at Melbourne’s green wedges and rural areas. The government will allow large-scale commercial development through hotel, conference and restaurant complexes in beautiful places such as the Upper Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula. An extended range of accommodation types will be allowed.
Rural subdivision will be encouraged, creating thousands more small rural lots on some of the world’s most fire-prone land. Already, well over 50,000 allotments exist in Melbourne’s hinterland. Why do we need more?
Matthew Guy’s new planning system will also allow the unrestricted expansion of industrialised farming on rural land. There is a need for such massive structures, but the previous farming zones tried to confine them to acceptable areas.
The process this government is following in introducing its changes is also a concern. Guy withheld the details of new zones to sell his message before its full impact is realised hoping that bad news in the fine print will be overlooked when eventually revealed. This is a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion.
This government revels in its blatant advantaging of vested interests. It provides unrestricted access to property groups and openly panders to them. Many of the new uses and developments will be allowed without the need for planning permits with no right of resident notification, objection or appeal. There are going to be a lot of very unhappy Victorians.
What could have been done instead of assailing the last vestiges of the Hamer legacy? Most people agree the Kennett planning system is a disaster, one of the world’s largest, most complex, costly and uncertain. These problems can be fixed by rules that state clearly what is and is not allowed. Prohibitions for inappropriate uses as much as allowing minor uses without the need for permits provide certainty.
Like most of the world’s planning deregulators, the Baillieu government says it will provide certainty for ”mums and dads” and small businesses. But this is a smokescreen for pandering to big business. Rewarding the powerful and connected is the real motivation. Allowing developers to build dysfunctional suburbs, big retailers to destroy small business and big agriculture to ruin landscapes will advantage only them, at massive cost to everyone else. There is nothing rational about this unless you are a recipient of the largesse.
The cities that survive this century will be those that protect their vital resources. Melbourne’s greatest long-term assets are its people and its environment. Amenity is almost everything to a city. It is right to intensify mixed-use activity centres near public transport nodes but not at the expense of our built heritage. It is madness to even contemplate the destruction of our Victorian and pre-war strip shopping centres. These are among the city’s greatest economic assets, attracting innovators, investors and a broad range of economic drivers.
The natural resources and environment of Melbourne’s hinterland similarly are vital to the city’s future prosperity and success. We destroy them for the short-term gain of a few at our peril.
■Michael Buxton is environment and planning professor at RMIT University.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/planning-for-disaster-20120714-222v5.html#ixzz20eFXXTd5
Glen Eira Debates 
July 15, 2012 at 5:29 PM
Buxton is all theory. He sits up at RMIT taking pot shots at any planning ideas that come out of the Department. Anyone that thinks that Guy is providing the thinking behind the changes to planning laws is fair dinkum dreaming. He formed a committee of experts over a year ago, Some had sat on similar committees during the Brumby and Bracks governments. Maybe Buxton is miffed because no one sort his opinion.
July 15, 2012 at 6:47 PM
Buxton has been on plenty of committees. When the game’s rigged though you are entitled to be a little miffed. The argument still holds. This isk developers’ paradise thanks to Gy & Ballieau
July 15, 2012 at 9:18 PM
You obviously don’t like developers. Fishermans Bend may turn out to be a success. Four new suburbs with infrastructure. 2030 had plenty of faults. It allowed C60 and I suspect that you may have been amongst the critics.
July 15, 2012 at 10:14 PM
“Bent by name, bent by nature”. The history of Melbourne is the history of politicians and councillors furthering their own interests through dodgy property dealings and expenditure of public money. We’re so inured to corruption that it simply no longer shocks.
Professor Buxton made several points I agree with, but unfortunately he chose overall to give it a party-political tone. We have had Liberal governments, Labor governments, Coalition governments, and they all lie, fail to deliver on their promises, undermine public transport and encourage private motorised transport. While Maclellanisation of our railways was a Liberal policy, and the Lonie report recommended closure of 9 out of 14 suburban railway lines, Melbourne 2030 was the work of several Labor Ministers. And both have promised a railway to Doncaster, starting over 5 decades ago. The Hitachi trains delivered to Melbourne in 1972 even included “Doncaster” as a destination.
Zones are only a small part of the Planning System. The overwhelming evidence, at least in Glen Eira, is that they are irrelevant. In terms of decision-making, a Planning Scheme only needs to be considered, not applied. Council knows that, VCAT knows that, State Government knows that. I share Buxton’s distaste for current politics, but the solution is not yet more “rules”, which in practice are mere guidelines. While I don’t like what is happening to the residents of the areas targeted for substantial development, human nature being what it is, a new system is required in which developers can build as big as they want but at a substantial price—a price that is used to compensate the residents for loss of amenity, pays for infrastructure, and adequately funds open space within safe convenient walking distance.
Forget “certainty” or the woefully misused “appropriateness” of development. A sustainable system needs the principle of negative feedback at its core. Its currently missing from the planning system, which is a further reminder how few scientists, statisticians, mathematicians or anybody trained in logic enter politics.
July 16, 2012 at 7:37 AM
excellent documentary on ABC2 last night called ‘Battle for Brooklyn. Will be repeated on Wed at 11.25 and on IVIEW. Tells the story of a development in New York of a sports statdium completely changing the fabric of the neighbourhood. 1000 people forced to vacate their homes by the council declaring their residences slums. Shows the fight by the residents and local businesses to keep the fabric of their community and the political corruption on the other side that supports the development. Seems like a bit similar to a big development we all know. It also reminds me of Carnegie which had been such a great community but is going to be lose all its character through over development.
July 16, 2012 at 11:31 AM
It appears that developments in activity centres such as C60 will not change. That is a pity for the residents in that area as a 20+ story building proposed will have an impact on the area. Hopefully the improvements ro the centre of the racecourse will assist residents. Speaking of which, it has been mentioned a number of times that there was an agreement entered into by Councillors Pilling, Hyams, Lipshutz and Esakoff with the Melbourne Racing Club. Could you please provide a link to the agreement as I cannot find a thing on the new Council website.
July 16, 2012 at 11:42 AM
We suggest that you check out the minutes of 27th April, 2011 for the Draft Agreement. See: http://www.gleneira.vic.gov.au/Council/About_Council/Meetings_and_agendas/Council_meeting_minutes/Wednesday_27_April_2011_Minutes
July 16, 2012 at 3:02 PM
What improvements to the centre of the racecourse? Nothing has happened, whilst the MRC has moved on with shortlisting three companies to undertake the racecourse development. In the meantime, there has been no communication on the much vaunted agreement between Council and the MRC from signatories Pilling, Esakoff Hyams and Lipshutz. The silence is deafening.
July 16, 2012 at 4:09 PM
The only comment that has been made occurred at last council meeting where Esakoff and Hyams put the blame entirely on the one residents who had objected to the proposal. We note that no mention was made of fence removal and other aspects of the agreement!
July 16, 2012 at 6:41 PM
Ok, I will put my hand up and admit I was a Pilling supporter. However what a disappointment he has become. He can say that he helped forge the agreement with the MRC and gloat on his website what an achievement it has been but what really has happened – nothing but a massive over the top development approved for the MRC. He now only comments on his blog on soft issues in Murrumbeena, a sad sorrowful existence on what might have been.