Figures detailing the number of net new dwellings granted permits for the second quarter of the 2016/17 financial year has just been published. Glen Eira continues to quadruple what is stated as required with a yearly average of 2000+ net new dwellings. We remind readers that the 11,000 dwellings required to meet population growth by 2031 will be reached at the latest in 2020 at this rate!
Unfortunately the complete data for Port Phillip, Bayside and Stonnington is not available. Even if the data were available we remind readers that both Port Phillip and Stonnington are ‘special cases’ in that the former is a major tourist centre and hence it has several ‘capital city’zonings. Stonnington, according to the State of Play Reports has over 10% of its municipality zoned as commercial and development is concentrated in these areas. Glen Eira has a bare 3% of its land zoned as Commercial. In Glen Eira development occurring in the commercial areas is minimal, compared to the damage done in local residential streets zoned as GRZ and RGZ and yes, even NRZ.
Based on these figures alone, there is no reason why the zones cannot be reviewed and the extent of GRZ and RGZ areas reduced. If council is serious about implementing structure plans that take account of resident views, then the borders of the so called ‘activity centres’ and their respective zoning must be the foundation of any such review.
Here is the data and please keep in mind the question of ‘density’ when municipalities such as Monash, Kingston, Manningham, etc are double and triple the size of Glen Eira. What impact does 2000+ new dwellings per annum have on density, infrastructure, open space, traffic and transport on a municipality that is only 38.9sqk in comparison to these other councils?
Glen Eira Debates 
January 19, 2017 at 11:37 PM
Still our rates sky rocket, is there any correlation between cramming more residents into your municipality and our raising rates? Or are we being conned with the opposite view that more is better.
If Glen Eira continues to concrete its open space areas and the same rate as we are doing now, the city is going to be a concrete and glass nightmare.
We need a new open space strategy now, to replace Newton’s and Burkes disaster, that just whitewashed over any need to plan and supply quality open space for boom town conditions.
On top of this we need a Urban Tree Plan to help keep down rising ambient temperatures, and supply quality open space, not continuing to give priority to throwing an ever increasing amount of rate-payers dollars and up-keeping flats boring sports fields and there infrastructure.
Our Sustainable Living Strategy just pays lip-service to rag-tag bag of mediocre ideals, that they, the bureaucrats in service have no intentions or desires of even remotely achieving.
It beginning look like our CEO still has a fair amount bureaucrats that are more than happy to continue along with Newton’s hoaxes.
Now, the question remains ” how long do we give Rebecca McKenzie and her middling administration to get their act together and turn Newton’s Titanic around?
January 20, 2017 at 1:58 PM
I like your last point. Changes in personnel have happened and that is a good thing. McKenzie has been in for a year. We’ve had a planning scheme review that was forced on them. We’ve now got supposedly structure planning underway and consultation on the shopping strips. All sounds good. The outcomes are what matters most and whether or not real change is the end result. If nothing much happens then it would be fair to say that McKenzie is following in Newton’s footsteps. That would be a disaster for Glen Eira.
January 20, 2017 at 6:36 AM
The explanation for the high number of developments is quite easily answered. Developers see Glen Eira Council as a push over when it comes to maximizing their efforts. Always has been and probably always will be. Just ask them.
January 20, 2017 at 11:21 AM
All financial incentives are there for developers thank you very much. When a council drops its parking and drainage levies, extracts a bare minimum for open space for years on end, and doesn’t bother with getting on with the job of decent planning no wonder developers see Glen Eira as heaven. Money for jam.
January 20, 2017 at 12:32 PM
Another two years at least before anything changes with structure plans being finished. That means another 4000 dwellings into streets already bursting at the seams. The new council has to fast forward everything and spend the money on hiring real experts who know what they are doing.
January 22, 2017 at 11:15 AM
The outcome is both Council and State Government policy. Both have insisted there should be no controls on density or rate of change. Both insisted RGZ shall be imposed upon us without strategic justification and absolutely without public scrutiny. Their secret decisions have never been reviewed by RZMAC. Both have decided open space isn’t important [seen ANY decision where lack of public open space has moderated development??]. ResCode compliance is considered optional if you’re big enough or have enough money. Remember too that Council apparently has “concern about where it is going” but hasn’t shared with us what it intends to do about its concerns.
DELWP has conveniently published its definitions for low, medium and high density: they are less than 25, between 25 and 75, and more than 75 dwellings per hectare of developable land [excludes roads for example]. Nowhere in our planning scheme does it specify “high density” as a goal, target, or outcome. And yet high density is exactly what VCAT and Council have imposed on us, in areas that suffer from traffic congestion, parking problems, poor drainage, and lack of open space.
Even if Council did lift its game and start delivering on the strategic work it was supposed to have been doing for the last 15 years, there is still the huge gaping hole in the planning system that is VCAT. That unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable body is by default responsible for planning policy, and makes it on the fly through the cumulative and long-term effects of its decisions. In disputes between DELWP and VCAT about interpretation of sloppily-drafted clauses in planning schemes, VCAT wins. No politician has the courage to reform the operation of VCAT’s Planning and Environment List.
In the meantime the MRDAC report hasn’t been released, there has been no government response, and their attention has been diverted by expensive litigation in the High Court as state politicians scramble to avoid having their rorting of funds intended for electoral purposes scrutinized by the Ombudsman, in defiance of the Ombudsman Act 1973.
January 23, 2017 at 9:09 AM
Couldn’t understand this post so full of acronyms it was near impossible to decipherer who is doing what to who, or whatever, all chances to be educated, eroded or lost.
January 23, 2017 at 11:47 AM
I don’t think you’ve made much effort. Still, here are the 6 acronyms used you find bamboozling.
RZMAC Residential Zones Ministerial Advisory Committee
RGZ Residential Growth Zone
DELWP Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning
ResCode Set of standards and objectives in Sections 54, 55, 56 of Planning Schemes
VCAT Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
MRDAC Managing Residential Development Advisory Committee
January 23, 2017 at 3:17 PM
Reprobate I love your stuff, you’re usually head and shoulders above the rest of us plebes. And that valuable.
Sometimes I find reading post will lots of acronyms like wading through mud. Give me that clear stream of conciseness anyday
Please do as all good author do on the first use of an acronym use a (…) follow by the title, this will make your valuable posts more reading and understandable by the novice and the experienced
This is not a criticism just a comment.
.
January 22, 2017 at 5:13 PM
Net new dwellings per square km:
Glen Eira 53
Boroondara 30
Monash 20
Manningham 16
Kingston 15
Dandenong 12
Says it all.