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

Matthew Guy and the Department have released what can only be euphemistically called a ‘discussion paper’ (uploaded here). Short on details, but big on generalities and promises, the paper is anything but what most reasonable people would consider to be an objective and informative outline of the proposals, and the potential benefits and drawbacks.

Most concerning is that ‘feedback’ is required by late September, yet full details will only be released in October. In other words, the public is expected to comment blindly on something that they have limited information on. We suggest that readers pay particular attention to the following table extracted from the ‘fact sheet’. Please click on the image to enlarge.

Zone reforms to return planning certainty

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

The Victorian Coalition Government’s sweeping reform of planning zones will return certainty to our suburbs and towns and in particular to councils, residents and the development industry.

“Planning zones are the greatest indicator of the style of development for any area. The Coalition Government’s sweeping zones reform package aims to give certainty for areas that deserve protection and those identified as growth nodes,” Mr Guy said.

“The Coalition Government’s zone reforms reflect what communities have been crying out for, for many years – clear identification of areas that can grow and strong protection for areas that are designed to be low rise, low density neighbourhoods,” Mr Guy said.

“These reforms will protect what makes Melbourne great – our streetscapes, our amenity, our liveability, while encouraging density and growth in clearly defined areas,” Mr Guy said.

The Coalition Government’s zones reform package features three new residential zones:

• Residential Growth Zone;
• General Residential Zone; and a
• Neighbourhood Residential Zone.

“The new Neighbourhood Residential Zone will be an instrument that can be adopted by councils to protect existing amenity of suburbs and towns.

“It will give many areas the protection they deserve and will be the strongest residential protection zone ever offered in the Victorian planning system,” Mr Guy said.

This zone will include a number of features including mandatory height controls, stricter regulations around subdivision and the consideration of minimum lot sizes. The Neighbourhood Residential Zone will also be able to protect existing streetscapes and amenity with clear guidelines on what can be supported by a planning permit application.

In order to support integrity of the new Neighbourhood Residential Zone the Coalition Government has also introduced a number of complementary residential zones that will support development of medium and higher density housing in appropriate locations.

The new Residential Growth Zone will provide for a clear level of growth and change in identified areas that have clear targets for greater density. Councils will be able to use this zone to provide a new incentive to direct density and built form change in areas that are well known and identified.

“Importantly, these zones will be at the discretion of the local councils. It will ultimately be the view of the community that will inform which zone best fits where,” Mr Guy said.

“Victoria’s economic integrity is at the forefront of its planning decisions and these reforms are no different. The residential zone reform package supports Victoria’s economy by clarifying where development can occur and what can be built,” Mr Guy said.

“Importantly, it returns a level of planning certainty that has been sorely missing for the past decade,” Mr Guy said.

Under the Coalition Government’s planning reform agenda, plans for new outer urban growth have been released as well as the identification of Australia’s largest inner city, urban renewal project in Fisherman’s Bend.

These projects, combined with planning law changes and planning zone reform represent a major overhaul of the Victorian planning system since the change of government in November 2010.

“The time is right for planning reform and the Coalition Government is getting on with the job of delivering it.”

The key features of the reformed planning zones will be issued for feedback for a period of 2 months from Monday 17 July until Friday 21 September.