Alert - Changes to Boroondara's Residential Zones - More Growth

An Advisory Committee has been appointed to consider changes to the new residential zones which comprise  extensions to provide more Growth Zones following a request from Planning Minister Matthew Guy.

Many of the new Growth Zones are around Boroondara's neighbourhood shopping centres but some have been applied to main roads such as Canterbury Rd., Camberwell Rd., Studley Park Rd., etc.

Further details with a map showing the new Residential Growth Zones (RGZ)are attached -see above- click on "skip to content" and for the map go to the download - C199 Areas subject to amendment)

Residents in the affected areas have been notified by Council but these changes will also affect residents adjoining or nearby the RGZ because this zone allows for four storeys ( a mandatory height limit of13.5 metres)  which will result in overlooking, will affect the local ambiance and there will be overflow parking in nearby streets etc.

The Residential Growth Zones under a draft amendment C199  are in addition to the Growth Zones already identified under amendment C190. Applicants for development proposals in the RGZ will be required to demonstrate  compliance with neighbourhood character local planning policy and the relevant Boroondara Neighbourhood Character Precinct Statement and Guidelines.

Brag understands that there will be no ability to appeal to VCAT to exceed the mandatory height limit but appeals to VCATwill be possible in regards to disagreements with assessment criteria for neighbourhood character precincts. However, BRAG has reservations about appeals to VCAT as these are yet to be tested. We say that developers have pushed their rights to appeal to VCAT to the limit in the past and that we do not expect any change in their attitude. Would you trust VCAT to do right by the residents, they haven't in the past have they?

Council says it has chosen these new RGZ's because it considers them to have the capacity to absorb change and transition to a denser character based on proximity to large Activity Centres, proximity to shopping centres and commercial corridors, location along key transport routes. an emerging change in character or development potential based on allotment size. This is nothing short of just following the concepts in the discredited Melbourne 2030. We thought M2030 was dead but obviously it is not yet buried.

What Action Can you Take ?

Make an online submission to the Residential Zones Committee at www.dtpli.vic.gov.au/residential-zones-advisory-committee by 16th April 2014. You will be able to appear before the panel if you wish to further push your arguments against the changes and perhaps you can ask the members hearing the presentations to take off their planner's hat and ask them to pretend that they are a resident affected by these changes and think carefully how they would react. We are pretty sure that if they are honest they will react just like you and argue against these ridiculous changes. The hearing starts 5th May in the Hawthorn Town Hall at 10am. Come along even if you aren't presenting to show support for those who are.

Suggestions to help you to prepare your submission are set out in the following post

Go ahead and make a submission, BRAG can't do this for you, it is up to individual householders who will be adversely affected to tell the Panel (and the Minister) to approve the council's original proposal without these changes.

Suggestions for submissions to the Growth Zones Advisory Committee

Many Residents have sought assistance in preparing their submission to the Advisory Committee so we have complied a list of suggestions.

Click on  the attachment above.

Please use these as a guide and make your submission in your own words.Do not just copy as the Committee will disregard any submission that appears to be pro-forma.

More on Plan Melbourne and the New Residential Zones

"Plan Melbourne" has been criticized by the planning expert, Professor Roz Hansen, hand picked by the government to draw up and provide advice on the strategy. We criticized her appointment because she was one of this city's planners who were advocating unlocking the potential in the existing residential areas for massive development as a response to the record rate of our population growth which, on a population basis, is well above all other OECD countries.

In an article by Jason Dowling in the Sunday Age (26/1) Roz Hanson says that "The elephant in the room is how do we fund the public transport and community services for 8 million people in 2050"?

Roz still doesn't get it, the question that needs to be answered should be "If you double the population of Melbourne you need to double the infrastructure but can our governments (both Federal & state) do it"? Of course they cannot because they just can't get that much tax out of us. Right now they can't even fund the necessary infrastructure upgrades to meet current needs let alone the future needs of record immigration.

As a response to the continuing government policies pushing to increase our population, developers have been increasingly moving into our existing residential areas to build apartments and squeeze more and more into the suburbs. The residents reacted and through organizations like BRAG and Planning Backlash they lobbied the government for protection from such rapacious development.

The government responded by announcing the "Reformed Residential Zones" which require new developments to meet neighbourhood characteristics and mandatory height limits.The developers and the building lobbyists screamed that these new zones would lock them out of the residential suburbs and Radley de Silva from the Master Builders Assoc said that some councils were trying to lock up their suburbs. Their main concern is that they will not be able to push their infill developments into the more desirable and therefor the more profitable residential areas

Actually de Silva is right. We suspect this is a shot at the Glen Eira and Boroondara Councils but other councils are putting up plans to follow their lead by putting around 70% to 80% of their residential areas in the most protected zone - the neighbourhood residential zone.

The Planning Institute of Australia, the Master Builders, HIA, the developers and investors etc. are now applying pressure on the government to modify the new zones. The Labor Party have said if they are re-elected they will bring back Melbourne 2030. That would not be very clever would it ?

We at BRAG have many times made it clear that the elephant in the room is the increasing population numbers due mainly to the record and ever increasing rate of immigration, and those who come to this country on visas as a back door way of gaining residency. If it continues, the population of Melbourne will more than double within the next 35 years - yes, more than double to well over 8 million.

In our view it's the rate of population growth through immigration that needs to be modified.
This does not mean that we should shut up shop altogether for, if we cut back on the immigration quotas to something like the numbers we used to accept ( around 70,000/80,000 p.a instead of the 225,000 p.a.in 2013 - and still rising) we would still be in accord with what other countries do and meet our international obligations. We could even increase the numbers of refugees we accept. 

Currently we are growing at about 1.82% p.a. compared with the world average of 1.1% so if we did cut back we would still match the other OECD countries or maybe even be a bit above.

Makes sense to us.

Jason Dowling's AGE article is attached - see above.

PLANMELBOURNE, BRAG's SUBMISSION

The main message in BRAG's submission is that"if you double the population you have to double the infrastructure".
With Melbourne's population set to double by 2050 you would think that any plan for the future of Melbourne would contain a set of objectives and strategies to update and build the necessary infrastructure but, apart from the extension to the eastern freeway and some motherhood statements,
there is very little in the way of any real planning.

For instance there is nothing on schools or hospitals. the rail links to Doncaster and the airport get a passing mention, but there is very little in the way of detail for upgrades etc or finance.

BRAG's submission is attached - see above.

More on the New Residential Zones

Boroondara Council has lodged its zoning proposals
with the Minister for approval but, in the meantime the development industry has been very active in lobbying against the new zones screaming that they will be locked out of the residential suburbs.

In the case of Boroondara's proposal they are right, for our council has identified about 70-80% of Boroondara as Neighbourhood Residential Zone and the rest as General Residential Zone with a small section as Residential Growth Zone(partly as a result of our lobbying and the fact that most of Boroondara is residential).

However, other councils' planners with their tunnel vision, which is to push for more and more development, have reacted quite differently. Many councils are proposing to have more of their residential areas identified as either General or Growth Zones with not too much in the more protected Neighbourhood Zone.

For instance, in the Greater Geelong area the council is proposing to have hardly any residential areas in the Neighbourhood Zone. This is very much against the Minister's idea of trying to protect our residential areas from rapacious and unacceptable development. One area, which contains mostly lovely old Edwardian homes, is identified for growth. This is pure vandalism. And Greater Geelong is not the only one for many more councils are trending in the same direction. 

It seems that the development lobby is gaining ground because money talks. Check out what Charter Keck Cramer have to say on the subject (see attached above). 
We wonder just how this will all pan out.

We will keep you posted.

PLANMELBOURNE

The new planning blueprint just released called "Planmelbourne" will replace "Melbourne 2030. The document identifies nine strategic principles each with a set of "directions" to cope with projected population growth of nearly 8.5 million in Victoria by 2051 with about 6.5 million in Melbourne.

The document has 176 pages with a considerable amount of information so we have briefly summarized
the main points in the attachment above.Quite a lot of planning principals contained in Melbourne 2030
reappear in the document although it is a much broader plan and contains some predictable solutions as well as some that will raise concerns for many residents. 

New Residential Zones Approved for Boroondara

For years BRAG has been lobbying both the Minister for Planning and our council to "protect what we love about our neighbourhood". The Minister agreed to consider a new zoning system that would rely on neighbourhood character as a means of restricting what could be built and what could not.

Boroondara Council quickly conducted a survey of the municipality to identify precinct characteristics and this has now been used to map out new residential zones. 

At a meeting of the council's Urban Planning Special Committee on 16th September, the committee approved implementation of the Neighbourhood Character Study and the new Residential Zones as set out in the attachment (see above - a map of the new zones is on page 17)

When approved by the Minister, the new zones will offer the protection we have wanted for so long against unacceptable, opportunistic, infill development and it will be much more difficult for
VCAT to over-rule proper council planning decisions.

BRAG thanks the Minister for Planning, Matthew Guy, for introducing these changes for they will return planning power back to our council which is what we have been advocating for the last 10 years.The Coalition election policies promised this and now it has been delivered.