The Business

Overlooking or Isolating?

I never knew there were so many nudists in Melbourne!

That is, until I became a town planner. Maybe I had a sheltered upbringing. In my 19-20 years as a town planner, I don’t think a month has gone by where I haven’t read an objection from a neighbour highly concerned that he or she might be seen walking around naked in their backyard from a new development. Thank goodness for Standard A15/B22 of ResCode!

In case it wasn’t readily apparent, there was a huge amount of sarcasm in that last sentence. As planners, one of our fundamental objectives is to build and foster communities. Yet, in my opinion, the overlooking standard is the one requirement in our Planning Schemes that goes directly against this notion.

I make this statement based on my personal experiences. I think of where I grew up in the middle-outer Melbourne suburb of East Doncaster. A number of old orchards had been subdivided in the late 70s to early 80s to create the Milgate Park Estate. Our family home was on the hilly side of Landscape Drive, which meant our neighbours could look directly into our backyard and living room and vice versa and it was great.

I remember being in the backyard with my brother and sister and having our neighbours pass over fruit and veggies grown in their yard, my parents sharing a beer with them on a summer’s afternoon, our neighbour Bill yelling at me and my brother to jump the fence so we could stomp on his grapes when he was making wine. It was also as simple as saying g’day while hanging out the washing. They were good people, so much so that long after my parents moved, they remained friends decades later. At no stage did it cross my parents’ mind that these people were paedophiles or intruding on our privacy. Quite the opposite. My parents took comfort knowing that our neighbours could see us in case we hurt ourselves in the backyard or could see our house in case it was being robbed. If we were ever in our living room and wanted privacy, we simply shut the sheer blinds that allowed views out, light in and provided that privacy.

I move forward some 20 years and think of where I was living in Ringwood North. Every house around us had obscured glass to 1.7m high and the fencing was 1.9m high with an additional 300mm trellis on top. In the four years we lived there, I can count on one hand how many times I saw my neighbours.

The one thing that separates the two scenarios mentioned is the ability to overlook neighbours’ yards. It got me thinking, why do we have an overlooking objective/standard and where did it come from?

Looking back, the Good Design Guide Element 7 ‘Visual and Acoustic Privacy’ brought in the ‘overlooking objective’. It was at this time we start to see the inclusion of a provision of 1.6m high screening, 9m separation and 25% transparency, which also forms the basis of the current standard.

Sam D’Amico Director, Ratio Consultants

The move to ResCode raised the screen height to 1.7m, perhaps because the hormones contained in chicken was making people taller. Who knows?

However, I cannot find any rationale why the arbitrary line in the sand was drawn at 9 metres and/or 1.7 metres high.

So why do we have it? I assume it’s because the same nudists were raising objections to their loss of privacy and the State Government of the day decided to set a measurable standard. Since then, it has been easy to comply with a setback or provide a screen of some nature and so no one really questions it. There is always debate and often acceptance about varying a number of the quantitative standards of ResCode such as side and rear setbacks, overshadowing, walls on boundaries etc. But heavens forbid a variation to Standard A15/B22!

Whilst protecting peoples’ amenity/privacy is important, the reality is that if someone is determined to invade someone’s privacy, they will find a way. In my opinion, screens are there to avoid the perception of overlooking rather than overlooking itself.

Why is it an issue? Well in this crazy COVID world we are all living in at present, we already know that people are feeling more and more isolated at home than ever before, disconnected from their community and the people that surround them.

A 2004 study conducted by Dr Philip Hughes titled Insecurity in Australia, found that one-third of Australians say they trust their neighbours1 Does that mean that two-thirds of neighbours are untrustworthy? As Hugh MacKay (Honorary Professor of Social Science, University of Wollongong; Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Arts, Charles Sturt University) opines, “what it must mean is that most people in our society don’t know their neighbours well enough to have learnt to trust them…

What I am suggesting is that when we lose sight of our role as neighbours, the health of the neighbourhood suffers. And when the health of the neighbourhood suffers, we all suffer”. 2

Now, I can’t oversimplify loneliness and social isolation to be just about whether or not one can overlook their neighbours’ yard. It is obviously a much more complex issue. But we can look at how we force people to be separated from their neighbours. I’m also not advocating that people have no right to privacy in their own properties, there has to be a balance. But maybe it is time to review Standard A15/B22 and re-evaluate what we are trying to achieve and how we can do it better than we have been over the last 20-odd years.

1 NCLS Occasional Paper 04 – Insecurity in Australia

2 https://theconversation.com/hugh-mackay-the-state-of-the-nation-startsin-your-street-72264

Sam D’Amico, Director of ratio: has 20 years’ experience as a town planner at both local government and in private practice. samd@ratio.com.au