The Business PSP Planning in a post-Covid world

The unprecedented change wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic will have far-reaching changes for where and how Victorians live and work. For many people, living in a more suburban environment like our greenfield developments will have a new attraction.

It seems likely that many more of us will be working from home and when we can’t work from home we will be more inclined to work locally.

We may want different housing forms to ensure we can integrate home and work. We may want more services locally, we may seek to use open spaces differently, and we may feel differently about living at high-density.

So how can we plan for new communities when we face potentially significant changes in the urban aspirations of tomorrow’s Victorians?

The answer is to get the fundamentals right and keep the options open.

The Precinct Structure Planning process has been central to the VPA’s methodology generally but perhaps most importantly in Melbourne’s greenfields. Experience in its application over the past few years has led us to the necessity for a refresh. We want to enhance our collective ability, with councils and the development industry as our partners, to deliver the key objectives set out in the original principles.

Guidelines for Precinct Structure Planning in Melbourne’s Greenfields

The former Growth Areas Authority released Precinct Structure Planning (PSP) Guidelines in 2009 which has guided and shaped development in Melbourne’s growth areas precincts.

The review of the PSP guidelines is a key action (Action 20) for VPA and DELWP under the Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 Implementation Plan.

A review has been underway with the aim of updating the now decade old guidelines to ensure they build on lessons learned and are facilitating a flexible and innovative approach to growth in our precincts.

This approach has also allowed for integration between a number of VPA’s key innovation projects including PSP 2.0, Small Lot Housing Code, ‘Generally in accordance’ and better alignment of planning and infrastructure delivery.

An Expert Review Panel was engaged to challenge standards and pathways and provide advice to ensure the updated Guidelines deliver best practice.

Stuart Moseley CEO, Victorian Planning Authority

The draft Guidelines have been approved by the Minister for Planning and are now being taken forward for consultation.

In particular, the revised guidelines will:

• Represent a whole of government approach – that is striving for agency endorsement early in the process through policy integration

• Signal increased expectations for growth area outcomes (next generation PSPs)

• Provide innovation pathways at different stages throughout the planning and development process

The guidelines will do this by:

• Aligning with the Government’s established 20 Minute Neighbourhoods Framework and UN Sustainable Development Goals

• Setting meaningful performance targets that deliver improved outcomes as a minimum

• Define and incentivise alternative pathways to achieve innovations during PSP preparation and development delivery

Aligning with the Government’s established 20 Minute Neighbourhoods Framework and UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Guidelines align with new policy frameworks that provide guidance on vision and outcomes for the future through a hierarchy from global to local level. At the State Government level, Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 sets key policy directions and principles to guide urban planning across the state.

Plan Melbourne includes the key principle of 20 Minute Neighbourhoods, which focusses on the importance of living locally. The 20 minute neighbourhood is all about giving people the ability to meet most of their daily needs within a 20-minute walk from home, with safe cycling and local transport options.

The 20 minute neighbourhood concept of hallmarks and features provides a clear framework for living locally, living sustainability and social connectedness.

Setting meaningful performance targets that deliver improved outcomes as a minimum

The Expert Review Panel challenged the VPA to lift the standards of our PSPs. Taking on this challenge, the new guidelines seek to increase some of our performance targets and better align ourselves with the aspirations of state government policy, particularly the hallmarks of 20 minute neighbourhoods.

Some of the key performance targets are:

• A 1ha park within 800m of dwellings and a local park within 400m.

• A minimum target of 10% nda for open space and minimum 30% canopy tree coverage within the public realm and open space (excluding areas dedicated to biodiversity or native vegetation conservation).

• A target of one job per dwelling.

• 90% of dwellings within 800m of an activity centre.

• 70% of dwellings within 800m of a government primary school and 100% of dwellings within 3200m of a government secondary school.

Define and incentivise alternative pathways to achieve innovations during PSP preparation and development delivery

A re-occurring theme that emerged throughout engagement with the Expert Review Panel, Local Government and the development industry was the need for balance between certainty and flexibility. The updated Guidelines seek to address this by providing two different pathways for the preparation and delivery of PSPs. Depending on the right settings and circumstances, a PSP now has the option to take an alternative pathway that will allow innovative and placed-based responsive outcomes for the future community.

This new pathway will encourage collaborative leadership, forging partnerships and providing space for stakeholders to think differently to deliver unique and innovative outcomes.

The first of the two pathways proposed by the Guidelines is the Coordination Pathway. It provides for a collaborative PSP approach to coordinate high quality development outcomes and infrastructure delivery. Options are available for some placespecific variations to targets, where it will advance the vision for the PSP, and where variations meet the intent of the Principles.

Providing flexibility for leadership and innovation is the Innovation Pathway, which enables different solutions where there is a need for a substantially different approach to the form, process or format of the PSP to achieve that vision.

This pathway is available where there is a commitment to the delivery of 20-minute neighbourhoods through significantly elevated objectives in one or more areas, such as environmental performance, housing affordability and diversity or community and infrastructure service delivery.

Innovation PSPs should implement most of the General Principles contained in the PSP Guidelines, but may require substantial variation to some or all of the Performance Targets. This pathway will require agreement from the outset from council, VPA, state agencies and landowners to implement throughout the entire planning and development approval pipeline for the area – that is from the PSP stage right through to the detailed permit stage. Ultimately, the updated guidelines will establish a new approach to preparing PSPs for greenfield areas in Victoria.

Importantly, this new approach will provide for both a minimum standard pathway that will produce a more predictable spatial layout and a new innovation where a specific solution is required. The innovation pathway will provide incentives for those willing to try something new to ensure our new communities are diverse and respond to the local needs of their future residents.

We are excited to bring this new approach to our stakeholders for consultation. We want to hear from you about whether we have addressed the issues in the original approach that needed fixing. While precinct structure planning cannot deliver a universal resolution to all growing pains experienced by new communities, these Guidelines aim to provide best practice support to “lift the bar” in planning outcomes in the greenfields.

We believe at the end of this process we will have a better, clearer way forward that will deliver great new places for Victorians to live in.

Stuart Moseley has more than 30 years’ of experience in urban management and project delivery, and has held senior positions in three State Governments, the private sector and local government. Stuart is a reformer and a strong advocate for outstanding urban environments and practical planning solutions. In his VPA role he has driven the repositioning of the Authority as a broad-based State-wide growth planning agency and is now working to deliver the organisation’s largest-ever project portfolio.