The Business

Charter Group 29

A multi-disciplinary group of planning and environment professionals, researchers and academics, calling themselves “Charter 29”, has just released a report titled Growing Pains: The Crisis in Growth Area Planning . Maxine Cooper, a social planner and longstanding Fellow of VPELA, has been one of the contributors to the report. The report calls for a major rethink in the way new suburbs and their housing are designed. It focusses on our burgeoning growth corridors and raises serious concerns about the way that Victoria’s urban growth areas are being developed.

Compelling evidence is presented that the rules and guidelines for the development of new residential suburbs are not being adhered to, and that most of what is being built fails to meet the most basic requirements of good urban planning.

Key factors

It is self-evident that we have to provide accommodation for everyone. While lower socio-economic cohorts are often relegated to sub-standard housing or aging public housing (a challenge increasing in urgency and numbers), it is the provision of new housing that is the source of much debate. This debate is not about whether such accommodation is needed but it is about factors such as:

• Location

• Affordability

• Adaptability

• Long-term environmental sustainability

• Providing a range of housing types that reflect a wider demographic profile

• Timely provision of infrastructure.

About 38 percent of Melbourne’s new dwellings are built in fringe growth areas. The Report notes that, over the next 30 years to 2050, total planned development in outer urban corridors will extend the metropolitan area by about one-third. This vast expansion will provide some 422,000 new dwellings for up to 1.19 million people.

Walkable neighbourhoods

Growth area planning should result in neighbourhoods that are walkable, provide efficient access to jobs and local services, include sustainably designed housing, promote social connection and a strong sense of community, and are well served by public transport. These basic attributes of a residential area are, for the most part, not being delivered.

The report describes how current growth areas suffer from the disadvantages of being poorly connected to employment locations necessitating high levels of car dependency, a very limited range of houses on offer to new home buyers and no option for modest or adaptable options, detached houses occupying a disturbingly high proportion of allotments, housing which rarely takes account of orientation and solar access, and community facilities and effective public transport which are non-existent or inadequate.

Failure to deliver

The Report looks into why we are designing and building new housing estates that are bound to fail when measured against almost all evaluation criteria. There is no simple or single answer as to why this is happening but it is clear that the steps that occur in the development process from greenfields paddocks to occupied housing fail to deliver housing and community facilities that serve the purchasers, and instead serve the various players in that process.

In nearly every fringe development the local and arterial road patterns are focussed on facilitating the movement of vehicles rather than people. The high level of car dependency is readily seen in seriously congested local streets and main roads during commuter times and above-average levels of household car ownership.

Houses occupy disproportionate amounts of their allotments and areas of secluded private open space are minimal while internal spaces are beyond the real requirements of young families who make up the predominant buyer group. The basic social needs of a new community are not integrated with land use and infrastructure planning, resulting in physically and socially isolated communities, raising the spectre of poverty and limited social connections.

The VPA’s guidelines

The Report explores the role of the Victoria Planning Authority, the government body charged with oversight of the State’s growth areas. The key document is the VPA’s Precinct Structure Plan Guidelines: Overview of Growth Area Planning which sets out seven Objectives, with several elements that describe and support each Objective. These are the criteria designed to ensure high standards of planning and construction of growth areas in Victoria. The Report studied two recently developed growth areas and assessed how these areas perform against the Objectives. Of the total of 31 elements, both Merrifield West (8 kilometres north of Craigieburn) and Clyde North (5 kilometres east of Cranbourne) demonstrably fail on 21 counts, with only seven elements being achieved very well or partly. The Report notes that these two areas are not unique; they are typical examples of most other residential precincts in the growth areas on the fringes of Melbourne and regional centres and which incorporate the same inherent shortcomings.

Interestingly, the Report looks at an inner-urban Victorian-era suburb and a typical inter-war suburb and notes that, despite being established with fewer planning controls or guidelines than apply today, they achieve the VPA’s Objectives better than new growth area suburbs.

What needs to change?

The Charter 29 Report describes what needs to change, and stresses that change must be radical and must happen urgently if social, environmental and employment problems are not to be perpetuated. While the need for change has been evident for some time the lifestyle changes recently imposed by COVID-19 serve as a valuable catalyst for action. This current experience provides planners and State and local governments with a rare opportunity to re-evaluate how people live, work, socialise and move about and to plan accordingly.

The Report identifies five fundamentals that need to change if outer urban sprawl is to be halted and a more sustainable model introduced. The five are:

• Transport planning must be driven by factors other than road and traffic requirements

• The uplift value of urban development must go to community infrastructure

• Regulatory regimes must be re-focussed to be fit for purpose

• Better relationships are required between residential areas and hierarchies of town centres and local services

• The housing mix must be broadened to suit a wider demographic.

VPELA, the Planning Institute of Australia, et al, and the wider media are awash with articles and opinions about how we are currently housing Victoria’s growing population. If we were doing it successfully, this topic wouldn’t elicit as much debate as it does.

TYPICAL: An example of the type of dwelling common in growth areas: large house, small private open spaces, random orientation

POSSIBLE: living areas face larger north-facing private open space, adaptable design, higher overall density

(Drawings: Geoffrey Falk, architect)

Charter Group 29: The Report’s lead authors and editorial team:

Emeritus Professor RMIT Michael Buxton, BA, DipEd, BEd, PhD, Hon Fellow PIA

Jim Holdsworth, architect and urban designer, BArch, Reg’d Arch (Vic) Hon Fellow PIA

Mike Scott, planner and urban designer, BA (TP) Hons, Fellow PIA Steve Thorne, architect and urban designer, BA, BAS, BArch (Hons) MA(UD), MPIA

Geoffrey Falk, architect and artist, BArch, Reg’d Arch (Vic), MAIA, MAustAssnArchillustators

Contributing authors

Maxine Cooper, social planner, BA (Urban Sociology), GradDipOrgBeh, Fellow VPELA

Bruce Echberg, architect and landscape architect BArch, GradDipLD,MA (UD, Reg’d Arch (Vic), FAILA(ret), Hon Sec UD Forum

Stephen Pelosi, transport planner, BEng. Copies of the Report can be downloaded at info@charter29.com

The Charter 29 Group welcomes comments and feedback.

Charter 29 can be contacted via Jim Holdsworth, jim@planningcollaborative.com.au https://www.charter29.com/run