From The Age today comes news that Victoria’s planning minister, Matthew Guy, is moving to establish new residential zones aimed at guiding future housing development:
What type of housing can be built on Melbourne’s streets and how much new housing suburbs can expect to accommodate will be detailed in new planning zones to be rolled out across Victoria from July.
The new zones include a ”residential growth zone”, where new housing will be encouraged and enabled, a new ”neighbourhood residential zone”, where new housing will face tighter controls, and a ”general residential zone”, that will allow ”moderate housing growth”.
Planning Minister Matthew Guy said the government and local councils would discuss how the new zones would be applied, which could include consideration of heritage, environmental and transport issues.
If councils fail in a transition of areas to the new residential zones by July 2014 the general residential zone will apply.
Mr Guy said the government would also be pushing for an additional 60,000 new housing lots to be pegged out in Melbourne’s growth areas in the next year.
It’s hard to know whether the proposed plan is pro-development or an anti-development. The introduction of the neighborhood residential zone looks like it would effectively preclude development in areas with “significant local character”. Presumably, a large chunk of Melbourne’s established inner suburbs would fall under such a definition, thereby preventing any significant densification of these areas.
Indeed, anti-development resident groups have already hailed the new stricter zone:
Mary Drost, from residents’ lobby Planning Backlash, said the neighbourhood zones would help protect Melbourne’s liveability and amenity.
“We are relieved and thrilled, but developers are going to be furious about this because they will face strong regulation in established areas,” she said.
Offsetting this tighter zoning, higher-density housing development and small-scale office and shop projects would be encouraged in the two other zones – residential growth and general residential, which should facilitate greater housing development.
