ACT Labor’s announcement to limit dual-occupancy developments will have residents and developers scurrying to the large suburban maps issued by the planning authorities.
Labor is to limit dual occupancies to 5 per cent of the blocks in any suburban section for all suburbs across Canberra until neighbourhood plans are developed after the election. It has opened a divide between the major parties on urban development. Hitherto Tweedledeedee and Tweedledeedum were adherents of developer-driven “”planning”.
Beware, though, Labor’s 5 per cent limit is only a temporary measure. If they attain Government, who knows what the neighbourhood plans might bring.
The planning story is running true to form. In a lead up to an election, there are more votes in residential amenity than in development. Between elections there is more money for party coffers in development, and the residents can go jump.
Residential amenity is always up against it. Once a block is surrendered to dual occupancy, it is gone for good. Invariably all the trees are stripped and there is no space in the new development for trees of any size. Short-term profit takes precedent over the preservation of Canberra’s garden suburbs which have taken so long and so much work to create.
Further, development money acts with vigour. Those pursuing development get high returns, whereas residents gain nothing in a fight. At best they come out where they started – with the status quo, but still vulnerable to a later attack. And getting residents active is a difficult task. A resident’s interest in a development issue declines in direct proportion to the square of the distance between the resident’s dwelling and the proposed development. So unless government takes a determined hand, development usually proceeds – and it does so piecemeal and ad hoc. It depends on the vagaries of when and where dwellings are sold, who happens to buy and what they propose to do with the block.
Sure, some people think the market should determine these things. But the market cannot look after the long-term public asset that is the garden nature of Canberra’s suburbs.
This is the divide opening up between the major parties. The Liberal Party has an approach based on individual rights and the rule of law: land-owners across the ACT should have a right to develop if they fit certain rules. The flaw in that approach is that development is done ad hoc, according to which individuals decide to develop.
Labor’s 5 per cent rule will change development rights, not according to a rule of law which applies to all, but according to whether someone has got in first and used up the 5 per cent allowance in any particular section. But the overall objective is to retain the character of the suburb for the good of all.
It is a pity it is not Labor’s permanent policy. It is better than the present system which is seeing every block over 800 sq m being redeveloped as dual occupancy, gradually one by one. At least with a 5 per cent rule, someone can move into a suburb confident they won’t have the neighbourhood converted to tiny houses on tiny block with no trees.
Perhaps Labor should consider making the 5 per cent rule permanent — in addition to (or as part of) the neighbourhood plans. Perhaps the Liberal Party could come up with its own limit on dual occupancies, or does it stand for the possibility that every block over 800 sq m in a suburb could be divided?
The 5 per cent limit would have a certain amount of randomness about it because of the varying size of the suburban sections. A suburban section is an island of blocks surrounded by streets. They never straddle a street. In the inner south where much of the present heat is generated, some sections have fewer than 20 blocks, so there would be no dual occupancy under the 5 per cent rule. An adjacent section might have 20 or more. This is why developers and residents will rush to the maps and smack their chops, sigh relief or frown deeply depending on how many blocks are in their section and how many dual occupancies have already been built.
The example clipped in the diagram shows the point. It shows Sections 42, 43, 44 and 45 in Red Hill, bounded by Hindmarsh Drive, Investigator Street and Esperance Street. From a town planning perspective they are very similar. But Section 45 has, by the vicissitudes of surveying, only 18 blocks and therefore will get no dual occupancies under Labor’s 5 per cent plan. Section 43 will get just one, and it will be a race between the four corner blocks – 1, 9, 12 and 20 as to which it is because they look like the only ones greater than 800 sq m. If it is 1 or 9 (on the northern side), too bad for the adjacent blocks which will probably cop over-shadowing. Same for Section 42. How much better to have a policy that takes account of northern light and gives preference to development on the southern side of a section that would overshadow a road, rather than neighbours. But that would take time, money and staff power – things our planning bodies are drastically short of.
Section 44 has 40 blocks and so two dual occupancies would be allowed. Once again it would be a race.
A quick glance at the southside indicates that a 5 per cent limit is almost a moratorium on dual occupancies. Maybe that is what Labor’s planning spokesperson, Simon Corbell, should have promised until the neighbourhood plans were produced.
Nonetheless, the percentage limit (whether 5 or a bit higher) has a huge amount of merit.
Maybe you have to work from the premise that planning and development authorities are always going to be over-stretched and will never have the capacity to enforce qualitative standards that protect residential amenity, especially as aesthetic-qualitative criteria are always open to legal challenge by those who have the money.
To date the lack of qualitative control has frustrated good and innovative architecture because it has emphasised a one-rule-fits-all tick-a-box approval process. If your proposal fits the footprint and setback rules you can go ahead. Very little account is taken of siting and the same set-back rules apply to the sensitive northern side as the southern side.
In that environment and in the absence of the ideal – setting high qualitative development standards and sticking to them – maybe an overall limit is the way to protect the values of existing suburbs, while giving some scope for redevelopment, for people to stay living in the suburb in a smaller home and to repopulate to help support shops and schools.
These social arguments are trotted out in favour of dual occupancy, but they are probably furphies. Dual occupancies are mostly bought by or leased to childless working-age people as an investment proposition. Not many are bought by the aged wanting to stay in their suburb or by families that populate schools and shopping centres. Nevertheless some good redevelopment is desirable.
In any event, now that Corbell has promised percentage limits on dual occupancies, even as a temporary measure, he has given residents a demand benchmark. Whatever the neighbourhood plans from Labor and whatever the design and siting standards from the Liberal Party, they will now both have to come up with acceptable permanent percentage limits on dual occupancies or face losing votes to minor parties and independents.