ON THURSDAY the ACT code for planning comes into force.
Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth says it will be “a giant step forward”. But the code is based on the latest version of the Australian Model Code for Residential Development (AMCORD) which might mean a small step forward for unplanned Australian cities suffering urban blight, but it will be a giant leap backwards for the planned bush capital.
The code runs to 103 pages. Moreover, to understand the likely effect of the code one has to compare it to the existing territory plan and the guidelines issued under it. That it doubles the quantity and complexity of the task.
The devil is in the detail.
The code declares the high-sounding intention “to provide safe, convenient, accessible and attractive neighbourhoods that meet the diverse and changing needs of the community .. . . promoting a sense of place through neighbourhood focal points and the creation of a distinctive identity which recognises and, where relevant, preserves the natural environment.”
But in the detail we see reduced requirements for open space, lower set-back requirements, higher plot ratios, higher roofs and generally more allowance for bricks and concrete and less requirement for greenery.
Canberra has always struggled over planning. Developers want to make as much money as possible. That has often meant a short-sighted view of cramming as much built area as the rules, the planning bureaucracy and the courts would permit. (Unfortunately, the better way to more profit — quality, high-amenity development — has been rare.)
Early on, developers sought certainty. They hated a qualitative, subjective approach. They argued that it gave too much discretion to planners and that the process was too expensive, particularly when they had to mount court challenges to the exercise of discretion. They cried out for set criteria of a building envelopes, defined heights, and minimum setbacks. Just tell us what the parameters are, they pleaded.
Well, they finally got their certainty with the Territory Plan, but still want more. They found that some residents could claw through the criteria and occasionally manage to force amendments or, more rarely, the abandonment of development.
Meanwhile, some architects and quality developers found that the detailed quantitative requirements too restrictive. here was no leeway for planning authorities to allow innovative quality development that breached
the territory plan except through the heavy hand of a ministerial call in.
Fundamentally, though, it is not going to matter much whether the formal rules are detailed and prescriptive or whether they are broad and qualitative. Canberra’s planning regime will only cease to be a hotbed of contest when two things happen.
First, the number and quality of people in the planning bureaucracy has to increase. Only then that can a planning bureaucrat take the time necessary to make a good decision which will protect residential amenity or allow worthwhile architectural innovation in a may that withstands challenge.
Second is to address the concern of Canberra residents to preserve the character of their suburbs while allowing reasonable renewal. Residents would not mind a sprinkling of well-designed redevelopments but fear the thin end of the wedge.
A good way to address this concern would be to limit the percentage of any given suburb that can be redeveloped into higher density housing to, say, 20 per cent and to limit that percentage within any section of a suburb to, say, 25 percent.
If not, residents might take matters into their own hands. One way of doing this would be to use common-law covenants. For example, a group of a residents in an area could agree that that none would do a multi- or dual-occupancy. They would draft that into formal contracts and a register them at the Land Titles Office as covenants that would bind later purchasers.
In the meantime, residents will have to remain eternally vigilant, the more so after the new ACT Code which behind its high-minded rhetoric delivers more land to concrete and reserves less for trees.