Drive out towards Warburton and it seems easy to see where Melbourne ends and rural life begins. One minute you’re driving through houses, shops and businesses, when all of a sudden you’ve arrived in country. Except you’re actually still in Melbourne because the official boundary of the metropolitan area lies on the other (eastern) side [...]
Demonising sprawl seems to be the mission of many planners, academics and journalists, but oftentimes zealotry leads to mistakes, as with this claim that infrastructure costs on the fringe are double those in established suburbs. I’m reminded again how easy it is to get the wrong end of the stick on this issue by a [...]
A reader, Ian Woodcock, took me to task yesterday about my post on whether outer suburban families would willingly choose densities of 25-30 dwellings/Ha so they could walk to local shops and services. In particular, Ian reckons I invoked a straw man when I argued that “it can’t be assumed that merely increasing outer suburban housing [...]
This story in The Age says average dwelling densities in the fringe Growth Areas need to double to make walking to local shops and services viable. It’s based on a report, Shall We Dense? (geddit?), which says the current minimum average density of 15 dwellings/Ha in the Growth Areas only yields about 510 dwellings within walking [...]
February 7, 2011 – 6:33 pm
If you think that home buyers in the fringe Growth Area LGAs are predominantly young renters buying their first McMansion, then think again. A survey released today by property consultants Oliver Hulme profiles home buyers in the Growth Areas LGAs i.e. Wyndham, Melton, Hume, Whittlesea, Casey and Cardinia. Given the brouhaha in The Age today [...]
By Alan Davies
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Also posted in Housing
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Tagged Cardinia, Casey, first home buyers, growth areas, Hume, investors, mcmansion, Melton, Oliver Hulme, renters, Whittlesea, Wyndham
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December 7, 2010 – 7:53 pm
A new research paper suggests that many of Melbourne 2030’s key ambitions in relation to housing have come to nought. The paper, Planning and the characteristics of housing supply in Melbourne, was written by Dr Robin Goodman and a team of fellow academics from the RMIT Research Centre and published by the Australian Housing and [...]
November 21, 2010 – 6:04 pm
I think some aspects of the Victorian Opposition’s clumsily titled Plan for Planning are doubtful, especially their proposal for ensuring 25 years land supply within Growth Areas and their intention of levying the Growth Areas Infrastructure Charge at the time of development. But there are also some good ideas that I want to discuss, notably [...]
November 11, 2010 – 8:27 pm
The benefits of residential density are more complex than they appear. The attractions of living cheek by jowl in places like Surfers Paradise or the CBD may not apply everywhere, especially on the fringes of our major cities. Almost everyone knows, it seems, that density has enormous benefits. It is correlated with lower levels of [...]
October 28, 2010 – 8:08 pm
Everyone knows that Australians build the largest new houses in the world. According to the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, real expenditure on each new dwelling is now 60% higher than it was 15 years ago. Just why we need 85 m2 per person, on average, in our new suburban houses is an interesting [...]
October 27, 2010 – 7:47 pm
A common argument is that households who settle on the fringe because housing is more affordable end up worse off because of higher transport costs. They are forced to buy a second or third car and they use more petrol because they have to travel further. Of course there’s an assumption here – that ordinary [...]
