The Grattan Institute released a new report earlier this month, Building tomorrow’s suburbs, on how to make fringe suburbs more adaptable to future change.
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Would a satellite city re-energise Ted Baillieu?
The editorial in The Age yesterday, Mr Premier times are tough but you can leave your mark in the west, is one of the strangest opinion pieces I’ve seen in a long time. It’s so odd I wonder if its collateral damage from the current restructure at Fairfax. It ostensibly mirrors an accompanying feature, Faith [...]
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Why expand Melbourne’s growth boundary?
Victoria’s Planning Minister, Matthew Guy, has taken a pasting over his decision earlier this month to expand Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) by 5,858 hectares, as recommended by the Logical Inclusions Advisory Committee he set up. The media point out this is the fourth time the UGB’s been expanded since it was promulgated in 2002. [...]
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Is sprawl undermining food security?
Many observers are concerned urban sprawl is sterilising prime vegetable-growing land in the peri-urban areas around our major cities. For example, The Age’s editorialist, alarmed by reports the Bailleau Government is about “to extend suburban Melbourne to vegetable growing areas”, is seriously worried about food security. The paper says agricultural land in two outer suburbs in [...]
READ MOREWhere does Melbourne end (and sprawl begin)?
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 [...]
READ MOREAre apartments the answer to ‘McMansions’?
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 [...]
READ MOREIs living at density the same everywhere?
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 [...]
READ MOREAre outer suburbs dense enough to walk?
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 [...]
READ MOREWho's buying homes on the fringe?
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 [...]
READ MOREIs Melbourne 2030 achieving its objectives on housing?
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 [...]
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