Speculation and Resistance: Constraints on Compact City Policy Implementation in Melbourne

Abstract

Compact city policies such as Melbourne 2030 have been established in Australia for a range of reasons including climate change. It is now clear that the Melbourne 2030 policy has not been effective—with new development mostly on the urban fringe. This policy failure has often been sheeted home to resident and local government resistance to densification. This article suggests this narrative is insufficient to explain this failure at a metropolitan-wide scale and is clearly mistaken in one suburb, where aspects of the planning system appear to thwart the aims of strategic policy by encouraging speculation and producing vacant sites. Brunswick is an inner-city suburb with good opportunities for intensification adjacent to transit lines and on former industrial sites. In spite of resident resistance, 80 per cent of new dwellings proposed between 2002 and 2007 were approved for construction, and would have increased housing stock by 13 per cent. However, by 2009 just under half of all approved dwellings had been completed or commenced on site, while construction of the taller and higher density projects tended to stall, the sites having been on-sold and permits extended. We suggest developers anticipate that the planning system will ultimately approve significant increases in height and density, using Melbourne 2030 to over-ride local policy via appeals to the Planning Tribunal. Such permits produce significant capital gains that can be cashed without construction. We argue that elements of the Victorian planning system encourage ambit claims, contestation, cynicism and speculation, thwarting negotiations between residents, councils and developers towards a more compact city. The focus on the idea that resident resistance is the problem obscures the role the planning system itself plays in frustrating the goals of compact city policy.

Keywords:

• Compact cities
• resident opposition
• urban intensification
• planning
• speculation

Acknowledgements

This article drew on research funded by ARC Linkage Project (LP 0669652), with partners: the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development and the Cities of Melbourne, Moreland and Yarra. The authors are grateful for the extensive assistance provided by the City of Moreland for access to relevant data for this study. The views expressed do not represent those of the City of Moreland.

Notes

 1. ‘Main’ here refers to the network of Central, Principal, Specialised and Major Activity Centres that are envisaged as the main foci for intensification.

 2. The six centres were: Footscray, Broadmeadows, Ringwood, Box Hill, Dandenong and Frankston.

 3. A total of 28 638 or 22 per cent of applications were for new dwellings. New dwellings cover the categories ‘One new dwelling’ (Construct a new single dwelling), ‘More than one new dwelling’ (Construct more than one new dwelling; multi-unit developments) and ‘Other accommodation’ (Retirement village; Group accommodation; Caravan park; Motel; Backpackers/boarding house). Similar proportions were for alterations and additions to existing dwellings and are not included in these calculations.

 4. Higher density dwellings, as defined by DPCD, cover any form of residential development that is of higher density than the prevailing density of its residential context. As the prevailing context in over 75 per cent of Melbourne is separate houses at net residential densities as low as 10 DU/ha, higher density dwellings can mean almost anything from dual-occupancy and above.

 5. The categorisation of Local Government Areas into Inner and Outer follows that used in Buxton and Tieman's work (2004, 2005).

 6. Figures from Buxton and Tieman (2005, p. 139) and DSE (2005, 2006, 2007) and DPCD (2008b).

 7. Some types of development are exempt from third-party appeal, such as much new housing on the suburban fringe covered by covenants or developments within sites covered by a ‘Development Plan Overlay’.

 8. Six of the least disadvantaged LGAs are in the highest 10 for VCAT referrals (Boroondara, Stonnington, Bayside, Glen Eira, Port Phillip and Whitehorse). However, these 10 LGAs with the highest VCAT referrals also include four of the most disadvantaged (Hobsons Bay, Yarra, Moonee Valley and Darebin) but with ‘inner’ suburbs within 10 kilometres of the central city, all with varying, but significant degrees of gentrification that have occurred as part of the development boom in the inner city since the 1990s.

 9. The ‘Cheesegrater’ was approved in a slightly larger form at VCAT than originally submitted to Council. The Camberwell station redevelopment was at the time of the protests captured in the national media in 2003 only a vague proposal that went through a number of revisions before eventually being submitted for approval in 2008 and to VCAT in 2009.

10. July 2010.