How do you manage suburban sprawl in a heavily-urbanised country where the “quarter acre block” dream is dug in – and encouraged in some quarters – like a goanna tick?
Not very well, it seems, judging by the response of governments at both state and federal level.
Perth, not a populous place by international standards, nonetheless proclaims itself “the world’s longest city,” a north-south megalopolis clearly visible from space which gobbles up just about every available square inch of Indian Ocean coastline. Despite government targets, the building of new homes in urban (infill) suburbs has been eclipsed by those in outer “greenfield” areas like Wanneroo (in the north) and Armadale (south east).
In a surprise to absolutely no-one, many of those new homes are single house and land packages (apartment supply has “dropped off a cliff”) turbo-boosted by federal and state stimulus packages which make a mockery of the WA government’s own “Directions 2031” growth management strategy. Thus we see government acquiescence to the “quarter acre” fantasy generating the viral spread of suburbia and lining the pockets of developers who often scoff at the concept of “responsible growth,” all while infrastructure and environmental concerns lag well behind.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, Adelaide. Another “long” city on a north-south axis, Greater Adelaide saw its 30-Year Plan for sustainable, livable growth blown up when Premier Peter Malinauskas announced he would expedite the building of almost 24,000 homes on re-zoned land at places like Hackham (in the city’s far south) and Concordia (in the north).
Supporting transport infrastructure, you ask? Not happening, says minister Tom Koutsantonis, while planning minister Nick Champion gob-smackingly surrendered much of the responsibility for how it all plays out to the market: “people live in these communities, they work, they contribute to society, they’re good communities (so) … it will be the market that decides”.
It’s a pattern that repeats itself across Australia, governments of either political hue happy to advance the interests of donor developers via mechanisms such as hands-off code assessment regimes or the further streamlining of planning processes “to cut red tape,” consequences be damned. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it’s happening at a larger scale on our east coast, particularly in our fastest-growing (and now, officially, most populous) city: Melbourne.
They got there on a technicality (and a few years earlier than expected) but a re-drawn map saw Melbourne leapfrog Sydney as our most populous city just last month. After a moment’s self-congratulation, attention has returned to whether Melbourne – forecast by 2050 to be some 150 square kilometres of sprawling, unbroken suburbia – was equipped to handle such a lofty perch.
The answer, as things stand, is an emphatic “no” – and Melbourne’s geography means there are no easy solutions.
Melbourne’s CBD, a downtown area better suited to the needs of the 19th and 20th centuries, is simply no longer up to the task, situated as it is some 70 kilometres of often-inadequate road and rail away from the city’s forecast, 2050 eastern edge (see above). What’s more, in contrast to Sydney, its very centrality likely requires the development of multiple ‘mini CBDs’ to service outer areas and relieve pressure on Melbourne’s traditional CBD from all points of the compass.
When NSW sought alternatives to a CBD at the eastern end of Sydney’s sprawl, it chose centrally-located Parramatta, investing billions of dollars – from government and private sources – to bring commercial and retail space, entertainment precincts, education and transport hubs, medical and judicial facilities, government offices, medium or high-density residential nodes and ancillary infrastructure up to scratch. Melbourne has no such luxury: building just one mini CBD in, say, the north eastern suburb of Heidelberg isn’t going to improve services for residents of Frankston (to the south) or Werribee (in the west).
More than one mini CBD means Victoria’s government and corporate sector must allocate significantly more resources than NSW put into Parramatta – an expensive proposition to put it mildly. Likely sites for a mini CBD like Clayton (south east), Box Hill (east/north east) and Sunshine (west) boast some of the amenity expected of a CBD, but nowhere near all.
It just so happens that Clayton, Box Hill and Sunshine are all earmarked as major transport hubs on the planned Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) which would see 90km of mainly underground tunnels connecting lines on the existing, CBD-oriented rail system.
Built over three stages, the first trains would run on the loop’s eastern section by 2035, although the above-ground connection to the SRL’s western terminus (Werribee/Wyndham Vale) would not come online until several decades later.
A massive, $125 billion undertaking, the SRL is seen as a government-manufactured “magnet” for the private investment necessary to spawn mini-CBDs, based on the apparent premise that “if you build it, they will come.”
If you look at the map of Melbourne we’ve provided (above) the SRL may appear “too close” to Melbourne’s existing CBD to service Melbourne’s far flung fringes, but its inner-to-mid suburban setting is designed to incentivise the very infill residential building they’re struggling to produce in Perth (above).
Will it be enough? Infrastructure experts have warned Spring Street [the Victorian government] that the SRL alone won’t guarantee the kind of medium-to-high-density residential nodes seen as “optimal infill” development and, partly as a result, won’t deliver enough homes for Melbourne’s growing population.
Yet again, Australians’ dream of spacious surroundings, the market’s desire to accommodate it, and a hands-off government approach imperils prudent, environmentally-responsible planning.
This laissez-faire approach has more than its share of drawbacks. Professor Jago Dodson, director of RMIT University’s Centre for Urban Research, says it “has left Melbourne with inefficiency and dysfunction.”
To the consternation of local councils keen to host their own mini CBDs, the government is dragging out investor uncertainty by dithering on the announcement of priority mini-CBD precincts. This after going cold on the comprehensive 2015 Plan Melbourne strategy, which recommended “super cities” at now out-of-favour Werribee and Dandenong.
Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan insists it’s all under control: “We’re not the sort of government that wants to sit back and just watch it happen,” she told The Age, telegraphing Spring Street’s preparedness, if required, to offer financial incentives to move things in what it deems “the right direction”.
But Dodson says more is required, suggesting zoning interventions and a more pro-active relocation of education, health and government organisations to clearly-announced mini-CBD precincts. Greater government involvement would reassure Victorians on a number of fronts, not the least of which is housing.
With a $125 billion pricetag, the SRL “is an incredibly expensive way of facilitating concentrated (infill) development,” Dodson told The Age.
Victoria is in a fiscal hole, twice downgraded from a Triple A credit rating, with a looming horror budget expected to slash spending on infrastructure, including the SRL-connected Melbourne Airport Rail.
Early works have already begun on the SRL’s first (south eastern) stage, but these fiscal issues mean the pace at which it proceeds, its eventual completion, and the government’s ability to uplift its services to mini CBDs are now in real doubt. Perhaps that offers an opportunity to explore cheaper, more effective ways of managing Melbourne’s sprawl.
While we’ve focused on three “case studies” above, poorly-regulated and seemingly-unchecked urban sprawl is a feature of major Australian cities from coast to coast. It’s a theme the Fifth Estate will revisit in more granular detail in the weeks ahead, and it begs the question: “Why?”
In all three of the above cases, market forces were given almost free rein to do their thing, largely unencumbered by state Labor governments. The result: “inefficiency and dysfunction” around Melbourne’s SRL, while the lower density housing favoured by Australians has overrun “greenfield” suburbs like Wanneroo (WA) and Hackham (SA), despite experts repeatedly calling for the exact opposite.
If there’s one immutable truth about governments of either hue, it’s that they’re on, let’s say, “friendly”, terms with developers given free rein to “cry havoc and let slip” the single house and land packages. Money and politics are terrible bedfellows, spawning outcomes – from wars to income disparity to the viral spread of suburbia – that benefit only a tiny few.
In the Fifth Estate recently, planning and urban design veteran Mike Brown saw improved urban decision making and resolving our housing affordability crisis as a way of demonstrating “the superiority of democratic governance increasingly under threat from autocracies in our region”.
But if money has compromised our democracy, is “improved decision making” still an option?
