PIA Submission: Melbourne Let’s talk about the future
March 2013
Planning Institute Australia
Contact:Victorian Division Steve Dunn President
Liz Johnstone
Executive Officer
Planning Institute Australia Victorian Division
+ Contact Information
Liz Johnstone PIA VICTORIAN DIVISION Executive Officer Planning Institute Australia, Victorian Division G-05, 60 Leicester Street Carlton Vic 3053
PO Box 675 Natasha Liddell Carlton South Vic 3053 Planning Institute Australia, Victorian Division Telephone: (03) 9347 1900 Committee Member Facsimile: (03) 9347 2900 Email: [email protected] Web: www.planning.org.au/vic Stephen Rowley Planning Institute Australia, Victorian Division ABN 34 151 601 937 Committee Member
March 2013
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Contents
Contents ------3 Executive Summary ------4 1 The Planning Institute of Australia ------5 2 Our Understanding of the Discussion Paper ------6 3 The Context: Challenges and outcomes ------7 4 Relevant Recent Submissions and Advocacy ------10 5 What should the MPS do? ------11 5.1 Attributes ------11 5.2 Vision------11 5.3 Bipartisan and Long Term ------11 5.4 Spatially resolved ------12 5.5 Outcome focussed ------12 5.6 Policy alignment ------13 5.7 Implementation, Monitoring and Review ------13
6 Conclusion and Key Messages ------15
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Executive Summary
The Planning Institute of Australia’s Victorian Division welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the development of a new Metropolitan Planning Strategy (MPS) for Melbourne and Victoria. PIA is the peak professional institute representing planners nationally.
This submission outlines PIAs priority areas for focus and what we consider to be the critical attributes for a MPS to be successfully owned, understood and implemented.
This submission does not respond to each of the breadth of issues canvassed in the discussion paper. PIA has contributed both directly and through members to many more detailed submissions and has determined to make this a ‘higher-level’ submission.
PIA considers the development and implementation of planning strategies such as a MPS as a significant mechanism to achieve a better future, providing a critical lynch-pin for the land use planning system in Victoria, fundamental to investment certainty, inter-agency coordination and for longer term strategic objectives to be realised.
Without such spatially resolved long term strategies, major cities will not provide the health, economic, environmental and social outcomes necessary for ongoing improvements to quality of life and standards of living; or liveability.
Proper design and effective use of the built environment is more efficient, and can improve communities’ quality of life. Our key recommendations about the attributes necessary for the MPS to be enduring and successfully implemented are:
A vision: the MPS must provide a clear, long-term vision for the future of Melbourne and its role in the Asia Pacific region.
Bipartisan: the MPS must enjoy bi-partisan support.
Long term: while implementation plans are required for shorter time intervals and more frequently reviewed, the MPS should plan for at least 25 years ahead, and preferably 40.
Spatially resolved: the plan will be more readily understood and able to be implemented if the strategy is expressed spatially and forms part of municipal planning schemes.
Outcome focussed: the MPS must clearly state the outcomes the strategy intends and how these will be achieved over time.
Policy alignment: the MPS is a high order State Policy and, as well as flowing through the Victoria Planning Provisions (VPP), must directly inform and guide State Government departments’ and agencies’ investment and service delivery decisions.
Implementation Monitoring and Review: progress should be monitored and adjustments made as required.
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1 The Planning Institute of Australia
The Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) is the national peak body for planning professionals, with nearly 5000 members working across Australia and abroad, and over 800 members in Victoria. We aim to serve the public interest of urban and regional communities through our activities, including:
o Promotion of the professional interests of members
o Establishment and administration of standards of professional competency
o Provision of training to increase members’ knowledge
o Facilitation of forums to exchange views on contemporary planning issues
o Advancement of planning issues to the community, governments, private sector and academia
Approximately 30 per cent of members are employed in strategic planning, development assessment or other planning roles within Local Government. The remaining members are primarily engaged in private consulting (40 per cent), State government, academic research and teaching, or are student members.
PIA members meet specific requirements, including completed qualifications from accredited universities and relevant industry experience and are able to join one or more of the seven chapters. The vast majority of members are within the urban and regional planning chapter. The chapters or industry disciplines are:
– Urban and Regional Planning – Planning Law
– Social Planning – Economic Planning
– Environmental Planning – Urban Design
– Transport Planning
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2 Our Understanding of the Discussion Paper
The Discussion Paper is based on 8 principles: 1. A distinctive Melbourne – urban character, heritage, reinvigoration and design 2. A globally connected city – economy, patterns of employment, job creation 3. Social and economic participation – social equity and welfare, demographics, outer vs inner disparities 4. Strong communities – public spaces, appropriate & affordable housing, social housing 5. Environmental resilience – low impact transport, urban heat island, energy efficient urban design, carbon capture, alternative technology 6. A polycentric city linked to regional cities – restructuring urban form to follow jobs, employment and innovation clusters, reinvigorating established suburbs 7. Living locally – a 20 minute city – being able to access jobs and services within 20 minutes Infrastructure investment that supports city growth – delivering and implementing infrastructure, long term planning, funding, development contribution charges 8. Leadership and partnership – partnership and agreements with other agencies, indicators and targets These principles are a useful framework to discuss the issues and outcomes sought for a large city such as Melbourne. PIA does not intend to address each of these principles nor respond to the many questions posed in the paper directly. Our submission identifies the key challenges, outcomes and governance arrangements that we believe are of most importance to the future success of Melbourne. While PIA agrees that Melbourne 2030 principally failed in its implementation, we also recognise that most functions critical to the delivery of a MPS are state functions. How the State government best organises itself to ensure state services and infrastructure priorities are delivered is unclear and often controversial where state strategy is not spatially resolved or clearly foreshadowed. The establishment and composition of the MPS, and extensive consultation and efforts to engage citizens and practitioners in the development of a metropolitan strategy has been considerable and an important step towards building some common ground for the strategy development to occur. However it will be critical that further consultation occurs once the draft strategy has been prepared. That document will presumably be more specific and spatially resolved, and will allow for more informed community engagement.
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3 The Context: Challenges and outcomes
The Central Business District and Greater Melbourne region are important to the State of Victoria. Nationally, Victoria is a small, capital city centric state, and Melbourne’s rate of growth continues to outstrip regional cities and rural Victoria. Melbourne has benefitted from a long history of metropolitan planning, underpinned by transport infrastructure, well-planned and extensive urban services, and polycentric or dispersed activity centres. More recently Melbourne’s ultimate spatial extent has been sought to be limited by an urban growth boundary however, with frequent revisions, its utility has not been proven. Rapid growth has seen the city expand beyond its service and infrastructure reach, with a divided city emerging, where many Melbournians are unlikely to enjoy the active living opportunities more likely to occur in inner and middle areas, and suffer clear transport and socio-economic disadvantage. This has been exacerbated by the global financial crisis, reduced access to capital and government infrastructure funding. Further, the development of new areas is compounding the situation in suburbs developed over the past 10-15 years. PIA notes that Melbourne 2030 is the current metropolitan strategy and remains in the State Planning Policy Framework. Many aspects of M2030 are long standing urban principles that have endured various iterations of strategic plans for Melbourne over the last half a century. They reflect the structural elements of Melbourne and we hope many will continue and form part of the revised MPS. Some of the important and emerging policy areas that must be addressed in the MPS are: The effectiveness of the UGB and green wedge policy There is a recognised need for fresh and affordable local food (food security), access to open space and productive land close to urban areas. Evidence confirms that urban development using existing infrastructure or at densities able to support the provision of new services and infrastructure, such as the 37+ dwellings / jobs per hectare is more efficient and provides greater amenity. Current State policy provides for 15. The current UGB is elastic and as such is ineffective. Whether a ‘green belt’ approach as effectively used in the UK, an ALR (Agricultural Land Reserve) as used in Canada is preferred, PIA believes that a fixed boundary, with productive green spaces between more dense urban areas, is necessary for Melbourne’s future growth and development. In or Out or Up Melbourne’s spatial extent, presuming water, energy, employment and social needs can be met, is sufficient for a city with triple the population or more. We need to use land more efficiently and make better us of existing infrastructure, which provides a greater return on investment to government and reduces the burden on individual households. Higher density does not directly equate with high-rise. The amount of land in Melbourne needed for higher density housing and mixed use areas is a relative small proportion of Melbourne’s developed area. The human scale of in-fill development is important, and many cities around the world achieve high urban densities with buildings of 5 to 8 stories. This allows for sunlight to footpaths, reduces wind tunnelling and creates more interaction between occupants and the street. PIA is concerned that simply allowing high-rise precincts to occur, ostensibly to stop damage to valued suburban neighbourhood character areas, is a simplistic approach. The MPS should identify the need to accommodate more dwellings and effectively communicate this to Victorians. How this is achieved should be determined in a local and regional context, and the cumulative outcome monitored.
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The MPS should help identify more targeted locations for planned and cohesive increases in density and scale to avoid the problems with ad-hoc tower developments. Well planned and cohesive precincts of medium-rise built form will help to build community acceptance of such built form, in contrast with community opposition that occurs when such development occurs in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Such an outcome requires a greater level of spatial resolution in the metropolitan strategy than has occurred in the recent past. Polycentric Cities and Activity Centre Policy The Polycentric Cities model appears to essentially continue long-standing activity centres approaches, which is supported. However refinement will be needed as the strategy progresses to develop a nesting to ensure that the “polycentric” model does not simply devolve to a dispersed or centre-less model. This will involve careful and detailed delineation of the roles different centres play. Expectations should be clear about how car-oriented centres such as Chadstone fit into such a model. The challenge is to delineate an activity centre hierarchy that drives desirable built form and land use patterns, and realistically accommodates existing car-oriented centres, without simply reducing this to a description of the status quo. It is noted that recent and proposed changes to zones have greatly increased the opportunities for various retailers to locate in industrial zones. This has undermined activity centre policy as such land is almost always out-of-centre. If activity centre policy is to remain a feature of the MPS – as PIA believes it should – work needs to be undertaken to determine the availability of land for both industry and retailing to prevent such ad-hoc redistribution of these categories. (It is noted that the Managing Melbourne review of previous activity centre policies identified a failure to properly understand land supply factors as a key reason for underwhelming responses to activity centre policy). There needs to be a commitment to revisiting the zoning regime upon the conclusion of the MPS work, if necessary, to ensure that the recent changes to zones have not left the statutory framework at odds with policy. Active Transport and Active Living Where we work affects how we travel, more so than where we live. When people have services and interesting places to walk to, they walk. When the public transport service is frequent and reliable, people use public transport. Much of Melbourne does not have these attributes. Universal provision of transport services at inner city rates is not something we can currently afford. The existing radial heavy and light rail services reinforce the pre-eminence of our CBD. An integrated transport plan must accompany the MPS, and a nodal approach investigated to create the polycentric city required, and to create ‘second cities’ destinations in places such as Dandenong, Berwick, Frankston, Werribee and Sunshine, or others as appropriate so that a 20 minute city is achieved over time. The 20 Minute City idea is welcomed for highlighting that Melbourne has outgrown our travel budgets, and as a valuable discussion starter. However it is noted that the conception of the “20 Minute City” as described is not based on any preferred model of transport, so that a twenty minute car ride and twenty minute walk are seen as essentially interchangeable. It also does not distinguish between differing travel budgets for different type of task. This limits the usefulness of the concept, and may in fact tacitly support car-dependent outcomes. For example, a suburban location where shops, schools or day-to-day medical services are a twenty minute drive away is not considered highly accessible. At the same time, higher travel times might be quite acceptable for different tasks or travel modes. For example, a thirty-to- forty minute commute to employment by a reliable and well-run train service may be perfectly acceptable for many residents. It is suggested that the “20 Minute City” idea needs more nuance to better recognise such trade-offs, and to support a hierarchy of accessibility where certain key local needs should be within walking distance.
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Housing models to respond to ageing, smaller households and increased diversity and ESD Our future housing needs are not being conceived and delivered in the market. We need to be thinking about different design, funding and delivery models to provide the future stock of homes, and shared homes needed, particularly as we age in place. ResCode, the VPP, the SPPF and LPPF will need to be ‘realigned’ to deliver flexible, functional, sustainable and affordable housing across Melbourne. This will be a complex challenge as certainty may stifle innovation, but is an essential early focus for the MPS. Roles and responsibilities As with Melbourne 2030, almost regardless of the content, the implementation and achievement of ‘the promise’ is what the State Government will be judged on, as it is, in effect, the metropolitan planning authority. Metropolitan city shaping functions are state governments core business. The key levers necessary to shape cities are within their roles, functions, duties and powers. Water, waste, utilities, health, education, freight and logistics, public transport infrastructure and other significant areas of service delivery remain either delivered by the State or their agent. Applying principles of subsidiarity, the Federal Government can invest and deliver nation-building outcomes, State governments can invest and deliver metropolitan and region shaping infrastructure and services, and local government is very much the community building level of government. All are important, and importantly all are different. Whatever the vision (worlds healthiest city; a city where we live actively, sustainably and well; the lowest externalities globally; clean green and productive) through the MPS, the State Government needs to identify what it is going to do, where and when, and who it needs to work with to achieve it.
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4 Relevant Recent Submissions and Advocacy
PIA Victoria has made numerous submissions in recent years to planning policy and reform initiatives. Unfortunately many of those processes have not advanced. Many submissions are relevant to the MPS. Those submissions are: PIA submission to the 2013-14 Victorian State Budget. View here.
PIA submissions to the Standard Development Contributions Advisory Committee. View submission here and response to stage 1 report here.
PIA submission regarding Inquiry into Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in Victoria. View here.
PIA submission regarding proposed zone reforms for Victoria. View here.
Parliamentary Inquiry into Growing the Suburbs: Infrastructure and Business Development in Outer Suburban Melbourne. View here.
Victorian Planning System Ministerial Advisory Committee. View here
Parliamentary Inquiry into Environmental Design and Public Health. View here.
Parliamentary Inquiry into Liveability Options in Outer Suburban Melbourne. View here..
Planning and Environment Amendment (General) Bill 2009. View here.
East West Link Needs Assessment Study (EWLNAS). View here.
Inquiry into Sustainable Urban Design for New Communities in Outer Suburban Areas. View here.
Draft Design Guidelines for Higher Density Housing. View here.
These submissions share common elements about the positive contribution of planning, the need to ensure alignment between the strategic policy objective or intent, and the tools available to support implementation; the need for the planning system to function more cohesively and effectively, and the importance of planning to social inclusion, economic prosperity, infrastructure provision and health outcomes.
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5 What should the MPS do?
5.1 Attributes
A Strategy should outline the actions planned to achieve identified outcomes. PIA has identified a number of attributes that we consider essential for the successful development and delivery of a metropolitan planning strategy. Those attributes are consistent with the nine criteria for capital city strategic planning developed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). Those attributes are: A vision: the MPS must provide a clear, long-term vision for the future of Melbourne and its role.
Bipartisan: the MPS must enjoy bi-partisan support and associated Governance arrangements.
Long term: while implementation plans are required for shorter time intervals and more frequently reviewed, the MPS should plan for at least 25 years ahead, and preferably 40.
Spatially resolved: the plan will be more readily understood and able to be implemented if the strategy is expressed spatially and forms part of municipal planning schemes.
Outcome focussed: the MPS must clear state the outcomes the strategy intends, such as a twenty-minute city, and how this will be achieved over time.
Policy alignment: The MPS is a high order State Policy and, as well as flowing through the VPP, it must directly inform and guide State Government departments’ and agencies’ investment and service delivery decisions.
Implementation, monitoring and review: progress should be monitored and adjustments made as required.
5.2 Vision
The MPS should, as a long-term aspirational plan, provide a clear vision for the future of Melbourne. It should function as our ‘prospectus’, explaining the city we are and will become, attracting and guiding investment and service delivery. The vision for Melbourne will shape Victoria’s social, cultural, economic, and environmental advancement - for decades to come. A clear and enduring vision will provide certainty to communities as well as the public and private sectors, will assist to minimise conflict, and will build a common sense of direction and purpose. It should be ambitious and bold, not tied simply to trend, but informed by evidence. By definition it is future focussed, but this should not be to the exclusion of attributes that have served Melbourne well.
5.3 Bipartisan and Long Term
Bipartisan support is a critical success factor for the MPS. Without this, it is destined to fail. Bipartisan support is critical for the longevity of the MPS vision and plan, which successive Government’s will have to implement, no doubt with different shorter term priorities and taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. We envisage a MPS as an evolving document with short, medium and long-term goals, that will be refined over time as unknown variables (such as market conditions, population and sea level rise projections) become known. The MPS should be a whole of government and whole of community strategy, and as a long-term “visionary” document, not be politicised. Governments act cooperatively for long-term net community benefit across many essential services. This is no different. The long lead time for implementation of long term higher order strategic plans makes this all the more important.
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Should legislation be required to provide greater rigour and durability, such as that for the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges Strategy Plan, then it is warranted. While strategic planning may be difficult for many in the community to engage with and understand, how it affects their daily lives is well understood. Educating and involving citizens and the private sector in the plans preparation and implementation will assist in garnering on-going bipartisan support. Mainstream and social media channels should be used.
5.4 Spatially resolved
A failure of Melbourne 2030 was that the spatial representation of policy intent had only been achieved at a diagrammatic scale. This made implementation ambiguous and difficult. PIA believes that as much as is possible, policy objectives contained in the MPS should be spatially expressed. Maps should show where key metropolitan infrastructure and services are located, and will be needed. The relationship of Melbourne and its hinterland and regional and rural Victoria should be mapped. Where significant metropolitan services are, and where they will be, should be mapped. Locations for increases in density should be resolved. The conflict around the upgrade and augmentation of the Brunswick sub-station, an aging asset supplying a third of power to the CBD, came as a surprise to local residents. It is of metropolitan significance and Melbourne 2030 made no mention of this asset or its ongoing and future role. Spatial expression of metropolitan policy objectives will greatly assist in implementation at the local level.
5.5 Outcome focussed The Coalition Plan for Planning committed to an outcomes-based metropolitan strategy. Previous PIA submissions have focussed on the outcomes that a planning system for Victoria should deliver, including: Housing affordability, and the efficient use of land and infrastructure.
Well designed and located urban consolidation and renewal.
Addressing issues and delivering outcomes effectively at the right scale from local to regional to state-wide.
Timely and effective delivery of planning services in the public interest.
Integrated, effective and efficient infrastructure and land use planning delivery.
Whole of government approaches to policy development and implementation.
Clear definition of the roles (including functions and powers), responsibilities, requirements and opportunities in the system.
Bipartisan agreement to planning objectives.
Tools available for public policy development and implementation are well known (see list below). To be successful implementation of a policy or strategy invariably needs to use various combinations of these tools, as rarely is a single tool is sufficient alone. The key tools available may be grouped under the following headings, and all have a role to play:
Legislation and regulatory instruments.
Fiscal operational and capital budgets; taxes and charges.
Incentives, partnerships and sanctions.
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Information and education.
Clarity about the outcomes sought also assist in monitoring and review, but can become an end in themselves. PIA suggests that the outcomes measured be high level, use existing economic and other ABS data, and have meaning. Health outcomes, area of open space per capita, vehicle kilometres travelled, emissions or carbon capture, housing affordability can all be measured and spatially expressed so that interventions are targeted, equitable, and able to be monitored and reviewed.
5.6 Policy alignment
A successful MPS will align with both the national and the local context. The community building work of councils is essential to harness local investment and maintain political support. Strengthened collaboration between local government and regional networks, State and Federal Government must be fostered. In addition to aligning investment of various levels of government, is the need to align this with investment by the private sector. There is a significant element of behavioural and cultural change required, which will not happen without aligned and sustained effort. Effective clustering of economic activities will not occur without public and private sector investment achieving their purpose through a common means. Across wider Melbourne are many employment and productive clusters that will need local and State cooperation to thrive, and for others to transition from a manufacturing to a knowledge economy. There needs to be an alignment of capital works to produce transformative outcomes. For example, if all councils spent marginally less on drainage upgrades for 3 years, and that money was redirected to green the city, the results would be transformative, and with good capital works planning have minimal effect on drainage. The ability to leverage from investments by other levels of Government, such as the NBN rollout, so as to also achieve undergrounding of powerlines, reduced annual tree pruning requirements, more shade for pedestrians and reduce the heat island effect, should be easier with collaboration, cooperation, forward planning, and alignment of policy and effort.
5.7 Implementation, Monitoring and Review
PIA has outlined above that the MPS should be long term but with short to medium term priorities for delivery of major elements and projects. Their implementation can be more easily measured and reviewed. Agencies responsible must be identified, resourced and made accountable. This raises questions of funding and governance. Internationally and nationally governance arrangements for major cities vary widely and there is no clear model that is more effective. When changes are made to metropolitan governance they are considered deeply, through a Royal Commission in Auckland, for example, more recently. Trends emerging globally include: globalisation and shift from the late 20th-century 'local administration' approaches due to complex, persistent or 'wicked issues' to more flexible approach, some statutory (Greater London Authority), some non-statutory (regional organisations of councils).
focus on functional boundaries of metropolitan activity, and not just the formal administration boundaries.
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all inclusivescope – energy, transport, education, recreation etc.
strong political legitimacy, meaningful autonomy from both senior and junior governments, wide ranging jurisdiction and 'relevant' territorial cover - the functional region (from a review paper by Lefèvre).
In Canada the use of greater regional councils is more prevalent, as is a four tier system, whereas is Australia, the State is the de facto metropolitan government for the capital region. In the UK the Greater London Assembly was established in 2000 and is responsible for major regional strategies, transport and metropolitan police. At the neighbourhood or local level, governance trends are to bring government closer to people, to empower them through shared decision making which is key to local area sustainability management. Implementation, including resourcing and governance, are key issues for the MPS to address. Despite the announcement of a Metropolitan Planning Authority (MPA) and the appointment of PWC to advise government, PIA believes that form follows function, and implementation not planning was the problem and remains the challenge. Efficient, effective coordination of state functions such as health, education, transport and utilities - to realise economies of scale, produce a catalyst for transformation, and capture value uplift to support essential service delivery - is the increasing challenge. An authority comprising senior representatives of Health, Education, Housing, Transport and Planning, with approval of forward capital works expenditure may be worth considering. It is noted that Melbourne 2030 was the subject of an Audit in March 2008. This made valuable findings as to why the previous Metropolitan Strategy had not been satisfactorily implemented. It is suggested that the lessons from that review be explicitly addressed and applied in the current project, and that a similar process of auditing be committed to at the outset of the new strategy.
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6 Conclusion and Key Messages
The principles contained within the Discussion Paper provide a useful framework for the MPS. However, it is the resolution of these principles in the strategy which will determine the appropriateness and effectiveness of the MPS. To address some of the important and emerging policy areas, the MPS need to: Provide for a fixed urban boundary, with productive green spaces between more dense urban areas. Clearly identify locations to be targeted for medium and higher density development. Reinforce activity centre policy. Further resolve the concept of a “20 Minute City”, including correlating different tasks and preferable travel modes. Provide a mechanism to deliver more flexible, functional, sustainable and affordable housing that meets the diverse needs of the community. In order to effectively deliver on such policies, the MPS needs the following attributes: A long term vision. Bipartisan support (of key principles, if not the detail). Supportive governance arrangements. Spatial resolution. Strategies to achieve specified outcomes. Allowance for the review of lower order government policy, including the Victoria Planning Provisions, to ensure alignment (which will in turn assist the implementation of the strategy). A program for implementation, monitoring and review. PIA appreciates the opportunity to provide comment on the Discussion Paper, and looks forward to contributing to and providing comment on more detailed proposals as the Strategy is developed.
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