planning in victoria

70 posts

Freedom from Information: My FOI Submission to get Release of the Residential Zones Advisory Committee Report

Urban Planning

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Sir Humphrey: How are things at the Campaign for the Freedom of Information, by the way?
Sir Arnold: Sorry, I can’t talk about that.

– Yes Minister, “Party Games”

Victorian planners will have seen the announcements about new zones this week. This is a big planning story and one I hope to write more about once the detail is available. But it also marked the conclusion of my own curious adventure through Victoria’s Freedom of Information procedures.

Through 2011 I had been thinking a bit about residential zones, and contemplating writing something for Planning News about how zones could better facilitate the rolling out of local housing solutions. My thinking had been that the focus on fast, medium and slow-growth zones, evident in the earlier discussion papers, was misplaced. For me the focus needed to be not so much about setting different “temperatures” of redevelopment, with all the political challenges that can involve, but instead being more specific about the forms preferred development should take.

As I thought about how such controls could work, I became increasingly frustrated that the Advisory Committee report on residential zones, finished in 2009, was not publicly available. This was, after all, the biggest single piece of work on the subject, and DPCD and the Minister had sitting on it for more than two years. I asked DPCD for it, but got the expected answer: they weren’t releasing it until the government’s response was ready.

This is an attitude to the release of information that has been getting more prevalent and which drives me crazy. It wouldn’t hurt anybody for such a report to be in the public realm while a response is being considered, as has occurred for numerous reviews in the past. So I lodged a Freedom of Information request seeking the Advisory Committee’s report.

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Matthew Guy’s Ventnor Advice

Urban Planning

I don’t have time for a detailed post about Matthew Guy’s extraordinary decision to tell DPCD to change its advice to him about the Ventnor rezoning. But then, who needs one? Thanks to the good work of the opposition and The Age, the facts are now out in the open, and they speak for themselves. You wonder why he couldn’t just disregard the advice, rather than seeking for it to be changed… But then this kind of stuff, like Madden’s Windsor debacle before it, defies explanation. As I said then, good governance would actually be the canny political strategy in these instances.

I did, however, want to make one quick point about Guy’s conduct here that I haven’t seen made anywhere else, and that’s the contrast between the approach of the state government versus local government in a situation such as this. At state government level, the Minister can direct the Department to change its advice and top bureaucrats will acquiesce. In considering how bad a piece of behaviour that is by the Minister, it is worth considering that if he had been a councillor in local government, his request would have been not just poor governance, but actually illegal.

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Don’t Call it the Underwood Review

Urban Planning

sunstorm

The first instalment of the long-awaited Underwood Review of the Victorian planning system (which we’re supposed to call the “Victorian Planning System Ministerial Advisory Committee”) was released on Friday and makes for interesting reading. The full report is here, and the government’s response is here.

The paper is structured partly as a review and partly as discussion paper: at certain points it’s making quite specific recommendations, at other points it’s just kicking ideas around. This is actually one of its strengths: it certainly gives a sense that the Committee was legitimately interested in hearing people’s views. There is a much more genuine sense of community engagement in this paper than in, say, the previous government’s review of the Planning & Environment Act. To glance through the submissions received by the Committee (on the DPCD website here) is to get a sense of what an achievement that was. Extracting value from those submissions – most of which are either disgruntled objectors saying the system is too developer-friendly, or industry objections saying the system is too objector-friendly – is no mean feat. (For what it’s worth my submission – which I was flattered to see the Committee quote at a couple of points – is here).

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Build Up or Beat Up? Some Belated Thoughts on Melbourne’s Mega CBD

Urban Planning

Both Rupert Dance over at Plantastic and Designerific and Alan Davies at The Urbanist weighed in with good posts on Matthew Guy’s mooted mega-CBD. This got a big run in the Herald Sun first thing on the Friday before last, followed by a catch-up story later the same day by The Age. (The Herald Sun were obviously fed the scoop: perhaps The Age is being punished for its vigorous pursuit of Guy over the Ventnor rezoning).

Guy’s press release is here, and the map is reproduced below (click to see the original PDF). Oddly, there’s no explanation that I can find for the yellow blobs, though we can infer from their location that they’re industrial precincts. The DPCD website carried an almost comically non-committal story essentially just saying “Matthew Guy said some stuff: here’s a link,” so we can’t look to them for clarification.

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Value for Money: The VCAT Blitz

Urban Planning

Credit where it’s due. When I commented on the proposed pay-for-speed initiatives at the major cases list at VCAT last September, I argued (as did pretty much everyone) that what was really needed was extra funding across the list. VCAT is in a bad way at the moment, clearly struggling to clear its cases in a timely manner: the persistent rumour is that they lack the money to put on the Sessional Members that are needed to deal with the Planning List. And now Matthew Guy has announced what amounts to an emergency funds injection, specific to planning:

The Victorian Coalition Government has committed $1 million to tackle the backlog of planning cases before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

Announcing the initiative today, Planning Minister Matthew Guy said the funding would enable approximately 800 cases to be finalised and reduce the waiting list by up to six months.

Interestingly, the press release hints at looming twelve month waiting periods, which is even worse than the eight or nine months I’ve heard of:

“Eighty per cent of cases currently on the Planning and Environment List have been waiting at least six months to be heard, and without today’s initiative were likely to wait a further six months before a hearing date was confirmed,” Mr Guy said.

Whether it’s a year or eight or nine months, the waiting times are ridiculous and make a mockery out of the various “circuit-breaking” measures that exist to allow applicants to resolve disputes or move past an intransigent council. For example, there’s no point appealing a council failure to determine an application within 60 days when VCAT are likely to be slower than the council.

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“You Got Your Wish, George. There is No Planning Department.”

Urban Planning Urban Planning and Film

We all know urban planning has an image problem. But it’s odd to come across an example of a planning department producing a propaganda film to redress the situation. Yet that’s exactly what the Beverley Hills Planning Department did with this short from 2003, It’s a Wonderful City.

As the title suggests, it’s a take on It’s a Wonderful Life, which is already a highly suggestive, must-see film for urban planners (I talk about it more here). The original film shows the fortunes of a classic Hollywood small town as it teeters on the edge of suburbanisation, with the fate of the town depending on the existence or otherwise of affordable-housing pioneer George Bailey. In the Beverley Hills take, we follow George Buildley as we see how the town would fare without a town planning department.

While it’s a brave attempt, I can’t help but chuckle at the efforts to make a world without planning seem so nightmarish. And it’s a little depressing that even in pro-planning propaganda there’s a scene in which someone is driven to the edge of madness by planning bureaucracy. (“Review process… the Planning Commission, the Architectural Commission… there isn’t time!)

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Fixing the Victorian Planning System: Six Key Issues

Urban Planning

building the new city

What follows is a slightly edited version of my submission to the Underwood review into the operation of the Victorian Planning System (I wrote about that review back in June). With the committee due to report back early in the new year, I thought it would be timely to post it here since it’s one of the longer pieces I’ve written about the systemic problems with the Victorian planning system. A couple of points have been altered slightly to make it read better in this context, but mostly it’s as submitted.

I took a long time to post it as I have some reservations about it. I would have liked to have covered more nitty-gritty issues, which would have allowed me to be more specific and hence more constructive. Unfortunately time – and more particularly, a disillusioned sense that I wasting mine – got the better of me, so it ended up tackling just a few of the higher level systemic issues, rather than delving into detail. A more comprehensive overview of my take on the problems with the system would be gleaned by taking this in combination with the article Building a Better System that I co-wrote for Planning News (from which parts of this are cribbed), as well as my submission to the review of the Planning & Environment Act.

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The VCAT Fast Track: What Matthew Guy Said Before the Election

Urban Planning

Oh no i missed the train :(

There’s not much point editorialising about the proposed introduction of a user-pays fast-track system at VCAT (as reported in The Age today). The case against is pretty much self-evident, and well enough laid out by various parties in that story; and even those who support it will see it as a necessary evil, rather than the ideal way to resource the justice system. But I thought it was worth going back to what Matthew Guy said to Planning News about VCAT when we interviewed him, before the election.

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