rescodification

What Does 10% Tree Canopy Cover Look Like?

Urban Planning

The other day I posted visualisations of what fully deemed to comply ResCode envelopes would look like, out of concern for the lack of any such imagery provided by government ahead of the new provisions becoming operational on 31 March. The day before yesterday (the Friday before the provisions come into effect) the government posted a new guidance document, the Town House and Low Rise Guidelines. This is essentially an update to the old Understanding the Residential Development Standards Practice Note, and provides assistance in understanding the provisions.

The new material does not include the diagrams of deemed to comply envelopes that I believe should be provided, but it did include another diagram I wanted to see – an illustration of the 10% tree canopy requirement. This is at page 35 of the document and reproduced above.

The tree canopy requirement has been highlighted as a new requirement in the code in the government’s announcements, and it is true that there was no numerical standard for tree canopy cover in the old provisions – this was instead part of a more qualitative assessment of landscaping. The centrality of the messaging about canopy makes sense, as a commitment to protecting and enhancing tree canopy is a key action in the new Plan for Victoria (see Action 12). This one element in that strategy that has carried through relatively strongly from Plan Melbourne 2017-2050, which had also included strong language about urban greening and cooling.

I agree this should be a priority – as climate change makes our cities hotter, adequate tree canopy is going to be ever more important. But do the provisions match the rhetoric?

The key question is whether the new approach to tree canopy is a step forward or back, and whether it will help achieve that Plan for Victoria‘s target of 30% tree canopy coverage. This is why I was so eager to see some visualisation or testing of the outcomes of the new tree canopy standard.

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Visualising Deemed-to-Comply ResCode (March 2025 update)

Urban Planning

In November 2023 I posted some diagrams illustrating potential envelopes from the partially implemented change to the use of ResCode (the controls then governing housing of less than four storeys) to operate as “deemed to comply” controls.

We now have the final version of those provisions, which go into effect on 31 March. Once introduced you will find them in planning schemes, but for the next few days you can read the provisions here (look under “Gazettal”).

I won’t attempt a full description or critique of the provisions here – there is a lot changing. But I did think it was worth updating my old drawings to reflect the current controls.

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Button Mashing: The Housing Statement and Planning Reform

Urban Planning

Still from the Buster Keaton short "One Week" in which Keaton examines a misshapen, poorly built house.

The Victorian planning framework for residential development needs reform.

That is not to accept the much more dubious proposition that the planning system is a significant cause of our current housing affordability problem. However day-to-day the planning system doubtless causes frustration and costs for individual applicants, and enormous difficulties for the council planners (mostly) charged with administering it. Reforming such provisions is an intrinsic good that is worth pursuing.

I also do not believe that means sacrificing other planning outcomes (amenity protection, character outcomes, urban greening, etc) in the name of either process efficiency or overall housing supply. Hard choices between system efficiency and policy outcomes might need to be made if the system is already optimised to achieve its intended outcomes. But where the system has obvious deficiencies, we can focus on remedying those before evaluating the need for more radical changes.

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Who Needs Context and Character?

Urban Planning

Neighbourhood character is a clear example of an issue which cannot be reduced to simple rules. It requires qualitative assessment and the exercise of judgement. Similarly drafting a prescriptive standard to achieve objectives of building articulation to reduce bulk has proved unsuccessful. The focus of assessment of development proposals should always be on outcomes, not the satisfaction of rules for their own sake.
ResCode 2000: Part 1 Report – December 2000

The new DELWP paper Improving the Operation of ResCode: A New Model for Assessment -open for consultation here until next week – is presented as a streamlining of a cumbersome set of existing controls. It presents the alluring possibility of a world in which residential development standards set a fully objective baseline, and the kind of discretionary assessment currently applied to residential development is essentially only required when those standards are varied.

The premise is understandable – the ResCode controls are complex to administer (whether they are disproportionately complex is a different question, to which I shall return). The lure of efficiencies to be achieved with a truly objective baseline for assessment – especially when paired with not-yet-existing-but-foreseeable digital tools that would automate the initial compliance screening – is compelling.

But the paper presents a shortcut. It assumes the current controls can be modified into such objective standards without a rethink – indeed, it wrongly suggests that what is proposed is more-or-less just clarifying the controls so that they worked as intended.

The problem, though, is that the paper underestimates the role that the flexibility and discretion built into the current controls currently play. It suggests a streamlining of controls without doing the additional regulatory design work that would make this feasible. It therefore removes the aspects of ResCode that currently work to achieve acceptable outcomes, without adding back in sufficient mechanisms to take their place.

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