Australia's high density buildings are not designed to mitigate the spread of a virus as they have poor air circulation, insufficient balconies, and are usually designed for people who are away all day and only home to sleep. Our cities do not have enough open space areas for residents in high density apartments to escape to, yet we are still inundated with business and media statements extolling the benefits of population growth that can be accommodated in ever higher densitie
“About one in 25 Australian homes are at high risk of becoming effectively uninsurable by 2030, according to a new Climate Council report based on analysis by a climate risk assessment group (ABC, 2022).” (Dr Peng Yew Wong, RMIT School of Property.)
BRAG has always tried to remain unaligned politically but the plans the Andrews’ Government has for centralizing planning, if re-elected, require us to take a stand. The plans are being developed in secret by Labor to ensure that massive changes can be rammed through, if re-elected, to push at least 70% of new medium to high density housing into the middle suburbs of Melbourne. What this means is that you can expect multi-storey blocks of flats in your local street and neither you nor your council will be able to do a thing about it. You will have no right to be advised, object or appeal and the first indication will be when construction commences.
And these flats won’t be just two or three story, they could be up to seven or eight storeys or even more. No more mandatory heights, no real restriction on how many dwellings per block, as Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, has told the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee that, under the changes, 10 or more dwellings could be built on a single block. Previously the maximum per block was only two dwellings per block. No more backyards or gardens and lots of concrete.
On the other hand, the Coalition has announced at our Restore Residents’ Rights Rally on the steps of Parliament, that, if elected it will restore the Neighbourhood Residential Zone and General Residential Zone protections introduced under the former Coalition Government recently torn up by Labor. In addition we have established that the Coalition will review VCAT’s practice of acting as another “Responsible Authority” and overturning over 80% of council properly arrived at decisions. We attach a copy of David Davis’ presentation at the Rally which confirms the Coalition’s position and we also have confirmation in writing from David Davis (Shadow Minister for Planning).
BRAG is raising this issue because Labor’s plans for intense densification of our suburban residential areas will drastically change the way we live.
You can do something about this at the coming election if you don’t want to live in an overcrowded neighbourhood.
BRAG
www.brag.asn.au
Dave Davis, (Lib) Shadow Minister for Planning committments to restore protections to residential zones
Shadow Minister for Planning,
The Hon David Davis Mp
Speech to the Restore Residents' Rights Rally
Front steps of Parliament House
8 June 2017
I am very pleased to be here today, determined to support people right across Melbourne- There are many of my colleagues here as well who are determined to see that the liveability of Melbourne is protected and enhanced.
lnterjection (lndistinct).
Well, we did do some very significant things. We put in neighbourhood residential zones and protections on general residential zones. What I would say is this: We are at serious risk at the moment. The Plan Melbourne Refresh that came in in recent weeks and VC110, the planning amendment that accompanied it, strips away many of the protections that were put in place, the protections of neighbourhood residential zones and general residential zones.
General residential zones go from 9 metres to 11 metres, neighbourhood residential zones go from 8 metres to 9 metres and the cap of two residences per property has now been removed completely,
removed completely. And Richard Wynne admitted under pressure at PAEC, the public accounts committee, the other day that 10 or more can now be crammed onto one of those neighbourhood
residential blocks.
I make a commitment today, that if we are elected in 2018, we will restore the residential zones those protections.
A key aspect of where this (Andrews Labor) government is heading is public land and they are on a mission seize public land across the state and to develop it with massive, massive The people at Markham Estate know exactly what I am saying. Everyone supports, in the case of Markham, everyone supports the replacement of old public housing stock with new publlc housing stock. But no-body imagined for a second that massive towers would be built on that site. No-one imagined for a second that the density would be taken in that way. lt is a sell off of public land and as the FOI that was achieved by Graham watt makes clear, it was about achieving - their words {Labor), not mine - "super profits", "super profits".
Well let me just say very clearly the (Labor) government, through its new Development Victoria body, a merger of Major Projects with Places Victoria and that has got a remit to develop public land right across the state. We sought to put in protections for the community to say that those developments had to be approved by councils, that councils must support them' That was defeated in the upper house, but that protection now not there means that the new Development Victoria
body is going fast and wide across the state to find public land parcels that they can put intense development on.
The other point I want to make is the lnfrastructure Victoria document the 30 year plan does not have the support behind it that is required. And that document aims at one single thing. lts first and
primary objective fo1 Melbourne for the next 30 years is densification. Well I say that is the wrong objective for Melbourne. lt's about liveability. lt's about quality of life. lt's about a decent and fair Melbourne, not a Melbourne where densification is the objective of the whole State Government.
So I say to density Dan (Andrews): No, we actually want a fairer system. We actually want to protect land. We want to see more open space and we want to protect vegetation. Today, there are trees being cut down on St Kilda Road - the loss of the hundreds of trees along the Skyrail corridor - just ripped out. No Environmental Effects Statement. No process' Torn away' Never to be replaced in any realistic way. And that loss of vegetation that is occurring through our suburbs has got to be protected.
On the peninsula, it is very clear the Government is seeking to ignore the Peninsula specific planning protections that were put in place in 2014, that try to treat the Mornington Peninsula as a distinct and unique zone that needs its own protections. The GRZ changes down there will see the proliferation of three storey buildings right across the Peninsula as of right. And that is where we are heading and I think it is wrong and I think it is a terrible risk for Melbourne.
So we need to protect Melbourne. We need to have more involvement for our regional cities which want to play a bigger role and want to have a better outcome there. I say to the Planning Backlash people here today and to those from groups all across the city and beyond, we are prepared to work and make sure that we have a better city, a more liveable city and we will restore the neighbourhood protection zone protections that were put in place and restore them to protect those areas of Melbourne that need it and right across and beyond.
It's uncanny. Two cities on two continents, but Growthists in Vancouver and Melbourne seem to be reading from the same playbook.
Lance Berelowitz, an urban planner who chaired Vancouver's planning commission, praised the Mayor's so-called "Eco-Density" initiative as the answer to the city's ever-increasing house prices. Given that between 800,000 to one million new residents are expected to come to Greater Vancouver in the next 25 years, it can be assumed that developmental pressures on the city's limited land base will steeply drive up land costs. It follows then, that "housing prices in Vancouver will keep going up, unless we substantially increase the housing supply to match the aging demand."
For Berelowitz it is unconscionable that Vancouver, currently representing about 27% of the metro area's 2.2 million citizens, continues to throw up a kind of cordon sanitaire around its perimeter and not "shoulder its load" by accepting its share of growth. To do this he offers several European solutions to shove more innovative housing units into the area. But what is interesting about his plan is that he failed to mention Vancouver's housing surplus. Between 1991 and 2006 Vancouver grew by 126,000 people who required 15,000 new dwellings to house them. But developers built 69,000 units. According to activist Randy Chatterton, judging from BC Hydro statistics, 18,000 units are unoccupied, andMLS listings are up 26% while sales are down 10%. Now there are seven unoccupied apartments for every homeless person in Vancouver.
"Accepting our share of growth" is a standard line of urban planners and politicians. What they never reveal is their role in not only accommodating growth but promoting it. Developers build houses on spec. They are built on the expectation that compliant governments will continue to provide international clientele (migrants) and the monetary and tax policy necessary to lubricate investment in real estate. It is a case study of Say's Law---supply creates its own demand. Berelowitz never once thought to question the necessity for Vancouver to grow by 45% in the next quarter century. He never thought to consult Dr. Michael Healey's landmark 1997 study of the Fraser Basin ecosystem that recommended a halt to immigration and a Population Plan defend the region and others like it from runaway population growth. That's because the ideology of urban planning is not growth-control but "growth management".
Former real estate developer and media mouthpiece Bob Ransford recently "despaired" of those in Vancouver with, are you ready for this old chestnut, a "drawbridge mentality", that is, "who think we can resist the global flow of population and somehow sustain our lifestyle." One wonders what kind of lifestyle Ransford imagines for the Vancouverites forced to live like sardines in a sardine can just so more migrants can move in and buy the bachelor suite closets that his developer friends would obligingly sell them. It seems logical that the law of physics would place a limit on the process of densification that Berelowitz, Ransford and the Mayor would set in motion, but so far they have shown no apprehension of it. And the law of "livability" would surely fall well short of that physical limit.
One wonders how Ransford would behave if he were the last of ten passengers on an elevator that safety regulations set at ten. Would he hold open the door for more people in the lobby who wanted in because he feared being accused of "Nimbyism" or having a "drawbridge mentality"?. Would he suffer an urban planner who insisted that the elevator could hold 12 or 15 people, or a real estate developer who sold tickets to more people than could safely ride on the contraption? Would he listen to a human rights advocate who said that every person of colour from another country had a right to jam on board regardless of the elevator's carrying capacity because it was a matter of social justice? If it was a matter of profit, one suspects he would. Growthists can't grasp the concept that existing passengers, existing residents, be they of a city, or a nation, have a moral right to set limits.
Ransford ices his argument with more tired clichés. Cliché Number One: "Our kids will not be able to afford to live in a city where no new housing is built." Trouble is "our kids" aren't buying that new housing. In Greater Vancouver 85% of new housing is occupied by immigrants, while 70% of new housing in other Canadian urban centres is occupied by "New" Canadians. Cliché Number Two: "If we halted growth we will have a real labour shortage with our rapidly aging population." Fact: the C.D. Howe Institute demonstrated that it would take an unsustainable immigration rate 28 times higher than its present rate for the next 50 years for Canada to maintain its present age structure. Postponed retirements and higher productivity will greatly lessen the impact of this over-hyped bogeyman.
Lastly, Ransford recruited the words of retired planner Peter Oberlander who said that compact settlement patterns were an inevitable feature of urban growth especially where we were committed to preserving agricultural land. "The city is humanity's supreme achievement", he maintained, in dismissing fears about continued growth. Apparently Oberlander never heard of the failure of "smart growth" in America or the compromise of British Greenbelts by developers or he might be less confident in his "compact settlement patterns."And when it is recalled that a Greek polis was ideally imagined to consist of 5,000 citizens, one shutters to think that today a city of five million is considered a "supreme achievement".
In a speech that could have been ghost-written by any of the aforementioned Canadian growth-a-holics, Premier John Brumby of Victoria spoke of his Government's plan to "manage growth", because you see, growth is inevitable, and growth projections must be treated as, if anything, "pessimistic", ie. conservative. Thus Melbourne is going to grow at least 44% by 2030, with 6.2 million people by 2020. "Demographer Bernhard Salt has projected we will regain our title (sic) as Australia's largest city within 20 years." Note that the Premier treats a population growth plateau like a sports trophy to be raised aloft in triumph. Melbourne will regain its "title" like Muhammed Ali regained his title against George Foreman. Similarly when Victoria was "losing" people in the 1990s, presumably the state of Victoria was a "loser". But now "the exodus has been turned around and people are now voting with their feet in favour of Victoria." It is as if Premier Brumby is fighting an election campaign and people moving to Victoria are casting a vote for him. A commonplace illusion among Premiers, Governors and Prime Ministers.
But he does acknowledge the strain that in-migration places on infrastructure and states that a million extra residents will require 380,000 new houses or apartments. Given Melbourne's growth rate, he projects only a 17 year supply of land, and housing affordability, planning and supply issues demand full attention. He confesses that "the faster we grow the greater the demand on land supply." Yet the one option that Brumby will not consider of course is to lobby the federal government for a severe cutback on immigration. Out comes a variant of Canadian Cliché Number Two: "we are facing a skills gap of 123,000 jobs over the next decade, which could curb our ability to benefit from the climate change economy." Victoria attracts 27% of Australia's skilled migrants, and Melbourne 25% of migrants of all categories. It is curious that the Premier would think that the importation of workers would be key to fighting climate change, when research clearly indicates that the best climate change fighting strategy is reducing population growth.
Certainly the Vancouver experience leads one to question the party line of housing lobby groups that releasing more land is requisite to housing affordability. Australian Property Monitors operations director Michael McNamara argues that "demand for housing is extremely flat and developers haven't been able to sell the projects that they've got, let alone launch new projects—so we totally dismiss the argument that releasing more land on our cities outskirts is going to affect affordability." ANZ Bank senior economist Paul Braddick says "there is no strong evidence to suggest that a lack of land supply has been driving up prices." The proof of that is house prices have gone up across the board—indicating it is not just land availability that is the culprit here." Macquarie Bank analyst Rory Robertson attributes the fact that city house prices have grown 75% faster than wages over the past 20 years to a halving of interest rates, the halving of capital gains taxes in 1999 and massive immigration which chose to settle in the eight capital cities.
Of relevance here is a study done by Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy of Monash University in 2003 entitled "Migration and the Housing Affordability Crisis". While the authors acknowledge that Melbourne's housing price spiral "cannot be attributed to recent migration levels," they qualify their statement with significant findings. "The impact of migration varies sharply by metropolis. For Sydney the share of household growth attributable to net migration in 2001-2002 is 47.8% Migration makes the next biggest impact in Perth where it is projected to contribute 33.5% of household growth, then Melbourne where it constitutes 28.6% of growth in 2001-2002." By 2021, however, migration will account for 63% of Melbourne's household growth.
"Developers and builders are already heavily dependent on immigration to sustain their activities in Sydney. Within a decade those operating in Melbourne and Perth will be dependant on immigration for nearly half the underlying household growth. This will apply to Australia as a whole by 2021 when 48.4% of household growth will derive from overseas migration." It is in this context that the idea advanced by population sociologist Sheila Newman that property developers are key lobbyists for the country's ecologically suicidal policy of high immigration becomes very plausible. As Birrell and Healy state, "It is no wonder that the housing and property industries in Australia are so keen for high migration."
That immigration has a crucial impact on housing affordability is not immediately apprehended in any correlation of housing price increases in six major Australian cities with a given volume of migrant settlers. From 1989 to 2002 Sydney increased 30.7%, Melbourne 20.5%, Brisbane 45.8%, Perth23.5% Adelaide 28.1% and Canberra 34.8%. What must be understood, however, is while certainly investors and speculators played a major role in the housing price spiral, immigration boosted their confidence, and without that the spiral would never have taken off. That is why, Birrell and Healy explain, Sydney's housing bubble remained the strongest, for even if immigrants demanded mainly rental accommodations, "this is still vital to investors if they are to fill their properties with tenants."
"In the case of Sydney, the intuition of residents and some politicians that immigration is a factor in the housing affordability crisis, is correct. The absence of the immigration component of household growth in Sydney would significantly reduce the underlying gap between demand and supply. There is little doubt that a reduction in the national immigration intake would improve affordability in Sydney."
"The authors conclude by saying that "Immigration is an important underlying factor shaping growth in demand for housing prices because of its role in household formation ... By 2021, according to our projections, the migration component of household formation in Sydney will be around 75%, in Melbourne and Adelaide 60% and in Perth 54%".
As a rule of thumb, according to Albert Saiz of the University of Pennsylvania, "an immigrant inflow of 1% of a city's population is associated with increases in average rent and housing prices of about 1% ." (Journal of Economics, Volume 6, Issue 2)
By that token then, immigration has added 18% to the price of Vancouver real estate, or to put it another way, it has reduced the supply of housing stock available to resident buyers and the price mechanism has adjusted accordingly.
The logic of Growthism calls for an increase in supply, for more housing units through more density and/or the release or development of more land. The logic of common sense, however, calls for a decrease in demand, that is, a decrease in tax incentives for real estate investors and speculators and a reduction in migrants.
Whether it be Vancouver or Melbourne, throughout the Anglophone world, the issues are the same, cloaked in the same euphemistic code language of Growthism. The choices are ours to make.
Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
Canada
March 15/08
Personal DisclaimerSee also Should Brisbane aim to be like Vancouver? - the naked truth about a world class city.
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