Areas of the leafy inner south hold special significance for Canberra, but they may be at risk under proposed planning changes. Photo: Zango.
There are fears that the unique character of inner south Canberra neighbourhoods could be lost forever in the rush to build more so-called missing middle housing such as dual occupancies, townhouses, row houses and low-rise multi-unit homes.
The Inner South Canberra Community Council says the ACT Government’s one-size-fits-all relaxation of controls in RZ1 areas would not achieve its goal of “greater housing choice and supply within existing areas”, particularly with a focus on individual block redevelopments.
The council has made a detailed submission as part of the government’s community consultation on the proposed planning changes, which will enable more housing types in established residential areas.
It says the government’s Missing Middle Design Guidelines for such development were too vague and open to interpretation to offer much protection from inappropriate development through single-block subdivision.
Development is to be guided by “site context”, but there is no description of this in the changes and no help in the Guidelines, the submission says.
The likely outcome was excessively large new single houses, which can avoid the need for a development application and lease variation, a loss of green space and traffic and parking issues.
The submission proposes that there should be greater scope for consolidated blocks in certain areas to provide more scale but also special character zones to protect areas of heritage significance.
Former planner and Kingston Barton Residents Group president Richard Johnston said there was no incentive under the current proposals to do anything other than develop single blocks.
Mr Johnston said the technical specifications put real limits on where one could consolidate blocks.
“There’s got to be special circumstances, whereas we want to turn that around and say you can actually get much better development outcomes if you do put a number of blocks together,” he said.
He said four blocks should be the minimum to achieve a greater variety of housing and retain good tree cover.
“You can get more centrally located open space, shared between the units. You can actually achieve a lot more,” he said.
A development plan would be negotiated with stakeholders and potentially subject to a “fast-tracked” approval process.
KBRG president Richard Johnston. Photo: Facebook.
But that type of housing needed to be done in the right places.
Mr Johnston said areas such as the slopes of Red Hill had a very special character with beautiful streetscapes, big trees, big blocks and housing hidden amongst the landscape features.
“We’re never likely to replicate those, they are a very important part of Canberra’s heritage,” he said.
He said the current proposed changes were an abdication of good planning and based more on hope than anything.
“About the only thing they are talking about doing is slightly increasing the tree cover requirement, but they’re also reducing the planted area requirement,” Mr Johnston said.
“It’s all going in the direction of taking the controls away and setting a target of effectively five to seven times the existing average density of development through the inner south.”
Mr Johnston said the general principle should be to develop where it was appropriate to do so but he could think of nowhere else where planning controls were being relaxed so completely.
“It’s totally unplanned – throw it all up in the air and hope for the best,” he said.
The recently released 2025 Housing Supply and Land Release Program envisages 3130 multi-unit dwellings being built in the inner south over the next five years, including a number of mixed-use sites.
Submissions to the consultation must be made by 5 August.
