KBRG president Richard Johnston fears the suburbs won’t get the type of development Canberra needs. Photo: Facebook.
The proposed ‘missing middle’ zoning changes have been flayed as mindless, lazy planning that will mean open slather development in Canberra’s suburbs.
Kingston Barton Residents Group president Richard Johnston, a former government planner, told Region that without a targeted approach from government, if left to the market, the changes would result in inappropriate development popping up all over the place, inevitably changing the character of suburbs and reducing green space.
Mr Johnston advocated a government-driven approach and suggested that groups of landowners come together to redevelop consolidated sites.
He said the proposed target density of 54 homes per hectare for single attached houses was five times the current density for areas with 1000 square metre blocks, and it would be more for apartments, which would be allowed in RZ1.
This would give developers too much scope.
Mr Johnston said the government had taken the easy way out, giving the property industry groups what they wanted instead of taking a more thoughtful and strategic approach that would deliver sympathetic development.
“It’s just going to be a disaster for the environment,” he said.
The government would be rubbing its hands at the increase in land values and rates revenue, but it could be a re-run of the late 1990s and early 2000s when a residents’ backlash resulted in the defeat of the Liberal government.
Mr Johnston said that in a high-cost environment, developers would use these changes to maximise their yields at the expense of open and green space.
He said a better approach would be to create a government redevelopment agency charged with identifying suitable sites, “negotiating with owners, negotiating with the neighbours and getting together a decent site so they can get a really good outcome on a big enough site, but target the development”.
Mr Johnston said a collaborative housing model would support groups of landowners to do their own developments.
Under this approach, the current two-dwelling maximum in RZ1 would be retained unless a development plan was prepared for a minimum of four adjoining blocks that was negotiated with the immediate neighbours and then approved by the Planning Authority.
The proposal, in accordance with the approved development plan, could then be exempted from the formal development application process and ‘third-party’ appeal rights.
“I think this could be a win-win with much greater certainty and acceptability of redevelopment proposals and reduced approval times and conflicts,” he said.
Most Canberra townhouse developments lack sufficient green space, with internal areas taken up with roadways and parking, says Mr Johnston. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Mr Johnston said the kinds of housing Canberra was missing out on were the European-style, three to four-storey townhouses around the perimeters of blocks with central courtyards and green spaces.
“One of the things that I’ve been on about for some time is getting some decent communal open space in these developments,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the townhouse developments they’re getting on the northside east of Northbourne Avenue or that area running up towards Dickson, they’re just stuffing as many townhouses as they can into the block and you end up with two-storey townhouses with most of the rest of the site taken over by driveways and car parking.
“They don’t really like to go underground because that adds to the cost and there’s no space left over for communal open space, tree planting, all that kind of stuff that we really need to be doing.”
Mr Johnston said there were weasel words in the proposed changes such as ‘taking account of local context’ but he doubted a cash-conscious developer would listen to a designer who suggested fewer dwellings to create more open space.
He said the government had not done its homework.
“We’re going to give much more leeway for developers to make it up as they find sites,” Mr Johnston said.
“It’s going to be an interesting calculation between land value and development yields and what they can get for their product ultimately.
“I wouldn’t want to be a developer trying to try to work that out and we know building costs have been very high for some time and some developers are saying to us we’re just not prepared to take a punt on the market at the moment because we don’t know what building costs are going to do.
“And the more pressure on the building sector to build more buildings, the higher the prices are going to be.”
