Robin Goodman

Privatised Communities: the use of owners corporations in master planned estates in Melbourne

Abstract This paper contributes to the growing body of work on master planned estates in Australia by addressing the issue of the privatisation of assets and facilities, which in more conventional residential developments are in the public realm, owned and managed by local councils or other public bodies. The paper addresses the trend to place assets presented as lifestyle features, such as community and recreational facilities, open space or landscaping features, in a form of collective private ownership, known in Victoria as owners corporations. The provision of these facilities and assets for residents, however, has a number of implications relating to exclusivity, separation from the wider community, and potential conflicts within the master planned community itself. These issues are examined with reference to data gathered through an investigation of recently established master planned communities in the growth areas of Melbourne.

Life in a Master Planned Estate—Community and Lifestyle or Conflict and Liability?

Master planned estates (MPEs) in Australia and internationally are increasingly promoted as offering both enhanced lifestyles and closer communities. Resort-style facilities and environmental enhancements are often included in these estates and are promoted in marketing material to evoke an image of an affluent lifestyle in promotion. Such assets are sometimes placed into collective private ownership using a joint legal entity known in Victoria as an owners corporation. This brings with it a range of legal obligations and requires ongoing management. This article explores the promotional images invoked by developers and compares them with the reality of life in one Melbourne MPE with privatised community assets. A disjuncture is shown between the promoted harmonious community in the MPE and the reality of managing complex and sometimes inadequate assets. The authors argue that this ownership arrangement should be avoided where possible due to the long-term ramifications of this kind of development decision.

Protecting Melbourne's Green Belt

In September 2002, the Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks, announced that Melbourne’s non-urban areas would be protected from development by legislation as part of its metropolitan strategy, Melbourne 2030. This suggests a change in planning philosophy. Victoria adopted a deregulated market oriented planning system during the Kennett years (Buxton, 1999; Gleeson and Low, 2000) but now may be returning to strategic land use planning and a central role for government. Melbourne’s non-urban zones include green wedges sited between urban growth corridors and a broader green belt throughout large areas of fringe metropolitan area councils. If legislation is to be effective in protecting this area, it should define the boundary to urban growth, prohibit urban uses in non-urban areas and curtail subdivision. The Victorian government has undertaken to include these provisions in its legislation (DOI, 2002a, b). The legislation will remove major land use decisions for these areas from local councils, planning panels, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) and the Minister. Any decision to create a residential subdivision and allow other urban related uses will have to be approved by Parliament. This will be the first use of legislation in Australia to control land use and development in this way. The legislation presented to the Victorian Parliament in April 2003 establishes an urban growth boundary, defines the extent of the green belts, prevents subdivision below existing minimum lot sizes and requires prior ministerial approval for local councils to commence planning scheme amendments. In addition, the government will prohibit inappropriate urban uses in the green belt through the use of the planning system. The policy to preserve the non-urban zone areas between and outside urban growth corridors was introduced in Melbourne in the late 1960s. In 1968, the Victorian government decided to concentrate new urban development along growth corridors and protect the areas in between for non-urban uses. This position was further developed in 1971 by the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works in Planning Policies for the Melbourne Metropolitan Region, Melbourne’s first regional plan (MMBW, 1971). Subsequent government policies reinforced the preservation of these non-urban zones from urban development (MMBW, 1980, 1981; Government of Victoria, 1987, 1995). This model of linear development corridors coupled with green wedges and a green belt is a distinctive feature of Melbourne when compared with other metropolitan areas in Australia. The model was influenced by both the work of British planners in the Ebenezer Howard tradition, and the form of development pursued by a limited number of overseas cities such as Copenhagen and Stockholm. Legislation in the form proposed would not take away long held rights, but reaffirm the subdivision and use provisions of planning schemes which applied for over 20 years until removed by the Kennett government.

Sustainable Urban Form and the Shopping Centre: An Investigation of Activity Centres in Melbourne's Growth Areas

In Victoria the current strategic plan intended to underpin the future growth in Melbourne, Melbourne 2030, adopts the framework of sustainability as its guiding ethos. Melbourne 2030 makes clear a preferred form for new activity centres through performance criteria and guidelines on preferable layout and structure. The research presented in this article consists of an analysis of 17 activity centres which have been planned for or built on greenfield sites in three growth areas of metropolitan Melbourne since 2002. These activity centres are rated against a framework of sustainability criteria adapted from Melbourne 2030. The study found that in many cases the recommended form and location of new centres are not being adopted and possible explanations are advanced.

Activity centre planning in Melbourne revisited

She Victorian Government has recently introduced a new strategic planning policy for Melbourne designed to cluster activities around public transport nodes as part of its metropolitan strategy Melbourne 2030. This is not a totally new concept for Melbourne but a renewal and reinterpretation of a policy previously introduced and then abandoned, and is a form of policy now common in many countries around the world. This paper looks at this most recent policy for what are called activity centres and compares it to both the previously abandoned District Centre Policy of Melbourne in the 1980s and some leading international examples of such policies. The paper concludes that some key lessons from the past have not been heeded, most significantly the importance of including local government in the process of selecting centres for designation and future growth, the value of enforceable guidelines and regulation to support the policy and the critical necessity of appropriate funding to enable implementation. Selected international examples ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A National planning agenda? Unpacking the influence of federal urban policy on state planning reform

Although primary responsibility for urban planning rests with the Australian states and territories, the Commonwealth government has from time to time influenced urban agendas and regulation. The most recent period following the election of the Australian Labor Party in November 2007 signified a new era of federal interest in cities and planning, expressed through the establishment of a Major Cities Unit, a series of State of Australian Cities reports and the development of a National Urban Policy. At the same time, a national reform agenda focusing on planning regulation and development assessment was building within the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and its various working groups. In this paper we review the growing influence of national level policy agendas on state and territory planning reforms.

Shopping Streets or Malls: Changes in Retail Form in Melbourne and Brisbane

Retail facilities are a critical element of urban form often given insufficient scrutiny. While retail form has implications for matters such as consumer accessibility, quality of service and transport, there have been comparatively few investigations into the nature of retail form in Australia. The spread of the enclosed shopping mall is an international phenomenon of the last 50 years that has been embraced or resisted to various degrees in different cities across the world. Utilising data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics retail census and the Property Council of Australia, this article investigates the extent to which retailing in Brisbane and Melbourne is now dominated by corporately controlled shopping malls. The research builds a profile of each citys retail form, comprehensively at the time of the last retail census in 1992, and of the corporately controlled centres more recently in 2008. Results show that while Melbourne has retained a greater number of traditional shopping centres, the floorspace in corporate centres has substantially increased. Brisbane has a greater proportion of its retailing floorspace within malls. In both cities there is a significant concentration of the management of corporate centres in the hands of a few large corporations.

The impact of planning ‘reform’ on the Victorian land use planning system

Victorian governments have redesigned the Victorian land use planning system progressively since 1996. The main features are the imposition of centralised, statewide enabling provisions designed to deregulate the planning approvals system coupled with substantial increases in ministerial power. A first stage of system deregulation, introduced in 1996–1999, proved to be counterproductive, causing higher costs, delays, uncertainty and increased complexity because of increased discretion over development approvals and complex layered provisions. A second stage, introduced in 2013, reduces discretion and prohibitions by increasing the number of uses and developments not requiring planning approval. This second stage has been strongly influenced by a national planning reform agenda being implemented in Australian states. The Victorian neoliberal planning system renders metropolitan strategy redundant with important implications for future city functioning, spatial and social division and environmental quality.

Implementing Metropolitan Strategies: Lessons from Melbourne

In 2002, the state government of Victoria, Australia, introduced a new 30-year metropolitan planning strategy for Melbourne. However, its implementation was problematic, at times ineffectual and at others the cause of community conflict. When a new government was elected in 2010 it announced the strategys abandonment. This article evaluates the Melbourne strategy to examine its shortcomings. It concludes that it lacked the critical components of a clear purpose and vision, ownership, or at least acceptance, by all metropolitan stakeholders, including opposing politicians; and clear guidelines, actions (including expenditure) and regulation for implementation. These findings have relevance for metropolitan strategic planning in cities beyond Australia, as some of the underlying reasons, such as the neoliberal influence on policy, also exist in other city regions around the world.

Planning Practice and Academic Research: Views from the Parallel Worlds

AbstractDespite their different roles, academic and professional planners share many common goals. Both are concerned with the future of cities, and committed to goals of sustainability, equity and prosperity. Many academics hope to contribute knowledge that will influence practice and many practitioners wish to draw upon current research to promulgate best practice. Yet while this symbiotic relationship may appear clear in principle, in practice the two groups find it difficult to connect. This paper reports on a survey of planners in Australia and New Zealand, which asked respondents to consider the state of the theory/practice divide and suggest some solutions.