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CRAIG COMMENTS |
UDFs
Wednesday 18th April 2007
Next week, I will be meeting with East Gippsland Shire Council and community representatives to discuss concerns regarding Urban Design Frameworks (UDFs) for several towns in the region. The meeting has being convened at my request due to community concern at the process East Gippsland Shire Council has undertaken in preparing the UDFs.
The Department of Infrastructure describes UDFs as “design tools that provide physical interpretations of local visions and strategies. They focus on managing change and setting new directions for integrated development of the urban environment.”. In plain terms, UDFs provide local government with a plan for certain towns and areas. This could include issues such as car parking, public open space, building heights and development areas, just to name a few.
The lack of real communication and acceptance of community views by the consultants and then by the council has been the major concern for many residents. The deadline for submissions was closed within a few days of council passing the reports and undertaking to push ahead with the planning changes. A number of community representatives have expressed concern that the comments contained in submissions and made at the well attended public meetings could not have been taken into consideration due to this short time line and, as such, rightly are extremely sceptical of the weight the council staff placed on community comments.
But it is not just concerns of the community that have been raised. Even the consultants who wrote the reports stated to council that some elements of UDFs were beyond their brief and required additional specialist expertise, especially in Lakes Entrance and Paynesville. These comments indicate that even the consultants are extremely concerned with the lack of detail contained in final proposals and clearly more work needs to be done to address these concerns.
The “in-between towns” UDF has had almost no public discussion or acknowledgment of the potential impact to rural landholders. Those landholders currently with rural zoned land along the East Gippsland coast and the Gippsland Lakes would be significant impacted by these proposals and should be consulted by the council. The proposed new farm zones were designed to protect high value productive agricultural land from subdivision. The UDF seems to be using the new farm zones as a restrictive planning tool without adequate discussion on the impact. Before any changes are made in these areas, a land production and capability study should be undertaken before the proposed planning amendments are released. If implemented, as set out in the UDF, many rural landholders who would be expecting to be able to develop properties into rural living or other options in the future will be severely restricted and will aggressively object to the proposals.
Much of the debate and public opposition to the UDFs has been the push for high rise developments in coastal towns. The use of “metro planning-type” planning rules was identified as one of the major reasons for the undertaking of the coastal towns’ process. I would argue that the use of high rise as opposed to infill on undeveloped land is clearly the use of metro planning. Other concerns expressed that the development of high rise without stated overshadowing allowing foreshore areas as proposed in the UDF seems to be against the recommendations of the Coastal Spaces Landscape Assessment Study on coastal settlements.
The Coastal Spaces Recommendations Report, which is the background for the UDF studies, discussed in some detail the potential impact of climate change and expected sea level rises as the reasons why coastal development should be carefully considered. The consultants drafting the UDF and the council both seem to be ignoring the potential impact of climate change and the recommendations of the report. As most of the areas set aside in the UDF for intensive residential and high rise development are the most at risk low-lying flood prone areas, I would question if the UDF documents have addressed concerns expressed by the Victorian Coastal Council on climate change and identified the risks in these reports.
The Coastal Spaces Inception Report, May 2005, identifies that one of the major challenges was to maintain and identify, in each individual community, what is the desired neighbourhood and community character. The community has clearly demonstrated at community meetings that the council and the consultants have not understood the desire of the community to retain the coastal village character or made any real attempt to explain how this community character will be maintained with increased development, which clearly is possible with careful town planning.
