File - Peninsula Speaks Inc.

Maintaining
Melbourne’s
Green Wedges.
Planning policy and the future of Melbourne’s green belt.
Michael Buxton and Robin Goodman
School of Social Science and Planning – RMIT University
DECEMBER 2002
Maintaining Melbourne’s
Green Wedges
Planning policy and the future of
Melbourne’s green belt
Michael Buxton and Robin Goodman
School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University
December 2002
Acknowledgements
This report is part of a series of studies into major planning issues affecting
Melbourne and Victoria prepared by the Environment and Planning area of the
School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University.
Many state and local government planners helped in the compilation and
interpretation of information. Community groups such as the Green Wedge
Coalition, the Western Region Environment Centre, the Upper Yarra Valley and
Dandenongs Environmental Council and the Defenders of the South East Green
Wedge assisted in the identification of issues from their extensive local
knowledge.
The original maps within the report were compiled by Robert Parkington with the
assistance of the Department of Infrastructure which provided base map
information. Trevor Budge provided valuable insights and advice. The cover was
designed by Matt Claire.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF MAPS
ABBREVIATIONS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...............................................................................................I
1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................... 1
2. CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS .......................................................................................... 4
2.1 CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE ............................................................................................ 4
2.2 THE EMERGENCE OF GREEN BELTS ............................................................................. 5
3. GREEN BELTS IN AUSTRALIAN CITIES ........................................................... 12
3.1 SYDNEY AND ADELAIDE .......................................................................................... 12
4. MELBOURNE’S GREEN WEDGES ....................................................................... 15
4.1 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT ..................................................................................... 15
4.2 MORE RECENT POLICY POSITIONS ............................................................................ 19
4.3 THE VICTORIA PLANNING PROVISIONS .................................................................... 21
4.4 REVIEW OF ISSUES ON THE URBAN FRINGE .............................................................. 23
4.5 MELBOURNE 2030 ................................................................................................... 24
5. RECENT INCURSIONS IN MELBOURNE’S GREEN WEDGES...................... 26
5.1 WERRIBEE SOUTH GREEN WEDGE ........................................................................... 26
5.2 THE WESTERN PLAINS SOUTH GREEN WEDGE - WERRIBEE-MELTON ..................... 27
5.2.1 Eynesbury Station ............................................................................................ 27
5.2.2 Other amendments and pressures.................................................................... 31
5.3 WESTERN PLAINS NORTH AND SUNBURY GREEN WEDGES ..................................... 31
5.4 THE WHITTLESEA GREEN WEDGE ........................................................................... 31
5.4.1 Epping North.................................................................................................... 32
5.4.2 Cooper Street, Epping...................................................................................... 36
5.4.3 Hume Freeway extension................................................................................. 36
5.5 NILLUMBIK, MANNINGHAM AND YARRA VALLEY AND DANDENONG RANGES GREEN
WEDGES......................................................................................................................... 37
5.5.1 Manningham subdivision proposals ................................................................ 37
5.5.2 Manningham Non-Urban Areas Review.......................................................... 40
5.6 THE SOUTHERN RANGES GREEN WEDGE ................................................................. 41
5.6.1 Knox Amendments C2 and C3 ......................................................................... 42
5.6.2 Other pressures in Knox and Yarra Ranges .................................................... 42
5.7 THE WESTERNPORT AND SOUTH EAST GREEN WEDGES .......................................... 43
5.7.1 The SENUS Report and the Memorandum of Understanding ......................... 43
5.7.2 Kingston L33 – Waterways Estate/ Kingston Lodge........................................ 46
5.7.3 Kingston C22 – proposed retirement village (Pitrones reception centre
development) ............................................................................................................. 48
5.7.4 Other pressures in Kingston ............................................................................ 49
5.7.5 Greater Dandenong C2 and C5 - Keysborough South rezoning and changes to
the Keysborough Non-urban Policy Framework...................................................... 50
5.7.6 Greater Dandenong C11 – industrial rezoning ............................................... 53
5.7.7 Greater Dandenong C27 – Keysborough Green development ........................ 54
5.7.8 Scoresby Freeway ............................................................................................ 55
5.7.9 Frankston – C3 ................................................................................................ 56
5.7.10 Frankston – C7 .............................................................................................. 58
5.7.11 Other Frankston amendments........................................................................ 60
5.7.12 Casey - Botanic Ridge................................................................................... 60
5.8 THE MORNINGTON PENINSULA GREEN WEDGE ....................................................... 62
5.8.1 Frankston – C1 ................................................................................................ 63
5.8.2 Mornington Peninsula ..................................................................................... 63
6. THE WEAKENING OF GREEN WEDGE POLICY............................................. 65
6.1 A WANING OF COMMITMENT .................................................................................... 65
6.2 METROPOLITAN STRATEGIC PLANNING .................................................................... 66
6.3 THE INTERPRETATION OF PURPOSE FOR GREEN WEDGES .......................................... 68
6.4 THE ISSUE OF PRECEDENT ........................................................................................ 69
6.5 LANDOWNERS’ SUPERANNUATION ........................................................................... 71
6.6 DEVELOPMENT AS A SOLUTION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION. .................... 72
6.7 THE ENVIRONMENTAL TRADE-OFF – DESTROYING GREEN WEDGES TO SAVE THEM .. 73
7. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 76
REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 79
List of Maps
Map 1
Melbourne Urban Area and the Green Wedges
p. 14a
Map 2
Western Plains Green Wedge
p. 26a
Map 3
Whittlesea Green Wedge
p. 31a
Map 4
Manningham Green Wedge
p. 36a
Map 5
South East Green Wedge
p. 42a
Abbreviations
DOI
DNRE
EES
ERZ
GHD
GWZ
LPPF
MMBW
MMPS
MSS
POPA
PPG2
RCZ
RPD
SENUS
SGS
SPPF
UGB
URLC
VPPs
Department of Infrastructure
Department of Natural Resources and Environment,
Environmental Effects Statement
Environmental Rural Zone
Gutteridge Haskins and Davey
Green Wedge Zone
Local Planning Policy Framework
Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works
Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme,
Municipal Strategic Statement
Park Orchards Progress Association
Planning Policy Guidance Note 2
Rural Conservation Zone
Research Planning Design
South East Non-Urban Study or
Spiller Gibbins Swan
State Planning Policy Framework
Urban Growth Boundary
Urban and Regional Land Corporation
Victoria Planning Provisions
Executive Summary
The urban form of Melbourne has developed over the last one hundred and fifty
years along the major transport routes radiating outward from the central city.
Since the 1960s those responsible for the planning of Melbourne have
recognised the importance of maintaining access to rural land close to the city. A
policy was adopted by the Victorian Government in 1968 of focussing new urban
development along growth corridors and protecting and preserving the areas in
between for non-urban uses. These areas have become known as the green
wedges. They are a distinctive feature of Melbourne when compared with other
metropolitan areas in Australia and follow a form of development pursued by a
limited number of overseas cities.
The green wedges are part of a long standing strategic plan for Melbourne aimed
at preventing ad hoc poorly resourced suburban sprawl. The green wedges were
established to provide a number of unique benefits to the residents of Melbourne.
They provide easier access to open non-urbanised land in between the growth
corridors. They ensure the continuation of agriculture and horticultural industries
close to the city, including some of the most productive market gardens in southeastern Australia. They protect important landscape values, and resources such
as sand and stone for future extraction. The wedges provide space for important
community infrastructure, recreation, public open space and for the preservation
of remnant indigenous vegetation, sensitive environmental areas and wildlife
corridors. Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, they provide a break to a
spreading metropolis, a definitive statement that a city should not spread in an
uncontrolled manner, and that a city should be connected to its rural hinterland
and its surrounding environment. Although these values varied across green
wedges the policy was a generic one and was applied across the entire area of
the green wedges as part of a strategic metropolitan policy.
Conceptual origins and green belts in other Australian cities
The concept of green wedges, or a green belt surrounding the urban area, owes
much to a fusion of the ideas of some of the pioneers of urban planning thought,
Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, and Lewis Mumford. An important influence
on Melbourne’s green wedges was Patrick Abercrombie and the Greater London
Plan of 1944, which proposed that a green belt be designated around built-up
London. This concentric green belt would also be connected to green wedges
that would extend inward through the city from the green belt. This meant that
development would be directed, and the land use model of a constantly
expanding city whose form was determined by market decisions, rejected. Green
belts in Britain however, since their development more than fifty years ago, have
been threatened by encroaching residential development. While generally the
policy of urban containment, and of green belts, has been maintained, there is
i
increasing pressure because of the need to locate large numbers of new
households in the south-eastern area of England by 2020.
The British regional planning model influenced Australian planners who generally
had developed strong affinities with British town and regional planning. However,
Australian planners demonstrated a willingness to develop their own solutions to
urban growth from shared conceptual affinities. Other cities in Australia adopted
green belts or wedges. Sydney’s green belt is the most well known example of
the failure of this type of strategic planning. The original Sydney metropolitan
plan covered an area of over 4,000 square kilometres and aimed at containing
urbanisation through redevelopment of existing metropolitan areas and satellite
city development, maintaining productive rural land, and protecting landscape
values. However areas were progressively excised for urban development.
Eventually, most of Sydney’s inner area green belt was used for urban
expansion. In contrast, Adelaide has maintained a clearly identified green belt
because of a confluence of planning dating from the 1960s, geographical
limitations, the need to protect valuable productive agricultural land, and public
support.
The differences between these two examples provide important lessons for the
future planning of Melbourne. Planning for green belts and growth areas must
occur together, with sufficient land being set aside for future urban expansion.
The firm maintenance of green belt areas is an essential element in continued
public support for them. Their incremental loss establishes a cycle of progressive
loss of their value, less public acceptance of their importance, reduced
willingness of the public to struggle for their protection, resulting in even further
loss of area. The State government must play a strong role, developing and
implementing a metropolitan strategic plan, and must not leave development
decisions to individual local councils, land owners or developers. A clear
enforceable delineation between urban and non-urban areas is vital to produce
certainty and prevent the land speculation which dooms metropolitan strategic
planning.
The history of Melbourne’s green wedges policy
In May 1966, the Victorian Minister for Local Government, R.J. Hamer,
introduced the notion of the protection of the non-urban areas of metropolitan
Melbourne. These green wedges would define the outer limits of urban
development between the urban corridors and “provide relief from continuous
building development. The….preservation of countryside near to established
population…..is a most important consideration”. The Victorian Government
adopted the corridor/green wedge concept formally as policy in 1968, and the
Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) further developed this position
in the 1971 Planning Policies for the Melbourne Metropolitan Region. This
planning strategy continued in various forms in subsequent plans through the
1970s, 1980s and was still present in the Kennett Government’s metropolitan
ii
policy Living Suburbs in 1995. This document reinforced the importance of
containing urban growth within designated growth areas and linked the issues of
urban consolidation and green wedge retention. The State Planning Policy
Framework within the Victoria Planning Provisions is less prescriptive although it
conveys similar intent, stating in Section 14.02-2 “outward metropolitan growth
must be confined to designated growth areas in accordance with Minister’s
Directions under the Planning and Environment Act 1987”.
Recent incursions in the green wedges
While the policy context has been to support the green wedges around
Melbourne, there have been a series of decisions on planning scheme
amendments in recent years to allow urban development. The following table
documents the major planning scheme amendments to rezone green wedge land
since 1996, including all such amendments under the new format planning
schemes and many of those of significant size that occurred under the old format
schemes. The most significant of these are the following:
Name
Amend- Approval
ment
Date
Location
C20
May 2002
Melton South 1,350 2,100
C23
January
Derrimut
2002
September Epping North
2002
February
Braeside
1999
Municipality
– (previous
where
different)
Melton and
Wyndham
Brimbank
Whittlesea
C12
Kingston
Waterways
Estate
Boat Sales and
Repair
Kingston
L33
Kingston
March
2000
The
Keysborough
Concept
Sandhurst Golf
Estate
Flora Park
Estate
Castlebrook
Estate/Pindara
Acacia Ridge
Greater
Dandenong
Permit
only
reqd.
C2
Frankston
RL174
Frankston
L98
August
1996
July 1997
Frankston
(Cranbourne)
Frankston
(Cranbourne)
Casey
(Cranbourne)
Mornington
Peninsula
L188
Eynesbury
Station
Adrenaline
sports complex
Epping North
Botanic Ridge
Stage 1
Moonah Links
August
2001
Size
(ha)
359
No. of
house
lots
N/A
1,337 8,000
157
700
Springvale
Rd,
Keysborough
Keysborough 227
N/A
9001,100
Skye
300
1,950
15
124
April 2000
Carrum
Downs
Langwarrin
74
320
L242
April 2000
Langwarrin
43
L218
January
1999
June 1999
Cranbourne
South
Rye
280
1,450
185
250
C2
iii
The table shows that at least 4,000 hectares have been removed from the
wedges and the land converted into residential developments in the last six
years. In addition to those amendments shown, a large number of housing lots
were created in an ad hoc manner under the old format planning schemes.
Proposed further green wedge incursions
There are a number of proposals to rezone sections of the green wedges which
have not yet been determined. The future of some of these may now be in doubt
as they have been placed outside the new Urban Growth Boundary. The most
significant of these are:
Name
Municipality Amend- Status
ment
Location
UGB
status
Cooper St
Industrial
Precinct
Pitrones retirement
village
Whittlesea
None
as yet
Not yet
exhibited
Cooper St,
Epping.
Inside
UGB
Kingston
C22
On
exhibition
to July
2002, no
panel as
yet
On
exhibition
to May
2002, no
panel as
yet
Panel
report
submitted
March
2001,
Council
yet to
respond.
Panel
report
submitted
March
2002,
Council
yet to
respond.
On
exhibition.
Dingley
Outside 2.4
UGB
Keysborough Greater
Golf Club
Dandenong
C27
Stotts Lane
Frankston
C1
Burdetts
Quarry
Frankston
C7
Botanic
Ridge
Casey
C39
Size No. of
(ha) house
lots
407 750
Outside 160
Hutton and
UGB
Springvale
Roads,
Keysborough
110
elderly
units
480
Stotts Lane
Frankston
South
Outside 42
UGB
Potts Rod
Langwarrin.
Outside 101
UGB
390
Cranbourne
South
Outside 115
UGB.
515
iv
Stage 2
Botanic
Ridge
Stage 3
Hume
freeway
extension
Scoresby
Freeway
Casey
None
as yet
Hume/
Whittlesea
N/A
Frankston
N/A
Not yet
exhibited
Cranbourne
South
Outside 220
UGB.
Craigieburn
N/A
to
Thomastown
Keysborough N/A
to Frankston
1,200
N/A
N/A
The weakening of green wedge policy
Melbourne’s green wedges are now under serious threat from development. As
the above tables indicate, many major development proposals have been
approved in recent years in the green wedges, and many other proposals are
being considered or prepared. The current planning system has failed to protect
green wedges and has not met the widespread expectation that they should be
retained. Many councils have proposed substantial developments in Melbourne’s
green wedges, and planning panels have supported a number of development
proposals in these areas. Panel reports show a great variation in interpretations
of current State Government policy, and in their understanding of the importance
maintaining that policy. There is considerable inconsistency in the views panels
have expressed on the purposes of green wedge policy, the long-term viability of
individual rezoning decisions and the environmental trade-offs often used to
justify them. Ultimately, however, the State Government, through the requirement
of Ministerial approval of amendments, is the custodian of green wedges.
Without publicly abandoning long held official corridor/green wedge policy,
Victorian governments have ignored or overridden this policy. A number of
reasons explain the shift.
Policy about green wedges has been interpreted in varying ways in part because
of the long time delay between detailed metropolitan strategic planning
documents. Panels and councils have appeared to rely for guidance increasingly
on the statutory planning framework provided by the Victoria Planning Provisions
which is a discretionary development facilitation system containing weak policy
provisions. The State Planning Policy Framework has been interpreted in
different ways by various panels. Successive state governments and the state
planning agency have failed to maintain the 1971 policy designed in parts to
protect green wedges. They have not acted sufficiently as the custodians of
green wedges.
Some local councils have favoured development. Local councils have been able
to instigate amendment processes which have allowed the progressive build up
of development pressure and has led to the planning process being used to
develop green wedges instead of protecting them. There are significant financial
rewards to be gained from rezoning non-urban land to an urban use, particularly
v
residential subdivision. This means there are strong incentives to provide cogent
and persuasive arguments in favour of development. The trend to development
has also been influenced by changes to the structure of government and the
incorporation of land use planning into a larger infrastructure agency, the break
up of the metropolitan planning authority the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board
of Works (MMBW), and the loss of a strong environmental planning focus in
government and local government.
At least two panel reports into rezonings of green wedge land have regarded the
long-standing corridors/wedges policy as an outcomes-oriented rather than a
regulatory policy. Instead of accepting the broadly applied purposes of green
wedge policy, some panels have allocated purposes for an area of green wedge
land and assessed a proposed development against that purpose. Thus the
proposed Eynesbury Station development was assessed against its contribution
to the purpose of maintaining agriculture and protecting the environment, and
was found to contribute to both of those goals. The proposed Epping North
development was regarded as not detrimental to the purposes identified for that
green wedge. This approach ignores the overall strategic goals of a metropolitan
wide policy and reduces the aims to a small number of purposes that can then be
debated on an individual basis. This can lead to isolated and uncoordinated
decision making and the continual reinterpretation of policy on a case-by-case
basis.
It has become commonplace for development proposals to include some form of
environmental trade-off or net gain in order make them attractive to planning
authorities. This may take the form of environmental rehabilitation or ongoing
maintenance, or the donation of environmentally valuable land into public
ownership. These offers can be tempting, especially when accompanied by
funding for ongoing maintenance. However, there are a number of deficiencies
with this approach. Each parcel of land traded away diminishes the value of the
remaining stock of green wedge land, when assessed against the generic
purposes of the original green wedge policy. Ultimately a policy of trading off the
environment of the green wedges is self-defeating leading to progressive loss of
environmental and other values. Ad hoc individually negotiated decision-making
undermines metropolitan wide strategic planning. Net environmental benefits are
hard to quantify and frequently individual fragments of land preserved are too
small or isolated to be significant as viable flora and fauna reserves.
Each individually bargained decision creates a precedent for others. Such
precedents undermine strategic planning goals and create development
expectations amongst landowners and developers. This causes the very land
speculation that the original corridor/wedges policy was put in place to prevent.
Expectation of future rezoning can adversely affect land management decisions.
Uncertainty over the future of land can reduce the likelihood of landowner
investment in long-term management. The degraded state of the land is then
sometimes used as an argument for its urban conversion. Responsible rural land
vi
management requires certainty and a long-term perspective. Land degradation is
not an argument for urban subdivision. Urban development must proceed in
places where it is most suitable, not simply where the land has been allowed to
degrade.
Conclusion
This century cities that have protected their environments are likely to have the
strongest economic future and to maintain social harmony. Their liveability,
defined by environmental, economic and social criteria, will be enhanced by the
effectiveness of their land use planning in maintaining connections between city
and countryside. Maintaining Melbourne’s green wedges, and its broader green
belt, is essential if Melbourne is not to succumb to the problem of uncontrolled
growth and is to receive the continued benefits of a productive, diverse and
interesting hinterland.
The clearest single message that comes out of this investigation into Melbourne’s
green wedges is that policy must be consistently and firmly adhered to if it is to
be maintained at all. The original concept, to base Melbourne’s urban
development on a pattern of growth corridors and green wedges, remains sound.
The maintenance of the green wedges is more important now than it was when it
was first envisaged thirty-five years ago. Areas of remnant vegetation are now
more precious, the need for access to open space greater, the necessity to
protect assets such as the airport more economically imperative, and the need to
preserve and create wildlife corridors more pressing.
The future of the environmental and resource values of Melbourne’s hinterland is
precarious. We need a new method to determine the use of these areas that will
protect them from ad hoc decisions based on individual preferences. The
proposed legislation to preserve the green wedges and impose an urban growth
boundary will halt speculative development and divert the energy and capital
currently being invested in moving the growth boundaries into productive
investment in the green wedges. This will take a variety of forms from innovative
agricultural investment, to investment in nature conservation, low impact
recreation and open space. It will also divert the speculative energy to less
wasteful forms of subdivision, and new urban and environmental designs in
greenfield areas of the growth corridors, and into mixed use activity centres.
The Urban Growth Boundary and the prevention of urban related uses in the
green wedges is recognition of the unity between the city and the country, and
the principle that without smarter forms of urban development in the metropolitan
area, green wedges are doomed. Attention can now be directed to improved
management of the green wedges and green belt. Some of this land is in
productive use but some is struggling at the margins of profitability. Some
environmental areas are in pristine condition, but many are degraded and weed
infested. In many of these areas a program of assistance in land rehabilitation
vii
and management is needed. There is much that can and should be done but
protecting the land from urban encroachment is a vital first step.
viii
1. Introduction
The planning and development of metropolitan Melbourne has been based on a
preferred model of urban form and the protection and conservation of
environmental assets. Since 1971 Melbourne’s outer urban growth has been
channelled into development corridors. The land between these corridors – green
wedges – is to be used for non-urban purposes. Green wedges that contain a
range of non-urban uses have been a feature of metropolitan Melbourne and
have been widely supported by governments and the community. They are a
distinctive feature of Melbourne when compared with some other Australian
metropolitan areas and follow a form of development adopted by a limited
number of cities in other countries.
The green wedges provide a number of benefits to the residents of Melbourne.
They provide access to open non-urbanised land in between the growth
corridors, in some cases within 10 to 15 kilometres of the CBD. They provide a
break to what otherwise would be unbroken urban development. They contain
landscape qualities of varying value. They enable the continuation of agriculture
and horticultural industries close to the city, including some of the most
productive market gardens in south-eastern Australia, producing food not only for
Melbourne, but for interstate and export. In some areas the wedges provide
space for essential community infrastructure, or large areas for recreation and
public open space, and protect and allow the extraction of important resources
such as sand and stone. They are recognised as a vital means of preserving
remnant indigenous vegetation, and sensitive environmental areas such as
wetlands, grasslands and native forests, and for the provision of wild life
corridors. The green wedges are part of a long standing strategic plan from
Melbourne which prevents unplanned suburban sprawl.
However, there is a growing concern that the green wedges of Melbourne are
under threat. Recent reports (Fyfe 2002; McGregor 2002) have expressed
concern that the non-urbanised areas of metropolitan Melbourne, generally
protected for three decades or more, are now being developed and urbanised in
a piecemeal fashion. A community coalition of groups dedicated to retaining the
green wedges across Melbourne, the Green Wedge Coalition, has been formed,
and various localised groups have run campaigns around particular development
issues.
Several recent planning panel reports have suggested that in the decade 19922002 a clear government policy on green wedges was no longer apparent, and a
number of recent rezoning decisions appear to reject the application of the
concept. Recently, in response to community concern, the Premier, Steve
Bracks, announced that the Victorian Government intends to legislate to protect
the green wedges as part of its metropolitan strategy, Melbourne 2030.
“Development pressures on the fringe of Melbourne and ad-hoc changes to local
planning controls have undermined the protection of these sensitive areas …..
1
we are acting to protect these areas of great significance, the hills and plains,
forests and wetlands of this region are important to all Victorians. They are the
premium open spaces for our city-dwellers and a home for those who enjoy living
in a more open landscape”, (Bracks 2002).
The climate of both concern and uncertainty that has led to the decision to
legislate suggests that there is a need for clear understanding of green wedge
policy and the development pressures and policies and the statutory provisions
applying to these areas. This report presents the findings of a systematic
investigation into the non-urban areas of metropolitan Melbourne.
The detailed aims of this study are to:
•
•
•
•
provide an historical and theoretical context to the purposes of
Melbourne’s green wedges specifically, and the concept more generally
as it is applied in other cities both within Australia and internationally;
present an accurate summation of the current state of planning policy for
these areas;
understand the nature and extent of development pressures through the
systematic documentation and analysis of major rezonings of green
wedge land from non-urban uses;
better inform policy development and implementation with regard to the
management and growth of Melbourne’s urban form.
Green wedges may encompass land containing special environmental value.
Many parts of Melbourne’s green wedges do not have particularly obvious
environmental value, but may be valuable for other reasons. Green wedges have
always been sites for a range of non-urban uses. While this report continues to
use the term ‘green wedge’, it is more accurate to describe the areas as
Melbourne’s non-urban zones. The definition that we have adopted is those
areas in the fourteen municipalities on the fringe of metropolitan Melbourne
which currently have non-urban (either Rural, Environmental Rural, or Rural
Living) zoning and which are not part of future urban development areas in any
State Government sanctioned strategic plan.
Traditionally, green wedges were areas of non-urban land between urban areas,
such as in the Cities of Manningham and Kingston, and later between
Melbourne’s expanding linear growth corridors. However, Melbourne has a wider
green belt extending beyond Melton and Sunbury, and other areas well outside
growth corridors. The Upper Yarra Valley, Dandenong Ranges and Mornington
Peninsula possess environmental values long recognised in statements of
planning policy and regional authority strategy plans. This green belt has an inner
and outer boundary. It is therefore more accurate to talk about green wedges and
a green belt. In spatial terms, the area of green wedge land refers to non-urban
areas that stretch in an arc from the western to the eastern boundaries of
Melbourne facing Port Phillip. The municipalities include Wyndham, Melton,
2
Hume, Whittlesea, Nillumbik, Manningham, Yarra Ranges, Knox, Cardinia,
Casey, Kingston, Greater Dandenong, Frankston and Mornington Peninsula
The methodology adopted was to examine all amendments to new format
planning schemes in these municipalities and identify those which proposed to
rezone land in Melbourne’s green wedges from non-urban to urban uses.
Significant rezonings in these areas under the previous planning schemes from
1996 were also documented. The location of land subject to such amendments
was plotted in relation to official growth corridors outlined in Ministerial Directions
and to the boundaries of non-urban zoned land and the traditional location of
green wedges. Local government strategic planning statements were also
examined. Maps were prepared showing the location of urban and non-urban
land, urban growth corridors, additional State Government forecasted growth
areas, the proposed Urban Growth Boundary and proposed and approved
amendments to green wedge land. An analysis was carried out of these
amendments, planning schemes, reports of planning panels, and other relevant
investigations or reports into the green wedges by the State Government, local
governments, consultants and community groups. Interviews were conducted
with representatives of these bodies.
The documentation in this report of green wedge rezonings away from rural to
urban zones has in most cases been carried out with the assistance of the local
government authorities involved. All amendments to the current new format
planning schemes are publicly available on the Department of Infrastructure
(DOI) website, (http://www.doi.vic.gov.au). However, the current planning
schemes generally have only been in place for three or four years. While we
have endeavoured to cover the last five years, amendments to the previous
planning schemes are not as clearly documented. A large number of
amendments were made to the non-urban zones of previous planning schemes
particularly between 1993-99. We have summarised the extent of these
amendments in some municipalities, such as in the Upper Yarra and Dandenong
Ranges area, but not for other municipalities. However, this report includes all
the major planning scheme amendments to rural zones in relevant municipalities
in this category since 1996/7.
By far the greatest number of urban conversions of green wedge land have
occurred in the south east, a wedge which spans four different municipalities.
Many of these rezonings have been documented by the community group
Defenders of the South East Green Wedge which maintains an excellent website
providing coverage and general discussion of many of the issues in that areas,
(http://home.vicnet.net.au/~wedgies/).
3
2. Conceptual Origins
2.1 City and countryside
Historically, cities have developed up to a defined limit. The boundaries of
ancient cities were defined frequently by a wall, within which a range of uses and
a variety of urban spaces existed. Girouard (1985) and von der Dollen (1990)
have shown how the edge of the built up area of cities was progressively
transformed in Europe from the middle ages by the relocation of uses, such as
monasteries, hospitals, noxious industries, or palaces, and by the spread of
housing. New towns often grew out of settlements on the fringes of old towns,
and were enclosed by a second wall. Ribbon developments tended to radiate
along arterial routes from the town gates as precursors to suburban
developments.
Strong relationships existed between town dwellers and the countryside arising
out of the physical proximity of the town to surrounding rural areas. As towns
developed up to the outside walls, they increasingly relied on agricultural produce
from farms in the countryside. Mumford (1961), describes the “persistently rural
character of the medieval town” arising from both quick access from the town to
country for recreational and a range of other activities, and the large areas of
open space within town and city limits. He argues that up to the nineteenth
century many towns, which had not grown significantly since medieval times,
retained gardens and orchards. “The typical medieval had a far higher standard
for the mass of the population than any later form of town, down to the first
romantic suburbs of the nineteenth century” (1961:333), he argues. Von der
Dollen (von der Dollen 1990:328) supports this view, claiming that in medium
sized towns and large cities “usually, sufficient space was enclosed within the
second town wall circuit to cope with growth up to the inaugural phases of
industrialization”. In Köln, for example, of 405 hectares within the walls in 1815,
117, or over a quarter, were still in agricultural use (von der Dollen 1990:328).
Much of Rome was used for vineyards or grazing well into the eighteenth
century, including the use of the Forum and Colosseum for sheep grazing
(Haskell and Penny 1981).
Open spaces within medieval urban areas generally comprised private gardens,
public spaces such as markets, squares and parks, royal parks, and areas of
land such as open areas around cathedrals (Mumford 1961). During the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European cities such as Paris, London,
Berlin and Vienna developed promenading spaces for citizens. City and town
walls began to be pulled down and used as open spaces or developed as
parklands particularly through tree planting. Large areas of formerly royal park
became available for public use, or were subdivided into farms. Bath’s model of a
combined housing and parkland developments, first seen in Royal Crescent
(1767-74), was widely imitated, appearing first in London in the early nineteenth
century through the St. John’s Wood, and then John Nash’s Regent Park
4
developments. This “mixture of city and country” led to the combination of villas
and parklands spreading throughout Britain from about 1820 (Girouard
1985:279).
The setting aside of large areas of parkland within cities arose from a desire to
perpetuate the union between countryside and city. Cities were urban
concentrations which retained open areas and explored new connections with
nature such as through new forms of recreation. They also maintained strong
associations with surrounding rural areas particularly for food, and the sale of
agricultural produce in, for example, market towns. The nineteenth century
parklands movement was aided by the nineteenth century Romantic
preoccupation with nature, and a growing concern with public health and the
overcrowding and diseases associated with cities. Parks were established for
public benefits. They were seen as places which could provide for a range of
natural and recreational uses, and help break up polluting industrial uses and
clean the air. New cities, including Australian cities, often set aside large areas of
parkland, and expanding old cities, such as Berlin, sometimes provided extensive
areas of parkland and lakes for recreation.
2.2 The emergence of green belts
The nineteenth-century concern for the countryside was predominantly restricted
to an intellectual and affluent minority (Blacksell and Gilg 1981). However, the
rise in mobility in the twentieth century increased the connections between city
and country. Growing numbers of people were able to live in regional or rural
locations and work in cities, or gain easy access to rural locations from cities for
recreation and other purposes. These trends were assisted by a romanticised
view of the countryside and a rising middle class, and have led to increasing
conflict between land uses. The result was “a breakdown of the division between
town and country, and the gradual erosion of the power base of rural landowners,
as urban populations extended their influence into the countryside” (Blacksell and
Gilg 1981:1).
The creation of green belts tied to the containment of urban growth within defined
urban boundaries has sometimes led to the location of large numbers of people
in regional and rural areas. The British adoption of New Towns separated from
large urban centres by green belts provides the most well known example of this
model. The concept of modern urban green belts owes much to a fusion and
application of the ideas of Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, and Lewis
Mumford. Geddes and Howard were unconventional Britons who spent some
time in America. Mumford, the American, eventually saw their ideas implemented
in Britain through the British planners Raymond Unwin and Patrick Abercrombie.
The concept of the green belt was closely linked to the idea of maintaining
connections between town and countryside, and of the urban fringe, a concept
introduced by Herbert Louis (1936) in writing about the geographical
5
development of greater Berlin, and through the work of the German-American
Michael R.G. Conzen.
Conzen (1969:125) defined a “fringe-belt” as “a belt-like zone originating from the
temporarily stationary or very slowly advancing fringe of a town and composed of
a characteristic mixture of land-use units initially seeking peripheral location”. The
urban fringe is therefore an area of land adjacent to the edge of an urban area, a
“zone of transition from urban to rural land uses” (Blacksell and Gilg 1981:53). It
can establish a clear separation between a city extending gradually outwards in a
uniform or planned manner, and a range of non-urban uses. These uses may
include agriculture, resource extraction, urban pursuits such as recreation, and
environmental values such as landscape values, wetlands, vegetation coastal
areas and streams. An urban fringe area may not be allocated to rural related
uses, but be used for quasi-urban uses such as rural residential lots as part of a
gradation between urban and rural uses. Alternatively, this land area may
separate urban areas, such as a large city and satellite towns and insist on a
strict separation between urban and rural as a figurative wall.
The report of the British Barlow Commission (Barlow Report 1940) accepted the
principle of Garden Cities and satellite towns and implicitly the importance of the
green belts separating cities and new towns. Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan
(1944) implemented key elements in the report of the Barlow Commission. This
plan proposed that “a gigantic Green Belt around built-up London” be designated.
These and other reports and plans helped put in place the objectives of green
belt planning in Britain. These objectives were to provide access to the
countryside, protect landscapes and agricultural land from urban uses, prevent
the uncontrolled spread of urban areas and form breaks to cities, maintain
lifestyles and protect health. They would therefore provide environmental, social
and economic benefits for both urban and rural residents. Hall shows that the
“notion of urban containment, and the notion of rural preservation, come together
in the concept of the green belt” (Hall 1973:52).
The British urban planning system also involved the creation of self contained
communities, or garden cities or satellite towns. These three elements “belonged
in a total inseparable package” (Hall 1973:67). The London green belt would
separate London from eight to ten New Towns so that these towns would appear
as islands of development in a sea of rural land; provide opportunities for outdoor
recreational pursuits and be connected with agricultural land further out from the
city. This concentric green belt would also be connected to green wedges which
would extend inward through the city from the green belt. Abercrombie drew from
the values inherent in Raymond Unwin’s work on the report of the Greater
London Regional Planning Committee (Greater London Regional Planning
Committee 1929). Unwin (1930) proposed that a “green girdle” circle London.
The Committee and Unwin (1930:186) proposed an alternative to the position
that “all land is potentially building land”, proposing that the State determine the
best location for dwellings against “a protected background of open land”. As Hall
6
(1988:166) has observed, Unwin’s report proposed a “complete reversal of the
then planning system: instead of planning authorities trying to reserve pieces of
land for open space, they should allocate certain areas for building, on the
assumption that all the remainder be left open; towns against a background of
open space”. Both Abercrombie and Unwin also assumed that strong
government intervention was necessary if green belts and New Towns were to
be introduced. This model meant that development would be directed, and
rejected the land use model of a constantly expanding city whose form was
determined by market decisions.
Abercrombie was also indebted to Patrick Geddes. He drew from Geddes’ idea
of organic structure in developing concentric rings from inner, outer, green belt
and outer country, and using open space as a structuring element defining the
extent of the outer ring (Hall 1988). Geddes (1915:86) was concerned at the lack
of opportunities for city dwellers to visit the country and argued that if they were
to experience country life, planners must “bring the country to them”. Geddes,
like Mumford, also rejected the necessity of constantly expanding cities unbroken
by natural areas.
Howard’s garden city concept provided a mechanism to implement this idea of
organic planning. The idea of satellite towns based around a metropolis
separated by open space from each other and the main city could be traced from
Howard (1898) through Purdom (1921) Unwin (1930) to Abercrombie’s plan of
1944 (Hall 1988:169) Howard’s “Social City” was to be a combination of town and
country, a cluster of small cities fixed to a limit of 32,000 people on 1,000 acres
surrounded by a permanent green belt, and grouped around and separated from
a larger city (1945). To Howard, a greenbelt provided open space for inhabitants
of towns, a means of limiting urban growth, and a location for agriculture. The
Green Belt is “Howard’s most striking and realistic physical proposal” (Morris
1997:50).
Howard also envisaged urban development occurring through a repetition of
these small centres containing decentralised employment and social
opportunities, linked to each other and a larger metropolis through mass transit.
Raymond Unwin, Barry Parker, Louis de Soissons and others implemented
Howard’s ideas in designing Garden Cities at Letchworth and Welwyn,
Hampstead and Ealing, and further examples were developed in Europe,
particularly in Germany. At Letchworth, for example, 500 hectares were devoted
to the town and 1,000 hectares set aside as green belt. This model was
eventually implemented through Abercrombie’s 1944 Greater London Plan, and
its success in Britain
led Sir Anthony Montague Barlow’s parliamentary committee to recommend the
industrial decentralization in garden cities as a remedy for the increasing
congestion of London; and this led in turn to the New Towns Act of 1946, which
projected a ring of New Towns around London and in various other parts of
England (Mumford 1961:594).
7
In Mumford’s view, (1961:595) Howard proposed a new type of city that would
overcome “the boundless expansion and random diffusion of the conurbation”.
He regarded Howard’s model as “organic” in that it proposed limits on a city’s
area and numbers of people, introduced a balance between city and country in a
larger ecological pattern, and between the city’s various activities. He argued “if a
city was to maintain its life maintaining functions for its inhabitants, it must in its
own right exhibit the organic self-control and self-containment of any other
organism”. This vision could only be achieved through appropriate zoning and
land-use legislation (1961:587, 574).
Mumford compared the “purposeless mass congestion of the big metropolis”
unfavourably with Howard’s model of an organic city and criticised as an “anticity” the “extension of vast masses of suburban…housing…into open country”.
He argued that once a suburb breached original limits, it became “a diffused lowdensity mass, enveloped by the conurbation and then further enveloping it…part
of the inescapable metropolis”. This led to the values of both city and country
being lost. Mumford was particularly concerned with the impacts that removing
boundaries to space had on time and urban functioning. The new suburban form
held out the dream of easier communication and time saving travel, but achieved
the opposite. A large road based city “devours space and consumes time” and
leads to “sprawling isolation”, a separation initially prized but which eventually
imprisons each person in Suburbia. Howard’s vision provided Mumford with an
alternative model which leads to the better use of time, the enjoyment of space
and personal communication. To Mumford, sprawling cities were anti-urban in
that they destroyed the essential urban functions needed for inhabitants
(1961:575-87).
Methods of implementation
Melbourne’s strategic land use and statutory planning owes much to its British
origins, and this debt extends to the adoption and implementation of the principle
of green belts or green wedges. The British Green Belt proposals included all the
implementation methods variously used to introduce green belts more generally.
In Britain, legislation assisted the introduction of Green Belts. However legislation
was enabling legislation, particularly the Green Belt (London and Home
Counties) Act 1938 which enabled local authorities to carry out various actions
such as compensating landowners and purchasing land. The adoption of New
Town proposals also incorporated the concept of green belts, as new towns were
an alternative to continuous urban sprawl. New Towns were initiated through
legislation, originally through the New Towns Act in 1946, and later through the
Town Development Act in 1952. The New Town idea was derived from Ebenezer
Howard and the Garden City movement. Other legislation was proposed, such as
legislation proposed in the 1967 South West Strategy, to control development in
country zones designed to supplement green belts. The Countryside Act, 1967
and 1968, protects areas of outstanding beauty and of high landscape
8
significance, and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 provides additional
protection to countryside.
The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act also contained key enabling provisions
for green belt development which influenced the method adopted in Victoria for
protecting green wedges. This Act proposed a development plan as a means of
land use control. This would indicate through maps the areas to be developed,
and those to be protected as an agricultural green belt. Green belts therefore
were given statutory protection through the land use planning process and were
delineated in plans and on maps. The Victorian model was based on this
approach. In Victoria, the principal method of protection for green wedges has
been statutory land use plans, whether structure plans, or planning schemes.
Changes to planning schemes require the approval of the planning authority and
the responsible minister. Amendments can be disallowed by parliament but do
not require an amending bill as no act of Parliament specifically protects green
wedges. The closest approximation to legislative protection for a green belt is
section 46F of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 which requires the
approval of both houses of parliament to any development which contradicts the
Upper Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges Authority Strategy Plan.
Two methods of protection of non-urban land on the fringe of cities have been
tried in recent years in the US. The first is the imposition of an Urban Growth
Boundary (UGB) which was introduced in both the Greater Portland area in the
state of Oregon from 1979, and in cities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in
1993 (Daniels 2002). In both cases the idea was to locate the UGB outside the
city in such a way as to provide sufficient land within the boundary to
accommodate growth needs for the next 20 years. Both city and county
governments agreed not to extend sewer and water lines beyond the UGB. The
second approach involved the purchase of land development rights from rural
landowners on the fringes of cities. This was adopted in Lancaster County in
addition to the imposition of a UGB, to provide a permanent solution to urban
sprawl. Landowners in America have an inherent right to develop their own land.
They can sell this right to the government while retaining their property for their
own private use. The purchasing of these development rights from rural
landholders at key sites on the urban fringe can ensure a permanent edge to the
urban area in perpetuity (Daniels 2002:3). A similar approach was adopted by the
South Australian Government in the 1980s to purchase the development right of
land in order to protect native vegetation. In general this approach has rarely
been used in Australia as a principle or under planning law.
Strategic policy statements, often given recognition in statutory land use plans,
are another method of protecting green belts. Victorian metropolitan planning
authorities and governments have developed many strategic plans which, since
1971, have specifically aimed to protect green wedges as part of metropolitan
strategic planning. However, these have been given little statutory force, and
specific reference to green wedges was removed from the state-wide strategic
9
policy section of planning schemes when the Victoria Planning Provisions after
1996 altered the State planning policy provisions.
The British Government protects green belts in Planning Policy Guidance Note 2
(1988) (PPG2). This aims to protect green belts from inappropriate development,
although development is allowed under exceptional circumstances. PPG2
includes the purposes of green belts, building on the purposes provided in earlier
British planning reports, such as to prevent unrestricted urban sprawl and the
linking of townships, to protect the countryside and historic towns, and assist in
urban regeneration. PPG2 lists the green belts in England and Scotland
approved in structure plans totalling almost five million acres. Fifteen Green Belts
cover 14 per cent of England, with the London Green Belt now comprising 1.2
million acres. In addition, green wedges and areas of township separation are
classified separately (Elson 2001).
Land purchase is another method of protecting green belts. Large areas of green
belt land have been purchased progressively in Britain. For example, the London
Country Council purchased about 55 square miles of land for the London Green
Belt (Morris 1997:83). Victorian governments either reserved large areas of
public open space from development, or have purchased regional parks.
However the purchase of the green wedges has been regarded as prohibitively
expensive and strategic planning policies and statutory planning controls have
been preferred.
Development pressure
Many British, European and other cities such as Portland and Seattle in the north
west of the United States, and Vancouver in Canada, have attempted to limit the
spread of urban areas and protect natural areas, with public support. Portland,
Oregon, for example, drafted a plan in 1994 to accommodate an increase of 1.1
million people by 2040 with minimal expansion of the city’s Urban Growth
Boundary, through an extensive process of public participation and involvement.
According to Daniels the public overwhelmingly endorsed increasing urban
densities through reduced lot size and the directing of development along transit
lines and into existing population centres, (Daniels 2002:2). Such examples can
be compared to the continued outward spread of many other American cities. In
Britain, generally the policy of urban containment, and of green belts, has been
maintained. However, British Green Belts have come under development
pressure through various strategic plans, in particular in 1961-81 through the
South East Study, the South East Strategic Plan 1970, and during the 1990s.
Morris (1997:245) shows that by 1991 there were over 200 developments
planned in Britain. Some of these have been proposed in Green Belts such as
the Cambridge Green Belt, and most are for township extension and new towns
in the south and south east of the country. There is increasing pressure because
of the need to locate up to four million new households primarily in the southeastern area of England by 2020 (Breheny 1996).
10
Green belts are also vulnerable to new roadways, not only because freeways
alter, divide and separate land, but because they lead to other development
pressures. Roads have also been used to define the precise points of separation
between urban and rural areas. The American concept of a “beltway” refers to an
outer urban ring freeway. This concept has been criticised as being an
unsatisfactory means of separating urban and rural uses, as it leads to further
urban development clustered around the roadway, the opposite effect from that
often intended (Cervero 1989). The British Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution, Transport and the Environment (1994) reviewed evidence which
analysed the impact on land development of the M40 motorway from London to
Oxford, and outer ring roads such as the London orbital motorway, the M25. The
M40 opened up access to land that was developed contrary to the approved
development plan. Traffic generated by new developments “added to highway
problems and brought forward the need for further improvements to the road
network”. The Commission evaluated modelling that showed that outer ring roads
encourage car-based decentralization of employment particularly service and
retail.
Between 1989 and 1991, an estimated 26 million square feet of offices (enough
for 160,000 workers) were completed in the districts surrounding the (M25); and
in 1993 some 50 million square feet of office space were awaiting construction or
planning permission… Such development generates traffic and undermines the
strategic purpose of the road; the traffic generated will cause greater congestion
than had been expected, and thereby reduce the achieved time savings to less
than had been assumed when calculating whether road constructions was
justified (Royal Commission on Environment Pollution 1994:147).
Ultimately, public opinion is likely to decide the fate of green belts. Morris
(1997:99) argues that in Britain, “the popular attitude has been that communities
must remain vigilant so the green belt can be maintained. In the popular mind,
the principle of the green belt is the most sacred of planning principles, and has
so far withstood the test of time”.
11
3. Green belts in Australian cities
The British regional planning model of urban containment was planning on a
regional scale, extending over large regions encompassing established urban
areas, green belts and satellite towns. This model influenced Australian planners
who generally had developed strong affinities with British town and regional
planning. However, Australian planners demonstrated a willingness to develop
their own solutions to urban growth from shared conceptual affinities. In
particular, even where green belts were accepted, as in Sydney and Brisbane,
satellite towns were never adopted on the British model. In Melbourne, the
concept of satellite towns was rejected in all metropolitan planning.
3.1 Sydney and Adelaide
The fate of Sydney’s green belt is the most well known Australian example of the
failure of green belt planning. Many commentators, such as Simmie, Olsberg and
Tunnell (1992) and Freestone (1992) have pointed to the conceptual connections
between British and Sydney planning. The original Sydney metropolitan plan
was a “bold master plan in the Patrick Abercrombie style, regional in scope
(covering an area of over 4000 square kilometres) and looking forward a quarter
of a century” (Freestone 1992:71). The plan aimed at containing “promiscuous
urbanisation” through redevelopment of existing metropolitan areas and satellite
city development, maintaining productive rural land, and protecting landscape
values. It sought to achieve these aims by establishing an inner city green belt of
332 square kilometres extending as a “girdle of rural open space encircling the
urban districts and penetrating towards the centre between some of the outer
districts, ensuring for all time ready access by urban populations to a countryside
specially planned and maintained for their benefit” (Cumberland County Council
1948:65).
Freestone (1992) has described the fate of this inner city green belt. Areas were
progressively excised for urban development. By 1957, 16 square kilometres had
been excised for development, and in 1959 the Minister for Local Government
unilaterally excised about one third, or 119 square kilometres, for urban
development. Eventually, most of Sydney’s inner area green belt was used for
urban expansion. In contrast, Adelaide has maintained a clearly identified green
belt because of a confluence of planning dating from the 1960s, geographical
limitations, and the need to protect valuable productive agricultural land.
Adelaide’s 1962 Development Plan established a Hills Face Zone extending for
ninety kilometres along the Adelaide Hills. The 1992 Metropolitan Adelaide
Planning Strategy identified an urban-rural boundary designed to protect the
horticultural areas of the Northern Adelaide Plains. Similarly, the landscape
features and important viticulture areas of the Willunga Basin to the south
constrain further urban development in that direction (South Australian
Government 1992).
12
There are differences between Sydney and Adelaide green belt planning with
important lessons for the future planning of green belt areas of Melbourne. The
first is that planning for greenbelts and areas designated for future urban growth
must occur together. Unless adequate areas for urban growth are identified,
development and population pressures will lead to irresistible pressure on
governments to use green belt areas for urban expansion. The 1947 Sydney
metropolitan plan correctly proposed that the metropolitan area could
accommodate a major increase in population, but failed to identify satellite or
alternative growth areas to accommodate the actual increase (Harrison 1972;
Freestone 1992). The eventual move towards a corridor-wedge model under
which development corridors would be separated by green wedges extending
back towards the city similarly did not last. The Sydney plan also identified the
green belt as a separate entity from land zoned for rural uses. The potential use
of green belt land for agriculture was contentious, with some commentators
claiming it had little agricultural value compared to the land protected in Britain
(Simmie, Olsberg et al. 1992).
In contrast, Adelaide has always identified areas of future urban growth while
accepting developmental constraints in areas significant for environmental or
resource protection reasons. Adelaide’s 1992 planning strategy designated the
northern growth corridor about eight kilometres wide between the horticultural
area and the Hills Face Zone (Perkins 1994). Successive plans for Adelaide have
adopted and maintained an urban/rural boundary by simultaneously defining
growth areas and accepting the limitations on urban expansion into valuable
horticultural, viticultural, environmental areas and landscapes.
There were also important differences between the ways critics of green belts
were handled, and in the degree of public acceptance of green belts, in both
cities. Freestone and others have argued that the public acceptance of Sydney’s
green belt was ambivalent, unorganised and unfocused (Harrison 1972;
Freestone 1992). Over 3,000 objections were received to the 1947 plan.
Landowners in the green belt, councils, development interests, and the LiberalCountry Party opposition, opposed the creation of the green belt. This land owner
opposition was similar to that in Melbourne where over 4,000 objections were
received in a review of the green wedge areas in the early 1980s, mainly from
affected landowners. Freestone also argues that public confidence in Sydney’s
green belt was progressively undermined by incremental rezoning. Affected
landowners regarded ad hoc rezonings for development as unequitable, and as a
precedent for further rezoning. Despite the continued support of some planners
and architects, public faith became progressively eroded.
In contrast, Perkins (1994:81) claims that the Hills Face Zone “is an example of a
boundary to urban development which has acquired a cultural significance that
has ensured its survival free from development long after the economic
restrictions on development have been surmounted”. Its cultural value “as
13
Adelaide’s rural backdrop, visible at the end of many east-west oriented city
streets, and a ready reminder of the city’s natural assets”, is protected by
organised groups and the weight of public opinion. Perkins argues that
confidence in the future of rural fringe areas can only be maintained by a clear
demarcation between urban and rural boundaries. Only through such strong
boundaries will what Bunker and Houston (1992) call the “impermanence
syndrome”, which has affected rural areas around larger cities, be removed. It is
clear that the maintenance of green belt areas is an essential element in
continued public support for them. Their incremental loss establishes a cycle of
progressive loss of their value, less public acceptance of their importance and
reduced willingness of the public to struggle for their protection, resulting in even
further loss of area.
14
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20
4. Melbourne’s green wedges
4.1 Historical development
Prior to the commencement of any formal town planning, Melbourne’s urban
development grew up spontaneously along the major transport routes radiating
out from the centre of the city. The non-urban areas between these corridors of
urban development were thus an early feature of settlement. The first attempt at
formal planning for Melbourne occurred in 1929, when a report was published
prepared by the Metropolitan Town Planning Commission. This plan did not
explicitly provide for protection of rural areas, but adopted wide-ranging
proposals to protect Melbourne’s rivers and streams from development and to
introduce an extensive network of public open space along these streams which
would separate urban development areas. This plan was never adopted but it
influenced the provisions for the urban area in the 1954 plan prepared by the
Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW). The open space
provisions of this plan were eventually incorporated into the 1988 Metropolitan
Open Space Plan, (Environment 1988).
The 1954 plan extended over an area of 1,800 square kilometres and was
intended to accommodate a population of two and a half million people through
outer urban growth in accordance with demand. A rural or non-urban zone
surrounded the specified urban zones, but no provision was made for preventing
urban development in this non-urban zone in future years.
McLoughlin (1992) comments that the origins of Melbourne’s radial growth
corridor/green wedge plan are unclear. He speculates that the 1942 MARS plan
for London or the Finger Plan for Copenhagen might have been the sources.
Planning for London has been considered above. The 1948 Copenhagen Finger
Plan was a regional plan which recommended that Copenhagen’s suburbs be
developed as small independent urban communities connected to the city centre
by radial railway lines and roads. Urban growth would be concentrated in these
urban “fingers” which grew outwards from the city centre that constituted the
“palm of the hand”. Subsequent plans, in 1961, 1973, 1989 and 1993 continued
the basis of this plan (Copenhagen Municipal Corporation 1993).
It is certain however, that the development of Melbourne’s radial corridor/green
wedge plan was strongly influenced by post war British planning. Initially, through
the 1954 scheme, the MMBW rejected the British approach of urban
containment, delineation of green belts and satellite towns. The Board
considered the issues associated with satellite towns and anticipated critics who
“may point to what is being attempted around London and near other English
cities”. It adopted a focused metropolitan planning approach concentrating on
planning for the existing and proposed urban area, not a regional planning
approach on the British model which integrated urban and rural planning. The
15
Board argued that “factors which have led in England to the development of the
new towns do not operate here” (MMBW 1953:29). In particular, the Board
argued that Melbourne’s population density was much less than that of London,
and that urban dispersal was desirable. The 1954 plan also assumed that there
were no spatial constraints on development and that urban consolidation or other
forms of urban containment were not needed.
In May 1966, the Victorian Minister for Local Government, R.J. Hamer, moved
Melbourne’s metropolitan planning away from many of the principles of the 1954
plan and towards the British regional planning model which included the
protection of green belts. Hamer, in language similar to that used by Abercrombie
and Mumford, wrote to the Town and Country Planning Board and the MMBW
requesting a report on, amongst other matters, the future shape of Melbourne.
The key elements of the 1948 British plan, and of the Geddes and Howard
blueprint, were considered in Hamer’s instructions to his planning authorities, and
in the MMBW’s response (MMBW 1967). These were the need to contain urban
growth, protect green belts and plan for satellite cities. As in the 1948 Sydney
plan, satellite towns were considered but generally were not adopted. However a
significant part of the existing metropolitan area was to be redeveloped and
green belts or green wedges introduced.
Hamer stated that a widely dispersed metropolis, unless carefully planned,
raised a threat to the surrounding countryside…. nobody could happily
contemplate a future metropolis of seemingly endless suburbia spreading
outwards indefinitely. It must be strongly emphasised that future planning should
take full account of the surrounding countryside as a vital part of the metropolitan
environment…I would urge the Board to give particular attention to the possibility
of urban decentralization with provision for “satellite” towns of, say, 100,000 or
even greater population each based on a sizeable industrial and commercial area
and separated from the existing metropolis, and from each other, by broad tracts of
open country, natural parkland and recreation space, (MMBW 1967:29).
The MMBW (1967:14-16) considered three outward growth alternatives. These
were controlled outward growth, satellite cities, and growth corridors. The first
would pose major transportation difficulties and require a minimum degree of
planning direction. The MMBW adopted the principle of corridor development
with limited satellite city growth in the north and west. This would allow
development to proceed along major public transport routes and would protect
“open countryside near to established population”. The Board considered the
London New Towns but considered that satellite cities could not accommodate
all the projected population increase. The concept however was “exciting and
thus likely to capture the public imagination”. The separation of satellite towns
“from the continuous urban area would give a sense of community which would
be lacking in all other forms of development, and the relative selfsufficiency…..result in a minimum impact on the continuous urban area”.
16
The non-urban countryside would define the outer limits of urban development
between the urban corridors and “provide relief from continuous building
development. The ….preservation of countryside near to established
population…..is a most important consideration”. Its other functions were to
protect areas of high natural amenity, primary production including orchards and
market gardens, other rural activities, deposits of minerals and other resources,
and to provide locations for major public utility installations and large institutions
(MMBW 1967:14-16). The Government adopted the corridor/green wedge
concept as policy in 1968, and also considered the possibility of satellite town
development in limited locations, particularly at Melton.
The MMBW further developed this position in the 1971 Planning Policies for the
Melbourne Metropolitan Region. It proposed seven urban growth corridors
separated by permanent green wedges, or non-urban areas, in a plan which has
defined the direction of urban growth and the shape of Melbourne over the last
thirty years. All future urban development was to be confined to the growth
corridors which would not be wider than 4-6 miles. Physical and economic
constraints on development were identified and these helped to define the
features to be protected in the non-urban zones, or green wedges. The most
notable addition to the features identified in the 1966 report were detailed
environmental values, including floodways and wetlands, water quality,
landscape values, native vegetation, and terrain characteristics. The MMBW also
recognised areas of special interest including the Yarra Valley, the Dandenong
Ranges and the Dingley area, and proposed the public purchase of large
regional parklands in green wedge areas.
The MMBW implemented its report through Amending Planning Schemes 3 and
21 which modified the Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme, (MMPS). As
part of this implementation, it adopted a number of new non-urban or countryside
zones to implement its policy vision for green wedges and areas of special
significance outside these wedges. These included resource, general farming,
intensive agriculture, and conservation and landscape interest zones. It therefore
relied on planning measures under the Town and Country Planning Act in its role
as metropolitan planning authority. The MMBW controlled and administered one
metropolitan wide planning scheme, the MMPS, and introduced additional
controls in areas such as the Dandenong Ranges where the local council
administered its own planning scheme. This approach reflected the Board’s
confidence that it could successfully implement its policies by relying solely on
the planning system. In 1988, the MMPS was broken up and devolved to
metropolitan local councils. The introduction of the Victoria Planning Provisions
(VPPs) in 1996 reintroduced the principle of standard planning provisions, but
individual councils administer planning schemes and may initiate amendments.
Local councils are therefore in a position to commence processes, which can
reinforce incremental development pressure in green wedges.
17
The 1971 plan was Melbourne’s first regional plan. The area affected was
revised from 1,800 to 5,029 square kilometres and extended to Westernport Bay,
the Dandenong Ranges, and far to the north, south and west of Melbourne. Over
4,000 objections were received to the exhibited plan. As in Sydney, most
opposition came from landowners within the proposed green wedge areas. Many
people believed that the proposed standards were too inflexible and restrictive
compared to the more permissive nature of previous zoning provisions.
Numerous individual objectors argued “against the detailed zoning provisions as
they affect individual properties, i.e. many with land zoned for a non-urban use
desire an urban or potential urban classification” (MMBW 1971:12). Support for
the need to control Melbourne’s growth was received by professional planners
and architects, conservation and social bodies, and some local councils. Unlike
the situation in Sydney, the MMBW and the Government held firm and rejected
the great majority of these objections to the plan.
Two major studies were undertaken by the MMBW into non-urban zones in the
mid 1970s. The first was the Review of Planning Policies for the Non-Urban
Zones (MMBW 1977:12) and the second was the Metropolitan Farming Study
(Aberdeen Hogg and Associates 1977). Both studies made strong
recommendations aimed at ensuring the continuation of farming in the non-urban
zones. The non-urban zones review outlined the importance of non-urban zones
in terms of State production of agricultural products and showed that in many
cases almost the whole of the State’s supply was produced in the Melbourne
Planning Region. It also reaffirmed the importance of non-urban zones and green
wedge policy proposing that future urban development be located in urban
corridors and that permanent non-urban wedges be retained. The Farming Study
concluded that “it is important to realise that any production that is lost through
sub-division or urban incursion may not be capable of being produced elsewhere,
or, of it is, it would involve higher prices to the consumer” (Aberdeen Hogg and
Associates 1977:1).
The non-urban zones report summarized the five statutory non-urban zones then
in place: conservation, landscape interest, general farming, intensive agriculture,
and parts of corridor zones where urban development was deferred indefinitely. It
argued that “the determination to preserve permanent non-urban wedges
between corridors of urban development…removed urban expectations from
major portions of the Metropolitan planning area”. It also pointed to subsequent
governmental support for the MMBW’s response to the Report on General
Concept Objections 1974 which rejected attempts to overturn the green wedge
zonings (MMBW 1974). The non-urban zones report recommended the retention
of the non-urban zones, additional restrictive controls over housing construction
and the protection of environmental values.
The farming study argued that uncertainty could best be avoided by adherence to
the permanence of the non-urban zones. It was essential “that the Board does
not relax minimum sub-division sizes and use controls if certainty is to be
18
maintained (Aberdeen Hogg and Associates 1977:4). The report argued that
large metropolitan farms should be preserved, subdivision prevented and
amalgamation of small farms encouraged. It proposed an increase in the
minimum subdivision size of the general farming zone in some areas from 40 ha
to 80 ha, the introduction of more restrictive uses in environmental zones,
arguing that
when a farm is sold it tends to be subdivided to the minimum lot size allowable.
This reduces the capacity of the non-urban zones to achieve the desired
planning objectives of retaining agricultural production and rural
landscape…There is no evidence that controls on use or development have
imposed any significant constraint or caused any hardship to metropolitan
farmers in the carrying out of their present farming pursuits (Aberdeen Hogg and
Associates 1977:8-9,2).
In 1980 the MMBW released its Metropolitan Strategy aimed at curtailing urban
sprawl, and protecting areas of environmental and recreational significance. The
MMBW assessed four options for the future growth of Melbourne, dispersal into
corridors, centralized (consolidation), suburbanised (multi-nodal development)
and incremental growth (a combination of other options) against five criteria:
energy, efficiency, employment, environment and equity (MMBW 1980).
Dispersal performed worst on the criteria maximizing the already heavy reliance
on the private car and ignoring energy conservation. In 1981, the MMBW
released its Metropolitan Strategy Implementation report. This was intended to
implement the 1980 strategy and to provide the policy context for a broader
range of urban consolidation and other policies in Amendment 150. This report
maintained the corridor/wedge principle and maintained a
clear demarcation between urban and non-urban areas, to eliminate urban
expectations from rural areas… by removing urban expectations from nonurban areas, the planning strategy aids their survival. It also helps eliminate
both land speculation and the sort of development that leads to uneconomic
demand for urban services (MMBW 1981:85).
The report also extended green wedges into some areas set aside for urban
growth corridors, increased subdivision minimum sizes for broad-scale farming
areas, extended the number of countryside zones, and introduced dual
occupancy and nominated mixed use activity centres as means of assisting with
urban containment.
4.2 More recent policy positions
The Cain Labor Government published its metropolitan strategy Shaping
Melbourne’s Future in 1987 (Government of Victoria 1987). This strategy
reinforced the urban corridor/green wedge model of future urban development,
19
and proposed that most future urban growth be located in the Plenty and South
Eastern corridors, with some potential for additional development in the Werribee
corridor.
The strategy continued to establish the policy context for the statutory protection
of green wedges through planning schemes. It argued that the retention of
wedges of countryside between urban corridors protected scenic landscapes,
farming areas, native vegetation, wildlife habitat, areas of primary produce and
other resources, and provided opportunities for rural living and recreation. It
referred to the protection of environmentally significant areas around the fringes
of Melbourne through existing policy in the form of Statements of Planning Policy
numbers 1,2,3 and 8 which “legally bind regional and local planning authorities”,
(1987:5). The strategy therefore recognised that
Metropolitan expansion places pressure on the green wedges separating the
corridors. Protection of these areas will continue as a fundamental aspect of
Melbourne’s growth patterns. The green wedges will play an important role as the
location for metropolitan open space. Rural landscapes will be maintained by
continuing agricultural use (1987:37).
and undertook to “protect environmentally sensitive and agricultural areas by
maintaining the corridor-green wedge policy and Statements of Planning Policy”
(1987:37) .
In implementing this strategy however, the Cain Government adopted structure
plans which significantly varied the 1971 and 1981 metropolitan plans and led to
the widening of urban corridors into green wedges in the South Eastern and
Werribee corridors, and the protection of significant environmental features in the
Plenty corridor. In 1989, the Government released technical reports into the
South Eastern and Werribee corridors that contained some options which
involved limited extensions of urban zonings into green wedges. However the
1990 Ministerial Directions defined the new boundaries to these growth corridors
and contained major extensions of urban corridors into non-urban zoned land
which had never previously been proposed in exhibited options. In this way the
Ministerial Directions undermined the previous consultation process and
disenfranchised potential objectors to the more far reaching extensions or urban
growth into green wedges. These areas were particularly to the east and west of
Cranbourne, including a large area between Evans and Dandenong-Hastings
Roads, and in Werribee South. This was the first significant strategic alteration to
the boundaries of non-urban zones.
From 1990, the Labor Government began to investigate strategic options for
limiting urban expansion through consolidation and included the options of new
towns in its Urban Development Options for Victoria Discussion Paper
(Department of Planning and Urban Growth 1990). Governments continued to
reaffirm the importance of retaining green wedges in later strategic statements
about metropolitan development, notably, A Place to Live (Department of
20
Planning and Housing 1992), and the Kennett Government’s metropolitan policy
Living Suburbs (Government of Victoria 1995). This latter document reinforces
the importance of containing urban growth within designated growth areas and
links the issues of urban consolidation and green wedge retention.
Melbourne has an abundant supply of undeveloped but easily serviceable land
with scope to accommodate growth in established areas. There is no need to
earmark extra land for urban purposes in the foreseeable future…. Making better
use of existing urban land will also mean protecting the many parts of
metropolitan Melbourne that have particular characteristics or which support
activities incompatible with other urban uses. Examples include airports, tips and
sewage treatment plants; mining, agricultural and recreational areas; and areas
with high landscape and conservation values. The Government is committed to
protecting high-quality agricultural areas from unplanned changes of land use
(Government of Victoria 1995:58-9).
4.3 The Victoria Planning Provisions
The Victoria Planning Provisions (VPPs) were intended to introduce a
performance based planning system which facilitated development through
reduced regulation and an increase in the number and type of discretionary and
‘as of right’ uses, particularly in rural zones. The legislated provisions are the
standard statutory rules and in their entirety in effect replace, or constitute, policy.
Local councils on the metropolitan fringe, and earlier the MMBW, tended to have
developed relatively sophisticated planning schemes for non-urban or rural
areas. These schemes recognised that even if residential rezonings of green
wedge land was prevented, allowing urban related uses through consideration of
planning permits could still lead to the quasi-urbanisation of green wedges. The
provisions of these schemes which had often applied for decades, were now
replaced by standard more permissive rural zones.
The introduction of the VPPs in 1996, and the subsequent development of new
format planning schemes, changed the non-urban zones radically. The five
previous MMPS zones, including two strong environmental zones, were replaced
with three rural zones, the Rural Zone, the Environmental Rural Zone, and the
Rural Living zone. Boundaries of the non-urban zones remained almost identical
across Melbourne. In particular, the Rural Zone contains only three prohibited
uses. This meant that a wide range of urban related uses including industry,
commercial, retail and major tourist developments and uses could be considered
in large areas of the non-urban zones. Although the Government intended that
new format planning schemes were to be introduced in a policy neutral manner,
subdivision sizes were also altered in some areas. This increase in the number of
allowable uses has important long-term implications for the future of the green
wedges. Even if rezonings for residential subdivision continue to be resisted, the
relative lack of prohibited uses will result in the introduction over time of quasi-
21
urban uses into green wedges. This process has already commenced through
permits for such uses as petrol stations, major tourist developments, hotels and
other types of accommodation.
The VPPs removed an unequivocal commitment to the protection of green
wedges which had been included in the previous state sections of planning
schemes, substituting words which have been interpreted in various ways and
which have been regarded sometimes as implying a reduced level of
commitment to green wedge protection. The state section of the previous
planning schemes referred to the corridor and wedge pattern of growth in Clause
14-3:
With regard to new areas of urban expansion, it is metropolitan policy that:
Growth is concentrated in established urban corridors that have the capacity to
absorb additional population. New outward growth will be principally directed to
the Plenty Valley Corridor in the north, the Berwick/Pakenham and Cranbourne
Corridors in the south east and the Werribee corridor in the west.
And also in Clause 14-9:
Melbourne’s growth corridors are separated by valuable wedges of open
countryside that are to be preserved. Parts of these areas have valuable
resources of minerals and stone which are also to be protected for future
extraction and reinstatement for non-urban uses.
It is metropolitan policy that:
• Non-urban areas must be retained for broadscale, mixed or intensive farming,
nature conservation and rural landcapes.
• Valuable agricultural land, natural areas and important landscapes in these
areas will be protected from fragmentation of ownership through
inappropriate subdivision, incompatible development and incursion of urban
land uses through piecemeal zonings.
• Urban works and services in non-urban areas should be kept to a minimum
and community services requires by residents of those areas be clustered in
existing townships.
The State Planning Policy Framework (SPPF) within the VPPs is briefer, and has
been interpreted in varying ways. Section 14.02-2 states:
Outward metropolitan growth must be confined to designated growth areas in
accordance with Minister’s Directions under the Planning and Environment Act
1987.
Consolidation of residential and employment activities is encouraged within
existing urban areas and designated growth areas,
It also states:
22
Environmentally sensitive areas with significant recreational value such as the
Dandenong and Macedon Ranges, the Upper Yarra Valley, Western Port and
Port Phillip Bays and their foreshores, the Mornington Peninsula, the Yarra and
Maribyrnong Rivers and the Merri Creek, as well as nominated urban
conservation areas, historic buildings and precincts should be protected from
development which would diminish their environmental, conservation or
recreation values.
Planning decisions should assist the creation of linked parkland and open space
systems and the protection of high quality agricultural land, important open
landscapes and native vegetation.
The VPPs (in 14.02-3) also list a number of documents to which planning
authorities should have regard when preparing planning scheme amendments or
the Municipal Strategic Statement (MSS). These include a number of documents
that support existing green wedge policy, such as Living Suburbs, the Melbourne
Residential Land Release Forecast and the Upper Yarra Valley and Dandenong
Ranges Regional Strategy Plan.
4.4 Review of Issues on the Urban Fringe
In 1996 the Minister for Planning and Local Government appointed an Advisory
Committee to examine planning and management issues on the urban fringe of
the cities of Melbourne, Geelong, Shepparton and Bendigo and to propose
solutions to problems caused by the interaction of urban and non-urban uses.
The urban fringe of Melbourne was defined as land that lies at the interface
between growth corridors and the green wedges. The Advisory Committee
received submissions, undertook site inspections and held discussions with a
large range of stakeholder and community groups. The result was an issues
paper released for discussion in September 1996 followed by the final report
Review of Issues on the Urban Fringe - Final Report in November.
The Final Report made thirty-two recommendations. Firstly it recommended that
the report be released without Ministerial comment to allow for responses to its
recommendations to be received. Then, mindful that major changes in the form
of the new VPP based statutory planning system were about to take place, the
Committee recommended that it be reconvened at a later date to reconsider its
recommendation in the light of the impact of the new planning system.
The Report unequivocally called for the protection of the green wedges, which it
noted was a long standing strategic planning concept in the growth of Melbourne.
The protection of green wedges, the report argued, is fundamental in order to:
•
•
promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources;
protect land having a high or potential value for the production of food;
23
•
•
protect rural areas generally from sporadic subdivision and urban development;
and
protect the landscape qualities as well as the recreational, botanical, heritage
and environmental values of land surrounding urban areas (Advisory Committee
on Issues on the Urban Fringe 1996:v).
Recommendation 3 followed on from this logic, advocating strongly that
The principles of the growth corridor/green wedge concept be upheld when
planning fringe areas for reason of environmental sustainability and the
protection of recreational opportunities, natural resources, landscape values and
high quality agricultural land.
In addition to this, the Report recommended that any proposal to alter the urban
boundary only be considered in the context of a strategic planning framework. All
councils should undertake such a strategic planning process to identify the urban
boundary and growth areas and it recommended “that Councils and the State
Government provide clear and consistent decision-making in accordance with the
adopted strategic framework and without political interference in dealing with
planning scheme amendments” (1996:vi).
The remaining recommendations within the Report cover a considerable number
of related issues and include an outline of criteria for the assessment of housing
development, planning principles for promoting sustainable agriculture on the
fringe and for land management and improvement. Several recommendations
relate to the creation of a hard edge to the boundary between urban and nonurban areas and propose that this boundary should be required by the VPPs and
acknowledged in each council’s MSS.
The Report which was presented to the Minister for Planning and Local
Government, Robert Maclellan, in November 1996, was not adopted and its
recommended program of reforms was not implemented. Recommendation 2,
that the Committee be reconvened sometime after the introduction of the VPPs
to reassess the Report in the light of experience with the new system was also
not enacted.
The Victorian Government at this time passed over an opportunity to make a
strong a clear statement of support for the continuation of green wedge policy.
4.5 Melbourne 2030
In September 2002 the Premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks, announced that the
Government intends to legislate to protect the non-urban areas of metropolitan
Melbourne (Department of Infrastructure 2002). The new metropolitan strategy,
Melbourne 2030, proposes to put an end to incremental rezoning of green wedge
24
land through the imposition of a fixed Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) which,
once approved, can only be altered by Parliament.
Melbourne 2030 also proposes two new zones for non-urban land, the Green
Wedge Zone and the Rural Conservation Zone to increase control over uses
within these areas (Department of Infrastructure 2002:10). Both of these
proposed zones contain fewer permitted and ‘as-of-right’ uses than do the three
current rural zones. The Green Wedge Zone (GWZ) is intended to be the main
zone applied to rural land outside the UGB and within metropolitan Melbourne,
and it may also be applied to areas surrounding regional cites and towns. It is
less restrictive than the Rural Conservation Zone (RCZ) but more restrictive than
other rural zones except in relation to agriculture. Allowable non-rural uses will
generally be those which support agriculture or low impact tourism or uses which
are essential for urban development but cannot be located within the UGB (such
as waste treatment plants etc). The minimum lot size for the GWZ will be 40
hectares, or less if specified in the schedule. The Rural Conservation Zone is
intended to protect areas of higher conservation values initially within
metropolitan Melbourne, but eventually also in other parts of Victoria. It will be
the most restrictive zone available. The minimum lot size for this zone is 40
hectares.
These proposed new zones, and the introduction of the UGB, applies a new level
of protection that is unprecedented in Australia. The stated aim of these reforms
is “to achieve a fundamental change in the relationship of rural areas to
metropolitan Melbourne… Clarifying where urban development will be allowed
and where rural activities and environmental values are to prevail will enable
landowners in green wedges to plan and invest with greater certainty”
(Department of Infrastructure 2002:2). The consultation period for Melbourne
2030 extends until 14th February 2003.
25
5. Recent Incursions in Melbourne’s green wedges.
The report on green wedges undertaken for the metropolitan strategy process
(Technical Report 2) identified nine green wedges in the Melbourne metropolitan
area (Kellock 2000:49). The recently released strategy Melbourne 2030 –
Protecting the Green Wedges now identifies twelve separate areas, separating
some of the previous green wedges along local government boundaries. The
number and precise boundaries between the green wedges however is not
important as they all ultimately connect at the outer fringe. The important
boundary is that between the urban and non-urban areas, which defines the
urban/rural interface. Melbourne 2030 defines this as the Urban Growth
Boundary (UGB).
The nature of each of these green wedges varies considerably, as do the
pressures upon them. In this section each will be profiled in turn, identifying
major environmental features, recent incursions and rezonings, current policy
reviews which may affect the areas, commentary included in relevant panel
reports, and a summation of the major pressures on the area.
5.1 Werribee South Green Wedge
The Werribee South Green Wedge lies between Port Phillip Bay and the
Werribee growth corridor in the City of Wyndham. The area contains
environmentally significant coastal wetlands, grasslands and waterways. It is also
home to some of the State’s most important agricultural regions, with the market
gardens in Werribee South providing up to 70% of south-eastern Australia’s leaf
and cole crops (Kellock 2000:49). Wyndham has three designated growth areas
at Wyndham North, Werribee West and Point Cook, the latter of which borders
this green wedge. There have been no recent rezonings of land in this green
wedge away from rural uses, in part because of the natural constraints on the
land, but also because at present there is sufficient land within the designated
growth areas as yet undeveloped.
However, there is considerable pressure for more intensive usage within the
wedge. Consistent pressure has been applied to Council by rural land owners
wanting to subdivide their land in order to sell small allotments below minimum
sizes allowed under the planning scheme. This pressure has come particularly
from some market gardeners in the Werribee South area, who have come to
regard their land holdings as a form of superannuation. They believe they should
have the right to sell sections of land. In response to this pressure for excisions
the City of Wyndham is undertaking a review of its policies regarding agricultural
land.
26
HUME
CA
WESTERN
FW
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MELTON
MOORABOOL
BRIMBANK
T
ES
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Eynesbury Station
RD
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MARIBYRNONG
WEST GATE FWY
HOBSONS BAY
WYNDHAM
GREATER GEELONG
INC
PR
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Green Wedge Incursions
Approved
Proposed
Main Roads
Rivers
Residential Forecast Land
Municipal Boundaries
CE S
HW
ES
HW
Y
Y
Land Use
Urban
Commonwealth
Rural and Parks
Public Use
Road
Special Use
Land Between Melton and Werribee Growth Corridor
Showing Eynesbury Station
0
2.5
Urban Growth Boundary
Kilometers
5
5.2 The Western Plains South Green Wedge - Werribee-Melton
The Western Plains South Green Wedge lies north of the Werribee growth
corridor, between it and the urban fringes of Brimbank and Melton. It is primarily
in the Cities of Wyndham and Melton, but also includes a small section of
Brimbank. The area is part of Melbourne’s western basalt plains and contains
valuable native grasslands, some areas of remnant red gums stands, and the
environmentally sensitive Werribee River catchment. A large and significant
development was recently approved which will be discussed in some detail.
5.2.1 Eynesbury Station
Eynesbury Station is a controversial residential and recreational development
recently granted approval on green wedge land in Melton South. It was approved
by the DOI in May 2002, acting under Ministerial delegation power, having
received a favourable Panel Report in September 2000. Amendment C20 of the
Wyndham and Melton Planning Schemes rezones 1,350 hectares of land within
the 7,414 hectare grazing and cropping property of Eynesbury Station on a site
that straddles both the municipalities of Wyndham and Melton. The development
originally proposed included 1,250 residential lots with a potential population of
3,000 – 4,000 people, two 18 hole golf courses, a golf clubhouse and pro shop, a
200 room four star hotel with conference and accommodation facilities, horse
agistment and equestrian facilities. The residential lots originally proposed varied
in size from 500 to 40,000 m2. The plan finally approved increased the number of
residential lots to a minimum number of 2,100. This will include 370 medium
density lots of less than 500 m2, 650 ‘normal residential housing’ lots, 240
‘normal residential housing with view’ lots, 140 ‘equestrian/rural housing’ lots and
700 ‘golf outlook lots’ (Eynesbury Station Incorporated Plan 2002:11).
The Panel Report into Amendment C20 states that “at first sight, amendment
C20 appears to be an audacious attempt to create a substantial new urban
settlement with a potential population of 3000-4000 people in the middle of the
non-urban ‘green wedge’ between the growth corridors of Werribee and
Brimbank/Melton. This appears to conflict with what is commonly understood to
be green wedge policy” (Melton C20 Panel 2000:13).
The proponents of the development argued that maintaining the entire Station in
agricultural use was becoming increasingly untenable due to the marginal nature
of much of the land, and in particular the on going problem of insufficient water.
The owners of the property intend to use the funds gained from the development
and sale of the residential lots to pipe treated wastewater from the nearby
Surbiton Park Treatment Plant for use on the remaining agricultural land. This
would enable more intensive, and more profitable production. Recently the
Surbiton Park irrigation farm has been leased to the Woodhouse Pastoral
Company, the owners of Eynesbury Station. The use of wastewater from
27
Surbiton Park for irrigation at Eynesbury would also enable the Treatment Park to
accept more effluent prevented excess water may run off into the Werribee River.
The issue of the waste water re-use became linked to the development proposal,
and the Panel Report made it clear that this was a major reason for its favourable
determination. The proponents successfully argued in their submission to the
Panel that “the ultimate objective of the proposal is to ensure that the land
remains in productive agricultural use by creating a greater range of farming
options and increasing the viability of what is now a marginal use of the land”
(2000:16).
The Panel believed that agricultural production was a major reason for the
continued existence of the green wedge, and that the development proposal
would assist in maintaining viable agriculture on the land. The Panel accepted
arguments that the development proposal would mean the property would be
retained in one ownership, allow it to continue to be retained in productive
agriculture, allow environmental management problems to be overcome, and
protect environmental assets. However, the Panel also accepted that no linkage
was established in the amendment between the development proposal, the reuse
of wastewater and retaining the bulk of land in productive agricultural use. In
approving the proposal, the Panel refers only generally to the need for “an
appropriate mechanism” to establish this linkage (2000:74).
For such a link to be made, the development would have to provide ongoing
capital for agriculture and maintenance of rural lifestyles in perpetuity, or further
applications for subdivision and development will be expected to arise on the
same property. This will require wise investment in perpetuity and a
demonstrated ongoing investment plan. It is unlikely that for most properties,
sufficient capital to guarantee such ongoing rural and agricultural practice could
be generated. Neither can there be a guarantee that once approval is given, the
remainder of the property will continue to be used for agricultural purposes. The
proliferation of rural, rural-residential allotments associated with other
developments such as golf courses, tourist and recreational components and
developments such as conference facilities and residential hotels introduces
uses which are incompatible with modern agricultural practices, and with many
other rural pursuits. It also takes land out of agricultural production and acts to
inhibit future innovations in such production, thus compromising the region’s
ability to adjust to new forms of investment.
The Panel did not consider traffic to be a major issue (2000:164). Neither did it
investigate the potential impact of introducing a diffuse pattern of development
into the green wedge rather than locating future development close to existing
townships and public transport. The Panel believed that approval of the
development would not create “a precedent for random subdivision throughout
this or other green wedges around Melbourne”. The Panel provides no evidence
for this assertion. As is shown elsewhere in this chapter, other panels have
accepted that development approvals in the green wedge act as precedents for
28
further and varied applications and approvals. However the Eynesbury Panel
believed any precedent would not be a “bad precedent” (2000:35).
The Eynesbury Panel Report suggested that there is something of a policy
vacuum on green wedges, and that the Government has withdrawn from clear
interventionist policies about the role of green wedges in a metropolitan context.
However, as the previous chapter demonstrated, the corridor/wedge principle
has been constantly reinforced by governments since it was introduced in 196971, including the Kennett Government, which reinforced the need to protect
green wedges in its planning policy Living Suburbs.
The Panel noted that there was “no longer any clear statement endorsing the
retention of green wedges per se in the SPPF. It is left to the MSSs of individual
municipalities to make clear policy statements about the green wedges within
their municipalities” (2000:22). The Panel accepted that there was no shortage of
land for residential and other development purposes in the Werribee growth
corridor and the Melton area, and that the development was therefore not
needed to meet any shortage in the supply of land. The Panel also accepted that
the Wyndham and Melton planning schemes contained policies locating further
urban growth in growth areas and are contrary to the location of a development
of the type and size on the site proposed by the amendment.
The Panel considered that “it would be wrong to ignore green wedge policy”
(2000:23). The Panel recognised that the new Metropolitan Strategy would
further consider green wedge policy but was not prepared to delay a decision.
Instead it assessed the proposed development against what it saw as the
objectives of green wedge policy for this particular wedge, citing the suggestion
of the 1997 Advisory Committee Report that each green wedge must be
considered separately.
This method of policy interpretation is consistent with the performance-oriented
approach of the new planning system. The Panel argued that if performance
criteria could be met, then this subdivision and development was appropriate.
Rather than seeing green wedge policy as necessitating a ban on development
in the green wedge - an absolute and prescriptive measure - it instead tried to
interpret what the underlying objectives of the policy were and then assessed the
proposal’s potential performance against these goals. The ‘outcomes’ which the
Panel considered desirable for the Werribee-Melton wedge were: the retention of
the bulk of the land for productive agriculture; the protection and enhancement of
environmental assets; and the protection of the Werribee River catchment.
Relying largely on information provided to it by the proponents of the
development and their advisors, the Panel decided that “the residential
development will not result in a loss of agricultural production” and “the proposed
development will not necessarily present a threat to Eynesbury Station’s flora
and fauna values” (2000:24).
29
The Panel was confident that “the values of the Werribee/Melton green wedge
will not be eroded by Amendment C20” (2000:33). A contrary view was proposed
by Harry van Moorst, Director of the Western Region Environment Centre, in a
report on the Eynesbury Panel decision. In arguing that the issue of green wedge
policy should be determined by reference to outcomes “the Panel is denying the
overarching nature of Government policy….If the Panel believes that such
outcomes can be achieved through the abrogation of green wedge policy then it
will override such policy and approve the proposal. This is a totally unacceptable
arrogation of policy making power by the Panel” (van Moorst 2002:4).
Although the Panel Report was ultimately favourable, it was critical of a number
of the elements of the proposal, chiefly the layout and design of the residential
development. Amongst its recommendations the Panel directed that the
proponents should undertake a complete redesign of the urban and recreational
components to “produce an economically, environmentally and socially
sustainable development” (2000:175). It was confident that the development
could be an exciting and innovative example of an environmentally sustainable
development (2000:31). Arguments that environmental values of green belts can
be “traded off” through the adoption of more environmentally sensitive
subdivisions are becoming increasingly common. The Panel here is expressing
the view the adoption of features such as energy efficiency and wise water use
can compensate for the loss on non-urban land and implement environmental
sustainability principles on the rural fringe.
The Panel approved the amendment even with such reservations. Green wedge
policy not only attempts to preserve the environment and viable agriculture close
to metropolitan Melbourne, but also seeks to provide integrated and well-serviced
urban settlements which are not located in an ad hoc manner and resulting in
social isolation and car dependency. Many of the deficiencies in the proposed
residential development which the Panel commented upon cannot be remedied
by a different design but are an inevitable consequence of constructing a
residential development in the middle of a green wedge. The lack of public
transport and any connection with existing activity centres and community
facilities comes about because of the development’s isolated location. The Panel
does not show how these problems might be overcome by better urban design
and the provision of a courtesy bus.
The final plan approved in the gazetted amendment has been altered from the
original in response to the concerns expressed in the Panel Report. The design
and layout of the development has been altered to provide a better focus around
a town centre. The Eynesbury Station Incorporated Plan states that the
residential development will be based on ‘new urbanist’ principles of design
(Eynesbury Station Incorporated Plan 2002:22). The Plan has also considerably
increased the number of lot sizes from the original proposal to provide a potential
population large enough to sustain a primary school and other community
functions. Whilst these measures may address some social and communal
30
shortcomings of the original design, the increase in population and number of
residential lots will also increase the impact on the environment.
5.2.2 Other amendments and pressures
One other amendment adopted in recent years has rezoned green wedge land in
this area. Amendment C23 to the Brimbank Planning Scheme was divided into
two and adopted in part in January 2002. This proposal rezoned land on
Boundary Road Derrimut from rural to industrial in order to allow the
development of the Adrenaline motor sports complex on a site that cover a total
of 359 hectares. In addition, Brimbank Council also continues to experience
pressure from some market gardeners who show interest in subdivisions below
the minimum size currently allowable of 5 hectares.
5.3 Western Plains North and Sunbury Green Wedges
These wedges can be considered together as they are adjoining and closely
connected. The Western Plains North Green Wedge covers the areas in between
Sydenham and Greenvale. This encompasses parts of Melbourne Airport and the
surrounds of Sunbury, and is primarily in the City of Hume, with a small section of
the City of Brimbank. The Sunbury Green Wedge is entirely within the city of
Hume encompassing the land to the north east of Melbourne Airport to the Hume
corridor and the areas of Roxburgh Park and Craigieburn. A proposed
amendment to the Hume planning scheme, C15, to rezone 322 hectares of land
known as the Sanctuary on the outskirts of Sunbury has recently been
abandoned.
5.4 The Whittlesea Green Wedge
The Whittlesea Green Wedge is the land between the urban areas along the
Hume Highway and the Plenty growth corridor, that is, the land in between
Craigieburn and the growth areas of South Morang and Mernda. It is
predominantly in the City of Whittlesea, with a small section of the City of Hume.
Two rezoning proposals have been made for green wedge land within the City of
Whittlesea. The first of these, Amendment C12, Epping North, has recently been
approved and gazetted in September 2002. The second is a proposal related to
Epping North and is discussed within the Epping North Strategic Plan. Known at
this stage as Cooper Street Epping, or the Cooper Street Employment Precinct, it
has not yet been allocated an amendment number.
A third amendment, C30, has been on exhibition but has yet to receive Ministerial
approval. It seeks to incorporate the Mernda Strategy Plan into the planning
31
MITCHELL
HUME
FWY (S
EC 2)
MACEDON RANGES
WHITTLESEA
HUME
Epping North
HUME
H WY
NILLUMBIK
Cooper St Industrial Area
Green Wedge Incursions
Approved
Proposed
Main Roads
Craigieburn Bypass
Municipal Boundaries
Residential Forecast Land
Urban Growth Boundary
Land Use
Urban
Commonwealth
Rural and Parks
Public Use
Road
Special Use
Rivers
Hume / Whittlesea Green Wedge
Showing Epping North, Proposed Craigieburn Bypass
and Cooper Street Proposal
0
2.5
Kilometers
5
scheme and to alter the current boundaries of the Plenty Valley Growth corridor
by 10 hectares, allowing for an additional 80 residential lots. The City of
Whittlesea views this change in the growth corridor as a correction of boundary
anomalies, which does not constitute an infringement on the green wedge. The
boundary of the residential growth area is Yan Yean Road which forms the
border between the two municipalities at this point. On the Shire of Nillumbik’s
side of the road the land remains rural, and there are concerns about problems
which this interface might create.
Finally, the new Hume freeway extension, known as the Craigieburn by-pass,
which is about to be constructed from Craigieburn to join the western ring road at
Thomastown, traverses some environmentally sensitive sections of this green
wedge.
5.4.1 Epping North
Whittlesea planning scheme Amendment C12 allows the development of Epping
North, “the largest urban development yet proposed outside the traditionally
designated urban growth areas” (Whittlesea C12 Panel 2001:52). As such, it
constitutes the biggest incursion yet seen into Melbourne’s green wedges.
Prior to the commencement of Panel hearings, on 26 April 2001, the Minister for
Planning, John Thwaites, announced that an 8,000 lot residential development
would be constructed by the Urban and Regional Land Corporation (URLC) at
Epping North. This announcement was a major departure from all previous State
strategic planning for this area which concentrated on development in the Plenty
Valley growth corridor and specifically rejected development in Epping North. It
also varied planning process. Corridor planning in the late 1980s occurred
through an extensive public process which considered development options for
corridor development.
Epping North will become a large residential area in the centre of the green
wedge above the current urban area of Epping, in an area formerly known as the
Epping Bulge. Amendment C12 incorporates the Epping North Strategy Plan into
the Whittlesea Planning Scheme. The land included within the Strategy Plan area
is 13 square kilometres, approximately 1,337 hectares, bounded by O’Hearns
Road, Vearings Road, Craigieburn Road east, Leamans Road and an extension
of Bindts Road. Most of this land has been rezoned from Rural Zone to
Residential 1 Zone, however a minimum subdivision size of 16 hectares will be
required for two small areas of Environmental Rural Zone, having higher
environmental values. Four overlays cover the area: Vegetation Protection,
Development Contributions Plan, Development Plan and Heritage. Previously the
entire area was zoned Rural with a minimum subdivision lot size of 80 hectares,
with the exception of 32 hectares in the south-west corner of Epping and Harvest
Home Roads which was a Special Use Zone containing the recently constructed
32
Epping Soccer Stadium and the Epping RSL building. The initial population
projections for Epping North suggested there would be 5,500 people living there
by 2011, or 9,187 on 2,700 house lots by 2016, (City of Whittlesea 2000).
However following the announcement of the URLC green development the
forecasts were revised to 13,777 by 2011, (Whittlesea C12 Panel 2001:27). It is
intended to eventually provide housing for 40,000 people.
Unlike the other rezoning amendments previously discussed, the Epping North
proposal was council initiated. Whittlesea Council believes that there is
significant demand for residential development in the area that may not be met
by the existing growth areas. This analysis is based primarily on demographic
forecasting done by consultants for the council. The potential residents for
Epping North will be drawn primarily from people already within the municipality
just to the south, from suburbs such as Epping, Thomastown and Lalor, who wish
to move further outwards. The council indicated in its submission to the Panel
that the demographic profile, and in particular the income levels, of people
wishing to move out to Epping North was likely to be different from that of new
residents in the Plenty Valley growth corridor. Epping North is apparently
designed to cater primarily for a lower income group, with higher levels of nonEnglish speaking families, than the new suburbs being developed in the east of
the municipality.
The fact that people may decide to live in the area, however, does not in itself
constitute an argument that the land should be developed, as Lester Townsend,
submitting to the Panel on behalf of the Merri Creek Management Committee,
noted. Land settlement decisions need to be based on factors other than simply
demand and supply. On this point the Panel agreed. While accepting that there
may be an as yet unmet demand amongst residents to the south of Epping North
to move into the areas prepared for development, the Panel noted
Given the well established outward migration phenomenon, the Panel notes that
this argument could easily be used to justify outward expansion along any radial
arterial road or railway line at the urban-rural fringe in Melbourne. Clearly there
are many areas where this argument alone might be considered very weak
(2001:29).
The Panel Report did however support the amendment of the planning scheme
to allow Epping North to proceed. It did so partly on the basis that the rezoning
had been prepared for a significant length of time, was included in the Council’s
MSS, and that State Governments had never opposed the development of
Epping North. “In the Panel’s view, the long held, uncontroverted strategic
intentions of the City of Whittlesea for Epping North, supported by the detailed
investigations and planning it has undertaken, provide a sound reason for
endorsing Amendment C12, provided it is not contrary to other important
planning objectives” (2001:31). The Council submitted to the Panel inquiry that
“there have been numerous opportunities over the last 10 years, most
significantly in connection with the approval of the new format Whittlesea
33
Planning Scheme in 1999, to signify opposition to the future development of
Epping North on policy grounds”, but yet the Government had not done so
(2001:30). This implied tacit approval, and the Government announcement
concerning the URLC suggested more explicit approval.
The Panel therefore supported the proposal, partly on the basis that the
Government had not rejected it, and argued that this rezoning proposal should be
supported provided it was not contrary to other important planning objectives.
The maintenance of the green wedges, a policy in place for over thirty years, is
such a planning objective.
The Panel Report made it clear that the Panel believed the Epping North
amendment was consistent with both the SPPF and the Local Planning Policy
Framework (LPPF). Like the report on the Eynesbury Station proposal, written
the previous year, the Epping North Panel Report proposed that there was no
longer any clear Government commitment to green wedge policy. The Panel
Report cited as evidence for this the Technical Report 2 – Summary, the
summary of the report Green Wedges and Non-urban Issues written for the
Metropolitan Strategy, which contained the comment that State Government
policy towards appropriate uses for green wedges was no longer clear
(Department of Infrastructure 2001:3). Furthermore, the Panel stated that there is
no explicit mention of green wedges within the SPPF, although clause 14.0.2
does contain the explicit direction that “outward metropolitan growth must be
confined to designated growth areas”. The Panel’s analysis of Government policy
commitments to the Green Wedges, such as in the 1987 Shaping Melbourne’s
Future and the 1995 Living Suburbs, omits reference to statements supporting
the retention of green wedges and the need to locate outer urban developing in
growth corridors.
The Panel “was reasonably confident’ that a recommendation by it to support
Amendment C12 “is not likely to be inconsistent with the intended direction of the
Metropolitan Strategy” (2001:58). In recommending approval of a major urban
incursion into the green wedge, the Panel pre-empted the policy development
process of the Metropolitan Strategy, so making it certain that the Metropolitan
Strategy would identify the Epping North area for urban purposes. The Panel
recognises that this approach, exemplified in the council’s objectives “might be
seen to be a self-fulfilling prophecy”. However, the Panel argued that there was a
decline in State Government direction about spatial planing during the 1990s,
and that the City of Whittlesea filled a “policy vacuum”. The Panel should
therefore take notice of Council’s intentions so long as these did not conflict with
the State Planning Policy Framework.
There is no longer a metropolitan-wide planning authority which ‘plans’ the
metropolitan area in terms of directing what zones shall be applied to land and
where. The State Government has confined its role to establishing a set of
planning policy objectives. It has been left largely up to Councils as the planning
authorities to implement those objectives. Councils have also been encouraged
34
to set their own planning objectives and to be responsible for their
implementation, so long as they are consistent with or do not contravene State
Planning Policy. The Panel considers it is unlikely that the proposed Metropolitan
Strategy will dramatically alter this trend (2001:31).
The Panel’s argument implies that the future shape and form of metropolitan
development can legitimately be determined by local councils, and by
incremental individual and uncoordinated decisions. It also uses a standardised
permissive statutory framework with weak policy directions to determine its
conclusions.
The Panel argued that the Epping North area did not contain important
environmental values compared with other areas, and accepted that it did not
represent “a valued part of a green wedge which should be protected”, implying
that green wedges only need to be preserved as non-urban if they exhibit
particularly valuable environmental characteristics, (2001:58). However, the
reasons behind the preservation of green wedges go beyond the protection of
environmental attributes. As in the case in the Eynesbury Report, the Panel
narrowed the purpose and value of green wedges and then assessed the
proposal against those narrow purposes, rather than accepting that long
established policy itself must be complied with. In this case the purpose of green
wedges was assumed by the Panel to be the protection of sensitive or valuable
environments, which Epping North was not considered to contain.
It is generally accepted that it lacks the important environmental attributes of the
Craigieburn Grasslands and the Red Gum Woodlands west of the proposed
Craigieburn bypass alignment…. Similarly it lacks the landscape significance of
the Darebin Creek and Quarry Hills to the east of the Harvest Home LSP…
Those environmental assets of remaining value within the Epping North Strategic
Plan area will be protected and enhanced as development occurs and will
contribute to the establishment of the local character of Epping North (2001:589).
Following this logic, the Panel concluded that the establishment of the large
residential development of Epping North, entirely on green wedge land, almost all
of which was zoned rural, was not “contrary to the principles that support the
protection of green wedge and other non-urban areas in Melbourne”. In any
case, it concluded, a substantial green wedge will still remain between the Merri
and Plenty Valley growth corridors, so the loss of this portion will not be critical
(2001:59).
The Epping North development is also being promoted as a “sustainable suburb”.
It appears likely that development will proceed before any provision of heavy or
light rail public transport. Promised transport connections have not been
delivered to the adjacent Plenty Valley growth area, which was established in
preference to development at Epping North as part of the late 1980s strategic
corridor planning for Melbourne.
35
Epping North recently received Ministerial approval and was gazetted on 13th
September 2002.
5.4.2 Cooper Street, Epping
This related proposal is to rezone 407 hectares to the south of the Epping North
area, currently in Rural and Extractive Industry Zones, to Industrial and
Residential. The proposal is to develop a concentration of industrial uses to
provide employment for up to 23,000 people over the next 15 – 20 years. The
intention is that 345 hectares be rezoned for employment purposes and the
remaining 62 hectares to be zoned Residential to provide approximately 750
housing lots. The development of this area as an employment centre has been
proposed for some time. The Cooper Street Precinct Strategy was completed in
1996. The development will necessitate a planning scheme amendment which
has not yet been formulated.
The Epping North Panel Report noted that Whittlesea Council was unable to
provide information on current employment levels in the area but “it is likely to be
only in the low hundreds” (2001:29). However, despite the fact that the Cooper
Street Employment Precinct does not yet exist, and will depend on a successful
amendment process, its proposed location was taken by the C12 Panel as an
argument in favour of the Epping North development proceeding to its north
(2001:29). The recent approval of Epping North may in turn be used as an
argument for Cooper Street to be developed.
5.4.3 Hume Freeway extension
The proposed Hume Freeway extension will extend 17 kilometres from the
Western Ring Road in Thomastown to join the existing Hume Highway just north
of Craigieburn. The freeway extension, which will be funded by the Federal
Government, will traverse areas close to important remnant native grasslands
adjoining the Merri Creek. A public campaign to stop the freeway has been
mounted led by the Friends of Merri Creek.
There are a number of grounds on which this freeway extension is being
opposed. The Friends of Merri Creek believe that the freeway extension will
irreparably damage the endangered Wildflower Grasslands near Craigieburn
which have been listed on the Register of the National Estate by the Australian
Heritage Commission. Less that one percent of Victoria’s original grasslands
remain intact. Friends of Merri Creek also believe that the freeway will threaten
endangered flora and fauna including the Growling Grass Frog, the Matted Flax
Lily and the Western Golden Tip. They have also expressed concern that the
Merri Creek itself will be polluted by contaminated run-off from the freeway at a
time when the water quality in the creek has begun to improve, confirmed by
36
NILLUMBIK
YARRA RANGES
MANNINGHAM
MAROONDAH
R
MA
Green Wedge Incursions
Approved
Proposed
Main Roads
Rivers
Municipal Boundaries
Residential Forecast Land
Urban Growth Boundary
ND
OO
AH
Y
HW
Land Use
Urban
Commonwealth
Rural and Parks
Public Use
Road
Special Use
Manningham Green Wedge
0
1
Kilometers
2
recent sightings of platypus in Brunswick and Northcote (Friends of Merri Creek
2002).
Although there is an on-going campaign that includes legal moves to oppose the
funding arrangements, it appears that construction of the freeway will proceed.
The Government argues that “Protection of the native grasslands, Merri Creek
and other ecosystems in the vicinity of the potential freeway routes has been a
key driver in the extended assessment process to find a suitable route for the
Bypass” (Victorian Minister for Planning 2002:1). The Minister believes that the
chosen route is environmentally acceptable because it does not cross the
Craigieburn, Cooper Street or Craigieburn Road East Grasslands, and does not
remove any significant grasslands in the area. On the contrary, the Government
believes that the proposed freeway will provide a buffer for the grasslands, and
will minimise the impact on the creek because it crosses it only once and will
employ a Water Sensitive Design Strategy to protect water quality. The chosen
route will also “provide the best opportunity for developing a substantial open
space area between the freeway and the Criagieburn Grasslands as part of a
regional park, potentially offsetting the impact … on the Whittlesea Gardens and
Lalor Golf Course” (Victorian Minister for Planning 2002:7).
5.5 Nillumbik, Manningham and Yarra Valley and Dandenong
Ranges Green Wedges
These green wedges were regarded as a single wedge in the original report
written during the development of the metropolitan strategy, Planning Issues in
Melbourne's Green Wedge Areas (Kellock 2000). In the recently released
metropolitan strategic plan they have become three separate areas. However the
discussion that follows encompasses all three areas. These wedges lie to the
east of the Plenty growth corridor and stretch as far as the Yarra Valley and the
Dandenongs. They have high landscape and environmental values and
encompass small parts of the City of Whittlesea, much of the Shire of Nillumbik,
the northeast section of the City of Manningham and the northern part of the
Shire of Yarra Ranges. There have been no significant encroachments on this
green wedge in recent years. Nillumbik council is currently reviewing all existing
council policies, and is specifically reviewing the use of Rural and Environmental
Rural Zones within the municipality.
5.5.1 Manningham subdivision proposals
The City of Manningham has recently reviewed its approach to its non-urban
areas in response to ongoing pressure from small landholders to be allowed to
subdivide lots below the permitted size within the Environmental Rural Zone.
Manningham contains land which has high environmental value, and is also
financially valuable. There is strong incentive for rural landowners to seek to
37
subdivide and sell lots for housing. The current landholdings are already
relatively small. Manningham’s green wedge was profiled in the 1995 Council
submission to the Panel into Amendment L76 of the previous planning scheme
which sought to place all the green wedge areas into one non-urban zone. At that
time Council indicated that Manningham’s green wedge areas contained 408
allotments of which about 80% (331) were under 4 hectares and just under half
(198) were less than 2 hectares in size. Very little of the area is used for
traditional agriculture, however there is some fruit and grape growing. With the
exception of one large orchard, much of the agricultural activity could be
described as hobby farming. Yet it remains non-urban in character, largely
unsewered and with steep slopes and undulations, and areas of high landscape
value, remnant indigenous vegetation and pastoral land.
The current Environmental Rural Zone allows for a minimum subdivision size of 8
hectares. As few lots are larger than 16 hectares this minimum generally
prevents further subdivision or excisions of allotments. Pressure to alter this
specification has been ongoing, particularly from the Park Orchards Progress
Association (POPA), representing landholders in an area of some 115 hectares
in Park Orchards and Donvale. A number of attempts to be allowed to subdivide
this land have been made. A submission was presented in 1995 to the Panel
hearing Amendment L76 to allow smaller subdivisions in the Park Orchards area.
A further request to rezone the area was put forward by representatives of POPA
as part of the review of the exhibited Manningham Planning Scheme in
September 1997. In June 2000 planning consultants, Hansen Partnership Pty
Ltd, submitted a rezoning proposal to Manningham on POPA’s behalf. The same
proposal prepared by Hansen Partnership was advanced again in March 2001 as
another request for amendment to remove the 8 hectare minimum subdivision
provision on the land bounded by Reynolds, Stinton, Rainbow Valley and North
Valley Roads and Pambara Court in Park Orchards and Donvale, and to apply a
Development Plan Overlay to the area. At least one other subdivision proposal
was recently made to Council.
The key argument presented in support of this most recent proposal was that
eight hectares was too small a size for viable farming and yet too large for
“people of urban origin, with interest in rural living, (to be) able to manage
effectively due to lack of knowledge, time and resources” (Hansen Partnership
Pty Ltd 2001:8). Permitting further subdivision would allow the land size to match
the management capabilities of the owners of each allotment. The proponents
also argued that as almost all existing lots were in reality smaller than 8 hectares,
the minimum did not reflect current use patterns and was therefore meaningless.
They also argued that smaller lot sizes would enable reticulated sewerage to be
introduced to the area that would remove one of the current environmental
hazards, the potential for contamination of the Mullum Mullum Creek by seepage
from poorly maintained septic systems. The proposal included a subdivision
concept plan with a range of smaller lot sizes varying from 0.35 hectares to 3.4.
38
Currently the variation in the area ranges from 0.4 to 12 (City of Manningham
2001).
The proponents of this amendment proposal acknowledged that this area of
Manningham was part of one of Melbourne’s green wedges. However they claim
that “Presently there is no general agreement at the metropolitan level of what is
inappropriate development in non-urban areas”, citing (as did the Epping North
Panel Report) Technical Report 2 for the Metropolitan Strategy, Green Wedges
and Non-urban Issues, which identified a lack of State Government leadership on
the issue (Department of Infrastructure 2001). The identification of a need for
greater Government intervention, to both clarify and strengthen green wedge
policy, is thus being used to support an argument for the weakening and
abandonment of that policy.
The request to amend the planning scheme was not supported by Manningham
Council, just as the previous requests from POPA to the L76 Panel and to the
Council, have not been supported. The main reasons given for rejecting the
amendment request were that:
•
•
•
•
•
•
it was not supported by a number of provisions in the SPPF and the LPPF,
including the MSS, which indicates that development in the non-urban
areas must be very limited;
Best Value in planning is interpreted to mean support for sustainable
development in the interests of future generations and “the best planning
outcome for the non-urban area (as distinct from personal outcome) lies in
the retention of the green wedge policies and controls”;
allowing further subdivision will set an undesirable precedent, giving rise
to expectations of further subdivisions, “this erodes what the green wedge
is and what it will become”;
the amendment would not enjoy majority community support as a previous
rezoning request was exhibited and “community backlash to the proposal
was expected and received”;
the area is unsuitable for further intensive development due to its
topography, soil and other physical characteristics including the lack of
reticulated sewerage and the potential environmental impact of its
introduction;
the request does not differ from previous requests which were rejected
and circumstances have not changed, (City of Manningham 2001).
However despite rejecting the latest attempt to rezone, Council decided to review
the issue and commissioned a report into Manningham’s Environmental Rural
Zones.
39
5.5.2 Manningham Non-Urban Areas Review
Planning consultants Research Planning Design Group (together with SGS
Economics and Planning and Rendell McGuckian Agricultural Consultants) have
recently completed their report, which advanced a proactive program of
environmental management going beyond simply protection from development.
The Report suggested that if the long-standing goal of environmental
enhancement for this area is to be achieved there has to be significant changes
to both policy and practice, and that continuing reliance on private landowners
and some restrictive provisions in the planning scheme would not be sufficient.
The Report found that the environmental values of Manningham’s non-urban
area are under threat from poorly planned incremental development, a lack of
commitment and shared goals amongst landowners, and insufficient resources
being devoted to environmental management by both individual landowners and
the Council. A key conclusion of the study was that “there is no realistic or proven
basis to substantiate that further subdivision will produce better land
management” (RPD Group 2002:i). Furthermore the Report makes it clear that
the non-urban area of Manningham is part of a wider north-east green wedge,
and that development decisions in Manningham have implications across the
metropolitan area. A departure from the long-standing approach of protection for
the green wedges “is not, as many people think – particularly those wishing to
subdivide their land – something which Council can do on a unilateral basis.
Such a change of policy has wider implications, (and) needs to be justified at the
local and metropolitan level” (2002:iii).
The Report recommended that the non-urban area should be regarded as a
special place. It argued that this “would recognize that, with the appropriate
approach, the area could boast a unique, exceptionally well managed
environment which is actually achieving demonstrable, measurable
improvements in its environmental qualities” (2002:i). Part of the recognition of
this special place is to understand that it was not an environmental rural area
(although that is its zone) but an environmental living area. The Report calls for
the development of a comprehensive plan that would include the public purchase
of some strategically placed parcels of land in order to provide a network of
wildlife corridors, trails and parks. All development within this area should have to
demonstrate a positive improvement in the environment, not just lack of harm,
and those wishing to develop land would have to make substantial financial
contributions to a fund to purchase additional land and extend the public
ownership. “The overall vision for Manningham’s non-urban area is the best
presented and managed metropolitan area environmental green wedge”
(2002:ii).
The report states that in order to achieve this vision, Council needs to implement
four measures:
40
1. Significantly change the way it administers development approval in the
non-urban area to ensure that only development which produces a net
gain in the environment is permitted, and enforce its planning scheme
and permit conditions.
2. Significantly increase the level of resources it devotes to its own
environmental management responsibilities in the non-urban area. This
needs to be matched by a new high level partnership with the State
Government, through its relevant government agencies and land
managers, to persuade them to increase their land and environmental
management resources, in a sense demonstrating the metropolitan-wide
benefits of the approach.
3. Significantly increase the level of resources Council devotes to
environmental management programs including cooperative funded
programs with private landowners. This should be based on the concept
of a significant increase in the level of rates in the non-urban area with a
scheme to return that increase to residents who participate in these
programs. Such a program will significantly enhance the value of
properties in the non-urban area – persons who participate in such
programs should be recognised and actually rewarded over and above
those who do not.
4. Seriously investigate how the concept of the non-urban area can be
planned and managed as an environmental living area. Planning needs to
demonstrate how land can be managed and developed so as to
contribute to the environmental management goals for the area (2002:ii).
Manningham Council has accepted the general direction of the report and is
currently considering how to formally implement its recommendations.
5.6 The Southern Ranges Green Wedge
The Southern Ranges Green Wedge includes the area between Rowville and
Lysterfield in the foothills of the Dandenong ranges, encompassing parts of Knox,
Yarra Ranges and Cardinia. It extends over the south-eastern sections of the
City of Knox that includes sensitive environmental areas such as Churchill
National Park and Lysterfield Park. There have been a number of requests for
developments to be allowed around the edges of these attractive and
environmentally sensitive areas. There have been no major rezonings of green
wedge land in this area, but there is considerable pressure here, as in
Manningham, from landowners wishing to subdivide below the allowable
minimum size.
41
5.6.1 Knox Amendments C2 and C3
One of the few requests the City of Knox has supported is Amendment C2, a
rezoning from Rural Living and Public Park and Recreation Zone to Residential 1
and Urban Floodway, along and south of the Monbulk Creek, east of Waterford
Valley Golf development and west of Blackwood Road in Ferntree Gully. A
further amendment, C3, seeks to rezone an adjoining parcel of land immediately
to the north of the creek and the C2 land, also to Residential 1 and Urban
Floodway. This amendment was approved by the City of Knox and submitted to
the DOI on 1st October 2002.
These two parcels of land are on either side of the Monbulk Creek in an area
shown on the map within the Knox MSS as being “rural areas inside the principal
urban boundary”, and they have now been placed inside the proposed UGB. As
such they are not within the green wedge, but they are rural areas that form part
of the border with it. The land subject to Amendment C2 is 16.8 hectares of land
known as the Nev Pask land on the south of the Monbulk Creek. The land that is
the subject of proposed Amendment C3 is slightly larger at 23.14 hectares to the
north of the creek and known as the Jungwirth land. Knox Council approved
Amendment C2 on the basis that Council believed the proposed residential
development makes good use of its sensitive location in the creek valley, as it will
face the creek and incorporate it into the urban design. Neither amendment has
required a panel hearing.
5.6.2 Other pressures in Knox and Yarra Ranges
The more northerly reaches of Knox, although not within a green wedge, border
the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges and its national park. There has been
ongoing pressure for Council to allow subdivision of some large land holdings
owned by religious and charitable organizations who would like to be able to
excise land for residential lots.
Land within the Shire of Yarra Ranges is protected by the Upper Yarra Valley
and Dandenong Ranges Regional Strategy Plan, originally approved in 1982
when there was a separate regional planning authority covering four
municipalities in the areas. The Upper Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges
Regional Strategy Plan 1996, which is relatively prescriptive, was given status
within the new Yarra Ranges planning scheme (Clause 53) following
amalgamation and the introduction of the new format planning schemes. Thus
Yarra Ranges has a more prescriptive planning scheme with tighter development
controls than any other municipality in the state.
This does not prevent similar pressures on rural land occurring here as in other
parts of Melbourne. Council planners consider that there is a large latent demand
42
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Green Wedge Incursions
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Showing Proposed Scoresby Freeway
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for smaller subdivisions and excisions, however unlike areas such as
Manningham there is little community expectation that this will be allowed. The
pressure for increased use of rural areas of Yarra Ranges is for residential
rezoning and tourist related developments, such as accommodation, restaurants
and convention centres.
Substantial subdivision has occurred in the Upper Yarra Valley and Dandenong
Ranges, contrary to State Government policy and the Regional Strategy Plan.
Between 1992-1999, the former Minister for Planning, Robert Maclellan,
approved 1369 new lots in this area, including 888 from 61 amendments to the
Regional Strategy Plan, many without public exhibition (Buxton and Staindl
1999).
5.7 The Westernport and South East Green Wedges
The Westernport Green Wedge lies between Narre Warren South and
Cranbourne in the Cities of Cardinia and Casey, and includes the land between
the Princes and South Gippsland Highways, and Westernport Bay. The South
East Green Wedge is a long and narrow area in between the south-eastern
growth corridor and the bayside suburbs. Much of the strategic planning with
regard to these areas, (including the SENUS report – see below), has treated the
two areas together as the South-east Green Wedge, and they will be discussed
together in this report.
The northern tip of the wedge is in the City of Kingston, and this extends into the
Cities of Greater Dandenong, Frankston and Casey. These four municipalities
have responsibility for parts of the wedge and have cooperated to an extent in
policy formation for the wedge. Together with the DOI they jointly commissioned
a study into the wedge, known as the South East Non-Urban Study or SENUS
Report, in order to assist with the development of policies for their management,
(Spiller Gibbins Swan Pty Ltd and TBA Planners Pty Ltd 1997). This then led to
the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by the four councils and the DOI
in May 1998 intended to assist the coordinated planning of the South-east Green
Wedge, which has experienced the greatest number of incursions, of any in the
metropolitan area.
5.7.1 The SENUS Report and the Memorandum of Understanding
The purpose of the SENUS Report was to examine existing development trends
and non-urban uses in the South Eastern Green Wedge and to develop polices
to guide the use and development of this land. The area of study was defined as
45,000 hectares which could be broken down into two distinct areas; the original
green wedge beginning in Dingley in the north-west and extending down to the
area between Dandenong and Frankston, and the south eastern section
43
surrounding Cranbourne, which in Melbourne 2030 documentation is now known
as the Westernport Green Wedge. The report commented that while the area
could be described as non-urban in many cases it was not rural. The northern
section in particular accommodated a multiplicity of uses with a high
concentration of golf courses and market gardens and areas rendered
unattractive through sand mining, while the central area was dominated by the
Eastern Treatment Plant and agriculture, which was still the predominant use in
the south eastern section.
The SENUS consultants initially released an overview and options report for
public exhibition in November 1996 before their final report some three months
later. The final report noted that reasons advanced in submissions by those
advocating a change in policy towards the green wedge included:
•
•
•
•
availability of urban infrastructure in some areas;
concern about the viability of agriculture;
conflicts, over incompatible uses and interface problems;
the precedent of the recent Sandhurst rezoning (see section 5.7.11).
Arguments advanced in support of existing green wedge policy included:
• protection of agriculture and horticultural production;
• extractive industry potential;
• conservation of areas of environmental significance;
• increased recreation demands for large scale activities;
• urban related activities on large scale sites, (1997:32).
In addition to these points of debate, the report also addressed the issue of rural
landholders regarding ownership of the land to be their equivalent of
superannuation. This is an argument sometimes expressed in support of
requests for excisions or other subdivisions of land in many of the green wedge
areas enabling landholders to sell land to fund their retirement. The report
commented that it was not appropriate for the planning process to be used to
provide an increased financial return to the owner of rural land for
superannuation or any other purposes, (Spiller Gibbins Swan Pty Ltd and TBA
Planners Pty Ltd 1997:35).
The principal finding of the SENUS report was that “the concept of a green
wedge is supported and must be maintained,” (1997:46).
The corridor/green wedge strategic concepts have served Melbourne well. They
have defined the urban growth area, provided private and public investment
certainty, assisted economic development and contributed to the overall
liveability of the metropolitan area.
The south east green wedge with its non-urban zoning has helped protect
environmental features, provided for a range of urban related uses and allowed
44
the development of significant economic resources, particularly agriculture and
extractive industry, (1997:49).
The study also found that in some areas there was a limited potential for
conversion to residential, industrial or commercial uses. However this could only
be considered providing a detailed structure plan was prepared for the whole of
the area, a hard boundary for the green wedge defined, and contributions were
made by the development of the rezoned area to the achievement of the green
wedge concept. “Major urban conversion is not supported. Any such
consideration must be made in the context of a metropolitan wide review of
growth areas”, (1997:46).
Following the release of the SENUS Report, the South East Non-Urban Area
Memorandum of Understanding was signed in October 1998 in order to continue
the cooperation and understanding between the parties developed in the course
of the study. The four councils agreed to consider the adoption of a common
policy statement (known as the South East Non-Urban Area Policy Statement) on
the non-urban area and incorporate it into their planning policy frameworks. They
agreed to apply the principles of this policy statement to the assessment of all
land use and development proposals in their areas and to prepare structure
plans for each section of the non-urban area. They also agreed that prior to
approving any rezoning in the non-urban area a strategic review would be
conducted and a land use framework plan would be formulated with supporting
development principles for the sector.
The Memorandum of Understanding included the objective “to manage the edge
of urban areas in a manner which ensures that the non-urban area is both stable
and enduring”. The physical outcomes for the non-urban area were identified as:
•
•
•
•
•
a high quality rural landscape
flora and fauna habitats and networks
public open spaces and open space linkages
defined urban boundaries
within any rural setting create an urban form that is of a high design standard
and low visual impact
All proposals must demonstrate that they are consistent with this vision, (Cities of
Casey, Frankston, Greater Dandenong and Kingston, 1998).
Of the four councils involved in the Memorandum of Understanding only two,
Kingston and Frankston, continue to include a South East Non-urban Area Policy
within their planning schemes. Kingston’s Clause 22.04 and Frankston’s Clause
22.15 are very similar, however only Kingston’s incorporates the above list of
goals for the non-urban area as policy. Dandenong has the Keysborough Nonurban Policy (Clause 22.02) which lists as one of its objectives “To recognise and
implement the Memorandum of Understanding signed with adjacent
municipalities containing the South East Non-Urban Area” (22.02-2). Casey does
45
not have a separately listed policy but it does mention the South East Non-Urban
Area Study and the Memorandum of Understanding as a relevant policy context
within Clause 21.02-1 of its MSS.
Having detailed this policy context for the area, incursions into the green wedge
in each local government areas will now be examined, beginning with those
within the City of Kingston.
5.7.2 Kingston L33 – Waterways Estate/ Kingston Lodge
Kingston Amendment L33 under the previous planning scheme affected 157
hectares of land west of Springvale Road between Governor Road and
Mordialloc Creek in Braeside. It provides a clear example of a trade-off between
a residential incursion into part of the green wedge in return for promised
environmental improvements. The development includes a residential
development of 700 housing lots on 65 hectares (41% of the total site) and a
“major wetlands system”, on a site that was previously zoned General Farming,
Stream and Floodway, Extractive Industry and Garden Industrial. The residential
component was designed around an environmental living concept to be
integrated with its surroundings “in physical, environmental, landscape and
aesthetic terms”, (City of Kingston 1998:3). It provided housing for between 1,400
and 1,800 people.
The wetlands component aimed to provide for the
sustainable maintenance and improvements of:
• water quality in Mordialloc Creek and the surrounding area, leading to
improvement of water quality in Port Phillip Bay;
• flood-plain storage capacity;
• natural resource qualities (flora and fauna-habitats);
• passive recreation facilities;
• non-urban and ‘greenspace’ landscape quality”, (City of Kingston 1998:2).
The City of Kingston supported the proposal and Amendment L33 was prepared
and placed on exhibition in March 1998. The matter was referred to a Panel for
hearing in July and August 1998. It received 39 submissions, 37 of which were
objecting to the Amendment.
The proponents of the Kingston Lodge, or Waterways proposal, argued that it
should be supported on the basis of its overriding community benefit deriving
from flood mitigation, drainage and the wetland feature (Kingston L33 Panel
1998:46). However the Panel did not consider that the benefits of public open
space, water quality and habitat, which would be experienced at a local and
regional level would outweigh the fact that the proposal contravened State policy
regarding non-urban areas. The Panel’s primary concern was that such
contravention would be a matter not only of local and regional but also
46
metropolitan significance. The Panel Report quoted both Clause 14-9 of the
State Section of the previous planning scheme, and section 14.02-2 of the VPPs,
both of which state that outward metropolitan growth must be confined to
designated growth areas in accordance with Ministerial directives under the
Planning and Environment Act 1987. The Panel saw no reason why State policy
should be ignored for this proposal which “does not stand out as setting a new
standard or benchmark in residential development” (1998:50). Approval of
Amendment L33 would bring about a major excision of non-urban land contrary
to State policy. “It is considered that this would undermine the very clear direction
set in that policy” (1998:50).
Around the same time that Amendment L33 was placed on exhibition, the Cities
of Kingston and Greater Dandenong released a draft report by planning
consultants Gutteridge Haskins and Davey (referred to as the GHD Report) for
public comment. This report was undertaken as a first stage in the preparation of
a Local Structure Plan. The GHD report emphasised the importance of
maintaining a clear boundary to the non-urban area. “Allowing any urban
conversions will in effect re-define the wedge boundary. Urban conversions are
excisions from the wedge and will become urban areas. These excisions …
should only be approved where the boundary of the wedge is currently illogical or
inappropriate and where the conversion will result in the strengthening of the
wedge boundary” (Gutteridge Haskins and Davey Pty Ltd 1998). The western
boundary to the green wedge in Keysborough contained in both the GHD and
SENUS reports was the Mornington Peninsula Freeway reserve.
In June 1998 the City of Kingston prepared and then adopted the
Keysborough/Wetlands Policy Area Framework Plan which it claimed built on the
work of the GHD report, but put forward different boundaries to the green wedge.
The change relevant to Amendment L33 was a shift in the boundary east from
the freeway reserve to Springvale Road, thus placing the land affected by L33
outside the green wedge.
The Panel Report discusses this change in boundary in some detail noting that
all previous reports and studies have identified the boundary as the freeway
reservation, and that this position has been supported by the State Government,
as evidenced in a letter from the DOI to the City of Kingston in April 1998. The
Panel expressed concern that a change in the boundaries had occurred in an ad
hoc manner likely to result in the urban creep that many submitters to the Panel
had been concerned about.
The identification of a new boundary has occurred outside of a metropolitan
review process that is desired under existing policies. Moreover, it is of some
concern to the Panel that the Council has acknowledged that there is more work
to be done on defining the boundary across the Policy Area and that there is
some doubt that the boundary can be sustained. This is not consistent with the
intent to create a defined edge between urban and non-urban areas (1998:25).
47
The Panel recommended that L33 not be adopted and that a review of the
boundaries of the urban and non-urban areas be undertaken so that any change
in those boundaries should be definable and sustainable. The Panel released its
findings in October 1998. The DOI however, did not concur with the panel report
that a metropolitan wide resolution on the non-urban boundary issue was needed
in order to review the boundaries of the south eastern non-urban area. The
amendment was approved in February 1999 thus creating a precedent which
would be used by proponents of subsequent developments.
5.7.3 Kingston C22 – proposed retirement village (Pitrones reception
centre development)
Kingston Amendment C22 has been recently exhibited, proposing to rezone 2.4
hectares of land at 642-660 Springvale Road and 369-385 Spring Road Dingley
Village from Public Use Zone 3 (Health and Community) to Residential 1. The
rezoning is in part required because the current zoning is inappropriate for
privately owned land, presently the site of a reception centre, but it is also
required to enable the development of a retirement village on the land fronting
Springvale Road. The proposal is to construct a total of 110 units comprising 48
two bedroom independent living units and 62 serviced apartments. The
amendment also seeks to apply a Development Plan Overlay to the land on
Spring Road.
The argument in favour of the development contained in the Explanatory Report
suggests that there is an identified demand for accommodation for elderly
persons in the area and that the development will have a positive effect on the
economy. It is also claimed that it will have a positive effect on the environment
as the plans incorporate a range of environmental management and sustainable
design principles including “water sensitive storm water drainage design, energy
efficient buildings, provision of habitat links to the adjacent Rowan Woodland
Flora and Fauna Reserve and incorporation of complementary native vegetation”
(City of Kingston 2002:2).
The Explanatory Report acknowledges that the land is currently included in the
South East Non-urban Area, but suggests that due to the proximity of residential
and business/industrial areas and the fact that other than a nearby honey
processing facility there are no other rural or agricultural land uses within close
proximity, the land should not continue to be part of the non-urban area. The
proponent is therefore arguing that the rezoning of this land “is unlikely to have
any adverse impact on the integrity of Kingston’s non-urban areas or on
Kingston’s non-urban policy framework” (City of Kingston 2002:2).
This argument restates those commonly expressed by proponents of other
rezoning applications for the green wedge. The environment will be improved by
allowing an urban related or residential development to occur on land in the
48
green wedge because of a range of offsetting mitigating environmental
measures. The green wedge will not be affected because the land in question
does not have high environmental value or was not used for productive
agriculture. The loss of one area will not lead to pressure to develop other parts
of the green wedge or create a precedent, and finally, the proposal should be
treated on its merits alone without consideration of broader strategic goals or
issues.
5.7.4 Other pressures in Kingston
Some urban related development of the non-urban area has not required
rezonings and therefore a planning scheme amendment, but only a planning
permit, as there are very few uses which are prohibited within a rural zone. One
of these developments in the City of Kingston was the development of a boat
sales repair centre known as JW Marineworld at 878 Springvale Road,
Keysborough. This large centre on land adjoining Braeside Park was refused a
permit by Council in November 1999. However this decision was overturned at
the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) in March 2000, underlying
the lack of clarity over how to treat non-urban metropolitan areas. Marineworld
sits within a strip of other low density institutional uses such as churches, private
schools and garden centres which alter the character of the area, but have
traditionally been allowed within green wedges. Boat sales and repairs however,
are a more obviously commercial and industrial use than others previously
allowed.
Kingston Council has been under consistent pressure to allow rezonings
particularly for land in the Heatherton area to the north of Moorabbin Airport,
where there are many small holdings, some market gardens and some now
unused agricultural land. Parts of this area have previously been used for sand
mining, and some extraction still continues. Some sites have been filled and
would now be unsuitable for residential development. Productive or otherwise
suitable uses for the land eventually need to be found, and perhaps a program of
agricultural assistance or guidance to the landholders in developing new forms of
agriculture or other appropriate uses. The City of Kingston has recently (March
2002) released another strategic review into this section of its non-urban areas,
commissioned again from consultants Gutteridge Haskins and Davey Pty Ltd.
This report is seen as a first step in the preparation of a structure plan for the
Heatherton/Clayton South/Dingley non-urban area. The next step will be the
preparation of a framework plan to guide future use of the area.
Amongst the key findings of this strategic review are that intensive agricultural
industries such as vegetable and flower growing are in decline due to high land
values, fragmentation and the small scale of holding sizes, and lack of certainty.
Sand mining will largely cease within the next five years, however an extensive
period of land filling will continue for some time. There are significant limitations
49
to the potential for residential development due to the proximity of the airport,
agricultural and sand mining and land filling activities. Survey responses have not
shown a desire by many landowners to subdivide and develop low density
residential. Included in the long list of key land use issues and challenges are:
o
o
o
Preventing further degeneration of the rural landscape due to:
o uncertainty over the future of the area;
o cessation of some operations and landowners no longer willing to
maintain and/ or invest in their properties; and
o lack of public commitment/investment in upgrading the area.
Providing certainty to the agricultural industry with respect to its future in the
Study Area
The proximity of residential and industrial development to the Study Area
creating pressure (for) conversion of land on the fringe for urban purposes.
With regard to the issue of growing uncertainty and speculation the report notes
that
Recent encroachments of residential and industrial activities around the Study
Area has served to heighten this uncertainty, fuelling expectations that at some
point in time the non-urban area will make way for urban development. This
climate of uncertainty has a real impact on both the function and character of the
Study Area, making it difficult to attract new investment and further degrading the
rural landscape, (Gutteridge Haskins and Davey Pty Ltd 2002:xii)
This accurately sums up the effect of uncertainty on development expectations
not just in this section of the south-eastern green wedge but in many areas
across Melbourne’s green wedges. Uncertainty, the possibility of rezoning and
even residential subdivision in the future, does not create the climate of stability
required for investment in long-term environmental management.
5.7.5 Greater Dandenong C2 and C5 - Keysborough South rezoning
and changes to the Keysborough Non-urban Policy Framework
The City of Greater Dandenong has experienced pressure for rezoning in the
Keysborough area adjoining the City of Kingston. A major proposal for rezoning
part of this land was put forward in Amendment C2, which was considered in
conjunction with Amendment C5, and exhibited in September 1999.
C2 was a proposal to rezone 227 hectares of land between Springvale,
Cheltenham, Hutton and Chapel Roads in Keysborough from Rural to Residential
1. Of that land 115 hectares was to be developed for residential purposes, to
create between 900 and 1,100 residential lots. The land affected by the rezoning
was owned by eleven different landowners, only six of whom intended to
redevelop their holdings, and was previously used for small scale market
gardening, poultry farming and horse riding and training activities. The remaining
five landowners (a private school, a church, the golf course and two sporting
50
clubs) were not opposed to the proposal but were not intending to alter their
current use of the land.
Amendment C5 was proposed by the City of Greater Dandenong in order to vary
the MSS and Local Policy sections of the planning scheme to allow for changes
to the Keysborough Non-urban Policy Framework. C5 affected the land in the
southern part of Keysborough, bounded by the Dingley Freeway reservation,
Cheltenham and Springvale Roads, Dandenong Creek and the Patterson River
and the Mornington Peninsula Freeway.
The Panel ultimately recommended that Amendments C2 and C5 be adopted,
subject to a number of modifications. These included that the land owned by
Haileybury College, the Christian Lighthouse Centre and the Keysborough Golf
Club be retained in the Rural Zone, that Council delineate the existing urban
boundary and remove all references to a potential change to this boundary, and
that “Council clarify that conversion of land for urban uses is seen as
complementary and subservient to the green wedge vision and concepts”
(Dandenong C2 & C5 Panel 2000:97).
The Panel acknowledged that previous rezoning decisions, in particular L33 in
the Kingston section of the Keysborough non-urban area, had created a
precedent that it could not ignore. “It would be fair to say that approval of this
development at state level has opened the door for other similar proposals in the
green wedge area” (2000:48). The Panel also expressed the view (in contrast to
the L33 Panel) that it would be unfair to suggest that the rezoning should wait to
see how the forthcoming Metropolitan Strategy dealt with the issue of green
wedges.
The Panel recognised the policy continuity aimed at protecting green wedges,
citing, for example, the statements in the Kennett Government’s strategy Living
Suburbs that a twenty year land supply exists in the growth corridors. It
concluded that “there is no need to earmark new land for urban purposes in the
foreseeable future…the green wedges are to be retained…not to be undermined
by uses that were inconsistent with long term, non-urban based vision” (2000:345). Nevertheless, the panel report considered that the amendments were
consistent with “the expressed intent of Living Suburbs”. State Government
policy relevant to these amendments was identified by the Panel as giving a
number of clear strategic directions. These were
Firstly, the concept of growth corridors and green wedges should continue to
underpin the planning framework for metropolitan urban and non-urban areas
and secondly, the boundaries between these should be clearly identified and a
hard edge maintained. Thirdly, changes to the boundaries should be based on
clearly demonstrated needs, be considered on a regional or metropolitan-wide
basis and be supportive of consolidation policies. Fourthly, some urban related
uses or urban conversion may be considered in identified locations when
51
assessed against certain criteria and where there is a demonstrated overall
community benefit (2000:48).
However the Panel concluded that Amendments C2 and C5 were consistent with
these policy directions and with the SPPFs, and cited Clause 14.02-2, which
states that
Outward metropolitan growth must be confined to designated growth areas in
accordance with Minister’s Directions under the Planning and Environment Act
1987.
Consolidation of residential and employment activities is encouraged within
existing urban areas and designated growth areas.
….
Planning decisions should assist the creation of linked parkland and open space
systems and the protection of high quality agricultural land, important open
landscapes and native vegetation.
The Panel concluded that the urban development proposed by C2 could not be
construed as outward metropolitan growth and should not therefore be directed
to the identified and established growth corridors (2000:20,48). Clearly however,
metropolitan growth in Keysborough is growth in an outer area of Melbourne. As
it is an extension to the boundary of the urban area it is outward metropolitan
growth. Nor did the Panel believe that C2 was affected by the second clause
concerning consolidation, as the land was not located within an existing urban
area. Finally, the creating of linked parkland and open space systems was still
possible through the proposal and the land in question could “under no
circumstances” be described as being prime agricultural land or an important
open landscape with native vegetation, (2000:20). In this way the Panel argued
that the amendments would not be inconsistent with the SPPFs and that the
amendments “do not compromise the strategic intent of state policy” (2000:48).
The Panel argued that growth corridors and green wedges should continue to
provide a basis for metropolitan planning, and that the boundaries between urban
and non-urban uses should be clearly defined and a hard edge maintained.
However, it proposed that Amendment C2, a major urban development, be
approved in a green wedge, which would move the urban boundary and in so
doing make a significant contribution towards the adoption of a constantly moving
“soft edge” to the metropolitan area. Decisions such as this contribute to a sense
of uncertainty and insecurity.
The Panel accepted that the subject area was once an important agricultural
area but that it “has probably reached its peak as far as land capability for
traditional farming activities is concerned and ….is now an area that is ready for
regeneration and redevelopment” (2000:94). The Panel did not justify this
position which contravened long held state policy on the importance of retaining
green wedges for agricultural purposes. Both amendments were approved by the
DOI and gazetted in August 2001.
52
5.7.6 Greater Dandenong C11 – industrial rezoning
Amendment C11 to the Greater Dandenong Planning Scheme was a proposal
which affected 250 hectares of land in Lyndhurst, bounded by Abbotts Road,
Cranbourne Railway line, Bayliss Road, Taylors Road, Colemans Road and the
Eumemmerring Creek Reserve. The Amendment proposed to rezone 125
hectares of the land from Rural to Industrial 1, apply a Development Plan Overlay
to all the land, alter the boundary of the existing Environmental Significance
Overlay and make some consequential changes to the LPPF and General
Provision sections of the planning scheme. The Amendment was exhibited in
July and August of 2001. Fourteen submissions were received and a Panel was
appointed in December 2001. It conducted hearings in March and handed down
a report in April 2002. The portion of land subject to the rezoning proposal
included two large landfill sites which occupied almost 80 hectares and a
triangular woodland area in the northeast slightly in excess of 11 hectares. The
remaining 35.7 hectares was a rural parcel known as 115 Bayliss Road.
There has been some dispute as to whether this land can rightfully be considered
to be part of the green wedge. The Panel and Advisory Committee Report which
reviewed the new format planning scheme, the City of Greater Dandenong’s
MSS and the SENUS report show the boundary as being Bayliss Road and
Coleman Road, placing the land which is subject to Amendment C11 just to the
north of the boundary. The South Eastern Growth Area Plan of November 1990
showed the land to the south of Abbotts Road as being Proposed Employment
with the exception of the two landfill site. A community groups, the Defenders of
the Green Wedge however, did consider this amendment to be an incursion into
the wedge, and put forward a submission in opposition to the Panel. However,
the most recent map of green wedge incursions which appears on the Defenders
of the Green Wedge website appears to acknowledge that this site is just outside
the green wedge, and no longer includes any reference to Amendment C11. The
new Urban Growth Boundary runs along the border of this land placing all but a
small section on the corner of Colemans and Taylors Roads within the Urban
Growth Area.
The Panel report found that as the land south of Abbotts Road, with the
exception of the two landfill sites, is clearly and unambiguously shown as
proposed employment in the South East Growth Area plan which forms
Ministerial Direction No 3, “it is not seen, in a strategic sense, as forming part of
the Green Wedge” (Dandenong C11 Panel 2002:50). The Panel supported the
rezoning of the land to industrial with the exception of the two landfill sites and
the triangular woodland area of environmental significance. The Amendment was
approved and gazetted on September 12th 2002.
53
5.7.7 Greater Dandenong C27 – Keysborough Green development
The proposed Amendment C27 to the Greater Dandenong Planning Scheme is
designed to facilitate another golf course life style development, which includes
environmental improvements as a trade-off for developing non-urban land. The
amendment proposes the rezoning of 160 hectares of land in Keysborough,
including the existing Keysborough Golf Club, located to the east of Springvale
Road on the north side of Hutton Road and a parcel of land on the south east
corner of Springvale and Hutton Roads, from Rural to Environmental Rural. The
proposed development is an integrated golf, recreation and residential
development to be known as Keysborough Green. It would include up to 480
residences around an extended and upgraded golf course of 27 holes with a new
golf club house. Environmental improvements proposed as part of the
development include the rehabilitation of the Mordialloc Creek, landscaping
treatment and “a system of managed wetlands to provide flood storage as well as
mitigate and treat storm water run off” (City of Greater Dandenong 2001). It is
claimed that this will result in significant environmental benefit to water quality in
both the Mordialloc Creek and ultimately Port Phillip Bay.
The current schedule to the Rural Zone has a minimum subdivision area for the
land south of Hutton Road covered by this proposal as 6 hectares and to the
north 4 hectares. The proposed amendment is to place the land in an
Environmental Rural Zone with a scheduled minimum lot size of 300 m2.
Currently the City of Greater Dandenong does not have any Environmental Rural
Zones, but such a lot size would be the smallest on any ERZ schedule yet
adopted in Victoria.
The area on the south-east corner of Hutton and Springvale Roads is in a
Wetlands Precinct in the local policy section (Clause 22.02.-4) of the planning
scheme, which was altered with the gazetting of Amendment C5. This precinct is
seen as providing a transition for the urban area to the north and the rural areas
to the south and east. The local policy in Clause 22.0-4 describes a limited
potential for ‘Wetlands Sensitive Development’. This concept of development is
to be encouraged “where substantial land remains in common ownership (i.e.
more than 30 ha)”. There are a long list of environmental principles which such
development should meet, including “lot size and orientation that protect
environmental features”, “limited sprawling of development”, and “minimal
landscape intrusion of development”, (Greater Dandenong Planning Scheme,
Clause 22.02-4). The Explanatory Report for Amendment C27 states that the key
principles as described in the Green Wedge Local Planning Policy are reflected
in the proposed development of the subject land. Amendment C27 has recently
been on exhibition and may proceed to a Panel hearing, although as it is clearly
outside the UGB it may be reconsidered.
54
5.7.8 Scoresby Freeway
The proposed Scoresby Freeway from Ringwood to Frankston will traverse green
wedge land in both Greater Dandenong and Frankston. It will travel through nonurban areas of Keysborough, Dandenong South, Bangholme (next to the Eastern
Treatment Plant) and Carrum Downs to link up with the Frankston Freeway in
Seaford. The major environmental concern with this proposed new freeway is the
potential effect that it might have on this section of the green wedge, in particular
the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands which have been registered under the
international Ramsar Convention, and its possible impact in increasing pressure
for land development.
Following the release of the Victorian Government’s transport policy Transporting
Melbourne, which included the proposed freeway, an Environmental Effects
Statement (EES) was prepared for the 40 kilometres proposed. This was
completed in June 1998. In September 1998 the Minister for Planning, Robert
Maclellan, appointed an independent Panel to conduct an inquiry into the
environmental effects of alternative strategies. A key recommendation of this
report, released in April 1999 was that the freeway end at Greens Road or the
Dingley Freeway, although this was not on environmental grounds. Over 130
submissions were made to the Panel in total, including a detailed submission by
the Public Transport Users Association representing 40 environment and
community groups in opposition to the Freeway. However the Panel did not find
that there were environmental impacts that should prevent the freeway being
built.
The proposed freeway will run alongside the Edithvale-Seaford Wetlands area
where it connects with the Frankston Freeway at Seaford. Opponents of the
freeway are concerned that it may have an adverse effect on the wetlands
through run-off contaminating the water, and the freeway may alter the hydrology
in a damaging manner. There are concerns that habitats of native birds may be
threatened and that increased urban development in the catchment area could
have a negative impact.
The pressure for increased development within the green wedge that the
Scoresby Freeway could generate was mentioned by a number of submitters to
the Panel hearing. Concern was expressed that the proposed freeway was
contrary to the concept of the green wedge and that it would lead to a loss of
rural character and an increase in further development pressure (Scoresby EES
Panel 1999:81). The SENUS Report in 1997 commented that the proposed
Scoresby Freeway would be a major influence for change and could bring about
significant pressure for increased urban development (Spiller Gibbins Swan Pty
Ltd and TBA Planners Pty Ltd 1997:32). This report proposed the idea that “high
quality, garden style industrial estates for strategic industry” could be developed
adjacent to the Scoresby Freeway in the green wedge area, where flooding and
drainage issues would not cause constraints. Strategic industries were defined
55
as large site industries with a combination of commercial, industrial, research and
warehousing functions concentrating on value adding import replacement or
export. The freeway was seen as an opportunity to provide a highly accessible
location to such industries (1997:59).
A number of submissions to the Panel raised the possibility that the Scoresby
Freeway, once constructed, might lead to significant pressure for further
development in the Yarra Valley Green Wedge, or increase the likelihood of
further freeway construction by connecting the Scoresby Freeway and the
Western Ring Road via a crossing over the Yarra River. The City of Manningham
and the Environment Protection Authority were amongst those expressing
concern about protecting the Yarra Valley Green Wedge.
5.7.9 Frankston – C3
Amendment C3 to the Frankston Planning Scheme was a proposal to reduce the
minimum lot size in the Rural and Environmental Rural zones covering parts of
Skye and Langwarrin in order to permit smaller subdivisions. It grew out of the
preparation by Frankston Council during 1998 and 1999 of a strategic review and
framework plan for the Skye and Langwarrin non-urban area. Formally it
proposed four changes to the Frankston Planning Scheme. These were: amend
the schedules to the Rural Zone to reduce the minimum lot size from 40 hectares
to 0.4 ha for the Skye and Langwarrin area; amend the schedule of the
Environmental Rural Zone to reduce the minimum lot size from 8 ha to 0.4 for the
same area; include a new Local Planning Policy the Skye and Langwarrin Nonurban Area into the scheme; and incorporate a Local Structure Plan for the area
into the scheme. The area affected by C3 and included in the Local Structure
Plan is bounded by Thompsons Road, the Westernport Highway, McLelland
Drive and the existing urban development in Langwarrin and Carrum Downs. It is
an area of 16.6 square kilometres.
The C3 Panel clearly identified that the land affected was within the green wedge
and the “the green wedge concept is still relevant to planning the growth and
development of Melbourne” (2001:12). The Panel Report presents a brief history
of the development of the green wedge concept in Melbourne, and the historical
and present day reasons for its existence and maintenance. The section of the
green wedge covered by this amendment is at one of its narrowest points, where
there has been ongoing pressure from landowners to allow smaller subdivision
for development. The C3 Panel commented “loss of the land in the C3 area to
development would be tantamount to loss of the green wedge. It would not mean
an incursion into its edge (and this has happened in a number of places) but a
severing of the northern section from the broader rural landscape in the southern
section” (2001:12-13).
56
The Panel also acknowledged that whilst the south-eastern green wedge still
serves the functions for which it was established, it could still be better managed
and its role strengthened. This is important because many of the arguments
made in favour of further development within green wedges – not only in the
south east but all around Melbourne – begin with the observation that the green
wedge land is not being properly managed at present, either as agricultural land
or as environmental reserves. Indeed arguments in support of C3 were on the
basis that environmental trade-offs could be sought on a case-by-case basis as
development proposals were considered. The Panel commented that “better
conservation habitat links, support for more viable rural activities, better rural
recreation activities, reduction in through traffic and better management of the
public landscape such as road verges could improve its function and
appearance. None of these improvements implies a need for more development;
in fact the reverse is true” (2001:12).
The C3 Panel recommended against the proposal on the basis that as it
represents an incursion into the green wedge it did not implement the SPPF, the
Frankston MSS or local policies in the planning scheme. Furthermore, it
commented that “the principle of environmental trade offs requires very careful
consideration”. Highlighting the fundamental contradiction in the trade-off
approach the Panel wrote:
A fundamental assumption behind C3 is that more development is required in the
green wedge in order to preserve its values. This assumption flows from the
belief that a limited amount of development will enable a number of ‘green trades’
to be made. That is, land could be given over for conservation purposes or for
open space as part of a proposal that saw more intensive development on the
balance of the land.
The Panel has concerns with this approach.
The over-riding quality of the green wedge is that it is undeveloped and ‘rural’.
The policies in the planning scheme and the MSS explicitly recognise this.
Development generally works against this rural quality. While in some cases it is
argued that the development will not be visible from roads or views, this reduces
the green wedge to a sort of rural façadism; a series of landscapes along
highways and roads that reduce the rural experience to a treed road verge.
A further concern is that by negotiation ‘green trades’ application by application,
council will have very limited opportunity to co-ordinate them to achieve the
desired outcome (2001:26).
Amendment C3 was abandoned following this Panel Report. However
Amendment C7 represented a second attempt at rezoning the same land for
urban development.
57
5.7.10 Frankston – C7
The original proposal embodied in Frankston Amendment C7 was to rezone 101
hectares of land in Potts Road, Langwarrin known as Burdetts Quarry from
Extractive Industry to approximately half Residential 1 Zone and half
Environmental Rural Zone to enable 390 residential lots to be established. The
Amendment would also preserve some significant environmental areas of
vegetation and habitat. Amendment C7 was first placed on exhibition in
December 2000 and following the receipt of a number of submissions a Panel
was appointed.
During the course of the panel hearing in November 2001 the proponents offered
to hand over the section of the land not intended for residential use to the Crown,
rezoning it Public Conservation Resource zone and thus guaranteeing that it
would remain preserved as open space in perpetuity. This proposal was
supported by the City of Frankston. The key issues surrounding C7 thus became
that of the proposed environmental trade-off, in particular whether a clear
incursion into the green wedge should be allowed in order to permanently
guarantee the future of another section of it.
None of the parties disputed that the proposal was an incursion into the green
wedge . While the Council supported the proposal at the Panel hearing it had
acknowledged within its own reports, which were then quoted in the Panel
Report, that the proposal “is a significant intrusion into the non-urban wedge”
(2002:38). The Panel itself noted that “it is readily apparent to the Panel by
observation and study of aerial photographs and land use maps that the
boundary of the green wedge is clearly formed by the western and southern
portions of the subject land. The proposal in that it provides for residential
development is an incursion into the green wedge” (2002:8).
The proponents of this amendment had made it clear that the proposal had to be
accepted or rejected, and that no further adaptations or concessions would be
possible. The Panel Report therefore rejected the possibility of recommending
any compromise and sought to analyse the arguments for and against the
proposal. The fundamental choice posed by the environmental trade-off became
the key issue for discussion. The arguments that the Panel believed were in
favour of recommending C7 related mainly to the advantages of the
environmental improvements offered.
The Panel outlined the following arguments. In favour of C7 was the
consideration that it would firmly and more permanently set the boundary of the
green wedge, as the land would pass into public ownership and be formally
reserved through an Act of Parliament. Financial assistance would become
available to support the management of the land as the developers had pledged
money to enable an extensive land management program to be put in place. The
Panel suggested that the transfer of the most environmentally valuable land into
58
public ownership might create a new benchmark against which future proposals
might be judged. It was also acknowledged that the size of the land to be set
aside was substantial, about 50% of the land, incorporating all the areas of
remnant native vegetation, and that previous sand extraction has so effectively
altered the vegetation cover of the portion of the land for residential development
that it would cost an insurmountable amount of money to restore and that the
land now has little other use. The urban development proposed would adjoin
existing developed areas and the costs of infrastructure were to be born by the
developer.
The Panel noted that an area of bushland had been degraded through the
removal of sand and the subsequent failure to adhere to the licence conditions to
restore the vegetation. This situation had occurred through a lack of enforcement
by one arm of Department of Natural Resources and Environment, (DNRE),
however another DNRE branch then supported the proposal because it would
preserve the remaining vegetation.
Ultimately however, the arguments against the Amendment proved too
persuasive for the Panel. Although it identified nine major arguments against the
proposal, it emphasised three as being most persuasive. Firstly that the area of
land proposed to be given over to public ownership was too narrow and close to
the area of residential development to offer viable protection for the flora and
fauna within it. Secondly, although the donation of land to the public was a
positive contribution to the preservation of part of the green wedge, the
Amendment as a whole represented an overall loss of area to the green wedge.
When viewed on a plan of the overall Frankston-Langwarrin green wedge area it
is a major incursion into the green wedge. This should be seen as separate from
the issue of whether there is public land protection. The ‘trade-off’ argument of
environmental gain for further residential incursion into the green wedge should
not be distorted by always linking the two. Each proposal must also be seen for
their separate impacts. The level and impact of change to the green wedge
concept of 390 residential dwellings is a major change. Simply asserting the
environmental trade off cannot lessen the residential impact (Frankston C7 Panel
2002:71).
Finally, the Panel was not convinced that the proposal could be supported by the
strategic and policy framework within the Frankston Planning Scheme. They
found no recognition within the Scheme that green wedge land could be traded
off for other land gains, or that there was any need in the area for additional
housing or strategies within the MSS or local policies for assessing the
appropriateness of such proposals. Like the C3 Panel before it, the C7 Panel
also felt strongly that this Amendment should not proceed until the Metropolitan
Strategy is released, as it is expected that the Strategy will make the State
Government’s position on green wedges clearer.
59
At this stage Council has not determined whether to proceed further with the
Amendment.
5.7.11 Other Frankston amendments
There have been a greater number of green wedge incursions within the City of
Frankston than any other municipality. A prominent amendment to land in the
middle of the south-east green wedge was Amendment RL174 (previously
RL164 and RL171) which allowed the Sandhurst Golf Estate development to
occur on 300 hectares of land bound by Thompson, McCormicks, Wedge and
Taylors Road, in Skye. This land was rezoned in August 1996 from Rural to
Residential in order to allow the development of 1,950 housing lots and two 18
hole courses, having been slightly modified from an earlier rejected proposal.
Another amendment approved under the City of Frankston’s old format planning
scheme was to allow the Flora Park Estate in Bullarto Road Carrum Downs to be
developed on the site previously occupied by the Keith Turnbull Research
Institute. This rezoning, which was approved in July 1997, was to enable the
development of 124 residential lots on 15 hectares.
Two more recent rezonings were initiated as amendments to the previous Shire
of Cranbourne planning scheme, and were gazetted at the time of approval of the
new format planning scheme of the City of Frankston in April 2000. They are the
74 hectare Castlebrooke Estate development in Langwarrin, now known as
Pindara, which will be developed into 320 residential lots, and the Acacia Ridge
development in North Road Langwarrin on approximately 43 hectares. Both of
these amendments involved environmental trade-offs,
5.7.12 Casey - Botanic Ridge
The Botanic Ridge Development concerns an area of 615 hectares adjoining the
southern, eastern and western boundaries of the Royal Botanic Gardens in
Cranbourne. The development is planned to proceed in stages. Stage one, the
largest component of the project to the south west of the Botanic Gardens, is the
only part of this project so far to be approved. It was gazetted in January 1999 as
Amendment L218 to the Cranbourne Planning Scheme rezoning approximately
280 hectares of land from rural to residential. Stage two has been placed on
exhibition until October 2002 as amendment C39 to the Casey Planning Scheme.
Stage one is shown on the DOI’s maps in Housing Melbourne – Residential
Forecast 2000 as being part of the forecast growth corridor, (Department of
Infrastructure 2000), and is included in the growth area maps within the City of
Casey’s MSS, (Clause 21.03), recognising that rezoning has taken place. The
land was not included in the Cranbourne Growth corridor in the review
60
undertaken in the late 1980s and was outside the area affected by Ministerial
Direction No. 3 implementing the south-eastern growth corridor boundaries. It
has now been placed outside the new Urban Growth Boundary and development
in this area is an incursion into the south-eastern green wedge.
The area of land included in stage one of Botanic Ridge is 280 hectares bounded
by Pearcedale Road, Browns Road, Smiths Lane and the Botanic Gardens. A
small section of this land, 40 hectares in the north-west corner, is not marked for
immediate development because of the close proximity of poultry farms. The
remaining 242 hectares will be developed to provide 1,450 residential lots, with
an additional 250 in the north west should the poultry farm cease operation.
Stage one is intended to result in an eventual residential population of 4,300 –
5,000 people (City of Casey 2002:2).
Amendment L218 to allow this land to be rezoned, was the subject of an
independent panel report handed down in September 1998. Unusually succinct,
the report recommended that Amendment L218 be refused. It did so primarily on
the basis that there was no apparent need for this extension to the urban area
and that the land remained valuable in its rural state.
The Panel were of the opinion that the Planning Authority had failed to establish
any requirement for an extension of the urban area. It was the Panel’s
impression that there was a considerable amount of land zoned residential within
the city limits and indeed the Planning Authority referred to this on two occasions
during evidence when they indicated that sales had now slowed and that the
holders of land zoned for residential were becoming impatient at the long delay
before development reached them…. The Panel was not convinced by the
argument that this land was not prime agricultural land and that it was more
suited to residential development (Cranbourne L218 Panel 1998:7).
The Panel also believed that there was no strategic basis for approval of the
amendment and was concerned about the effect which such an ad hoc decision
might have. The Report states that the Panel “was of the opinion that the
development was contrary to the intent expressed in the MSS and that the public
may conclude that there is no stability in the planning process” (1998:7).
Despite this clear finding Amendment L218 was approved in January 1999,
however development has not yet commenced.
Stage two, currently on exhibition, does not adjoin stage one, but makes up the
eastern section of the development, adjoining the existing Junction Village. It is
an area of 115 hectares bounded by Bullarto Road, the South Gippsland
Highway, the Baxter-Tooradin Road, the Dandenong-Hastings Road and the
Botanic Gardens. If approved it could result in 515 residential lots eventually
accommodating 2,300 people. The Amendment seeks to rezone the land into
Residential 1, Low Density Residential and Rural Living Zones. Part of this land
is affected by the close proximity of a quarry that requires a 200 metre buffer
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(City of Casey 2002:4). Stage three is planned to develop the 220 hectares of
land in between stages one and two and could eventually accommodate 3,500
people in 1,200 residential lots. However this rezoning will not proceed until the
first two stages of the project have been substantially completed.
The appropriateness of suburban development in this location adjoining the
Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne must be questioned. These unique gardens,
very different from Melbourne’s other, more European, Botanic Gardens, cover
363 hectares with Australian native vegetation, specialising in plants of the
Proteaceae family. The Botanic Ridge Development Plan emphasises that the
planned residential development will be in keeping with its location and will
proceed along sustainable development guidelines. Measures such as the
establishment of a wetland system and landscaping along boundaries, the
retention of existing indigenous vegetation in open space areas and the “use of
the natural terrain to maximise landscape compatibility” may help mitigate the
effects of urban subdivision, but this landscape will nevertheless undergo major
change. The Explanatory Report to Amendment C39 states, “the Amendment will
have an effect on the environment that is commensurate with the type of use and
development proposed for the subject land, including an increase in vehicular
and pedestrian activity in the area” (City of Casey 2002:2). In an attempt to offer
an environmental trade-off the Explanatory Report adds, “the Amendment should
have a positive effect on the subject area, as it will improve the bio-diversity of
the proposed Devon Road quarry rehabilitation” (City of Casey 2002:2).
Consistent with principles of environmental trade-offs, the potential
environmental improvement of the quarry rehabilitation is not considered alone
but linked to the approval of residential development.
Just as the Independent Panel into L218 found, it is difficult to justify the use of
the Botanic Ridge land for urban conversion on the basis of need. There are
large areas of land around Cranbourne within the UGB, to both the west and the
east, which have been set aside for future urban growth and have not yet been
developed. There is clearly no need for this land to be subdivided for housing
and because of its environmental sensitivities, its location adjoining the green
wedge, and the ad hoc nature of this rezoning, it would appear intrusive and
inappropriate. The land was omitted from the Cranbourne growth corridor in 1990
following an investigation into drainage patterns by the former Dandenong Valley
Authority and consideration of the possible impact of development in this area on
Westernport Bay.
5.8 The Mornington Peninsula Green Wedge
This last green wedge encompasses all the non-urban areas on the Mornington
Peninsula and adjoins the Westernport Green Wedge in the north. It is primarily
in the Shire of Mornington Peninsula with a smaller section of the City of
Frankston in the north.
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5.8.1 Frankston – C1
Amendment C1 to the Frankston Planning Scheme concerns 42 hectares of land
just north and west of the boundary between the City of Frankston and the Shire
of Mornington Peninsula. The Amendment was prepared on behalf of three major
landholders within the area which is bounded by the Baxter-Tooradin Road,
Stotts Lane, the Mornington Peninsula Freeway reservation and the Tarnee
Lodge Estate. The Amendment proposes to rezone the land from Environmental
Rural to Residential 1 and to introduce a Development Plan and a Development
Contributions Plan overlay over the land. The existing lot sizes within the affected
area range in size from 2.1 to 14.3 hectares. A Panel was appointed to conduct a
hearing in November 2000 and published its report in March 2001.
Opposition to the proposal from the Shire of Mornington Peninsula, and initially
also from the City of Frankston, was on the basis that the land formed part of an
inter urban break between the urbanised corridors of metropolitan Melbourne and
the Peninsula. Discussion within the Panel Report centred on whether this land
was located within this urban break area, and whether the Frankston Planning
Scheme and relevant State policy supported residential development in this area.
The Panel found that while there were differences between the planning
schemes of the two adjoining municipalities, there was no strategic reason within
the Frankston Planning Scheme or the SPPF to oppose the further development
of the land. The Panel recommended in favour of the Amendment and Frankston
Council has resolved to adopt it, however there has been no decision as yet by
the State Government.
5.8.2 Mornington Peninsula
The only major rezoning from Rural to allow for residential development in the
Shire of Mornington Peninsula in the last few years has been Amendment C2 to
allow another golf course and residential development. Known as Moonah Links,
the development includes two 18-hole golf courses and 250 residential lots with
an estimated eventual population of 575. It is located on Browns Road in Rye
and was approved by the Minister in June 1999. Apart from Moonah Links there
has only been one other small amendment, C24, approved to rezone 1.1
hectares of land as infill residential development between the Mornington
Peninsula freeway reservation and the existing residential zone boundary on the
Baxter Tooradin Road in Baxter, not far from the land affected by Frankston’s
Amendment C1.
This does not mean that the Mornington Peninsula is immune from the pressures
seen elsewhere to allow rural land to be redeveloped. The follow list shows the
number of requests for rezoning which have been refused since 1999. All were
requests for rezoning from Rural to Residential 1 except item nine, which
proposed Low Density Residential development.
63
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
185 Wooralla Drive, Mt Eliza
Cobb Road, Mt Eliza
Grant Road, Mt Eliza
Oakbank Road, Mornington
Sages Road, Baxter
Baxter Tooradin Road/Fultons Road, Baxter
Baxter Tooradin Road/Golf Links Road, Baxter
Craigie Road (between Balcombe Creek and Moorooduc Road),
Mornington
9. 74-76 Grants Road, Somerville
10. 247 Eramosa Road West, Somerville
11. North of Thomas Street, Baxter
12. 61 Balnarring Road, Balnarring
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6. The weakening of green wedge policy
The preceding analysis has demonstrated that Melbourne’s green wedges are
under serious threat from development. Many major development proposals
have been approved in recent years in the green wedges, and many other
proposals are being considered or are being prepared. Residential subdivision in
the green wedges require a rezoning, and consideration by the local council, a
panel, and the Government. Many planning panels and local councils have
recommended in favour of substantial developments in these areas, but
ultimately, the State Government is the custodian of green wedges. No rezoning
can proceed without State Government approval. Why have governments, local
councils and panels approved developments and allowed speculative pressure to
build up contrary to the historic strategic plan of growth corridors and green
wedges which has been reaffirmed by successive governments since 1971? How
is it that without publicly abandoning the long held corridor/green wedge policy,
State Governments have ignored or overridden this policy in making decisions on
planning scheme amendments for the green wedges? This section of the report
attempts to answer these questions and to demonstrate the need for a return to
strong strategic planning and action.
6.1 A waning of commitment
A general move away from State Government led strategic planning occurred
during the 1990s in Victoria. The Victoria Planning Provisions (VPPs), introduced
in 1996, were an attempt to reduce the role of the state and to facilitate marketled development through land use decision making. Their introduction by the
Kennett Government was part of the general shift during the 1990s from a
regulatory approach to a performance-based or outcomes-oriented policy. This
policy shift was intended to facilitate development through a model that
introduced consistent zones with much greater flexibility and discretion and fewer
prohibited uses across the State. The zones and other provisions, in effect,
became a substitute for strategic policy, particularly when coupled with a weak
State strategic planning section in the new format planning schemes.
Successive state governments and the state planning agency have failed to
maintain the state planning policy on the protection of green wedges. They have
not acted sufficiently as the custodians of green wedges. Some local councils
also have favoured development. Local councils have been able to instigate
amendment processes which have allowed the progressive build up of
development pressure and has led to the planning process being used to
develop green wedges instead of protecting them. There are significant financial
rewards to be gained from rezoning non-urban land to an urban use, particularly
residential subdivision. This means there are strong incentives to provide cogent
and persuasive arguments in favour of development. The trend to development
has also been influenced by changes to the structure of government and the
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incorporation of land use planning into a larger infrastructure agency, the break
up of the metropolitan planning authority the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board
of Works (MMBW), and the loss of a strong environmental planning focus in
government and local government.
Planning panels also have played a major role in decisions about the future of
green wedges. They have interpreted the purposes of green wedges, and green
wedge policy, inconsistently, and this had led to varying decisions. In particular
they have provided inconsistent interpretations around the value of
environmental trade-offs, the importance of precedent, the value of the green
wedge, the status of state policy, the importance of local policy, and the need for
metropolitan-wide policy.
6.2 Metropolitan strategic planning
A lack of clarity regarding current policy has also been affected by the long time
delay between detailed metropolitan strategic planning documents. The 1987
Cain Government metropolitan plan Shaping Melbourne’s Future gave clear
expression and commitment to a corridor and wedges pattern for Melbourne’s
urban development. The equivalent Kennett Government document, Living
Suburbs, released in December 1995, generally re-endorsed the policy, however,
it provided only generalised direction and was widely regarded as being vague
and ineffectual. It can therefore be argued that there has not been strong
strategic direction given to Melbourne’s urban form since 1987.
In the collective memory of the planning profession of Melbourne, fifteen years is
a long time, particularly considering the high turn over of urban planners. Many
young planners are unaware of the details of the history of green wedge policy.
Restructures of the state planning and conservation departments have resulted
in a reduction of commitment within the State Government bureaucracy to the
maintenance of green wedges, as evidenced by the many Government approvals
for residential rezonings in the non-urban zones.
A view common to some panels is that state planning policy is expressed in a
statutory form through the SPPF, and that this policy no longer clearly supports
the retention of green wedges. Panels and councils have appeared to rely solely
on the statutory planning framework provided by the VPPs for guidance, and a
number of panels have argued that the new planning system has given rise to a
state planning policy vacuum. This argument has enabled them to, in effect,
make state policy in an incremental manner.
The Eynesbury Station Panel Report, for example, suggested that as there is “no
longer any clear statement endorsing the retention of green wedges per se in the
SPPF. It is left to the MSSs of individual municipalities to make clear policy
statements about the green wedges within their municipalities”, (Melton C20
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Panel 2000:22). This view was reiterated in the Whittlesea C12 Panel Report,
which also cited the Technical Report 2 – Summary, the summary of the report
Green Wedges and Non-urban Issues written for the Metropolitan Strategy. This
report commented that State Government policy towards appropriate uses for
green wedges was no longer clear, (Department of Infrastructure 2001:3). The
Whittlesea C12 Report also observed more generally that there was a decline in
State Government direction about spatial planing during the 1990s, and that this
was unlikely to be redressed by the forthcoming Metropolitan Strategy. The
Dandenong C2 panel report also argued that the SPPF was consistent with
development in the green wedge. Nevertheless, panels which took the view of a
diminished state policy role, ignored the consistency of successive State
Government policy on the protection of green wedges and location of
development in growth corridors over a 30 year period.
Other panels have not supported the view that state policy is unclear and have
accepted that metropolitan policy is properly the province of the State
Government, not individual local councils, and that there has been a continuity of
metropolitan policy. The Kingston L33 report, for example, argued that the SPPF
could be used to reject development in the green wedge. This report, and the
Frankston Panel Reports on C3 and C7, are notable for their clear statements
regarding both the history and the ongoing relevance of the concept of green
wedges in Melbourne’s planning. Some councils and panels, in contrast, have
fostered a perception of a lack of clear government direction. Metropolitan
planning is based on a strategic State government planning role for the whole of
Melbourne, not leaving decisions on the future directions and type of growth only
to land owners, developers and councils. Market based decisions have led to
residential rezonings of non-urban land adjacent to urban areas where an
extensive capacity for residential lots exists, such as in Cranbourne South, or
areas unsuitable for residential development.
The VPPs allow for the development of local policy, and a number of panels,
such as the Whittlesea C12 panel, gave great weight to the existence of local
policy which supported development. In contrast, the panel considering the
Eynesbury Station amendment (Wyndham and Melton C20) noted that local
policies did not support the proposal but nevertheless proceeded to support the
Amendment. Some development decisions in non-urban zones have blatantly
ignored the existence of large land supplies in nearby growth corridors and the
lack of any further demand for lots. Notable decisions in this category include
rezonings at Eynesbury Station and Cranbourne South.
The VPPs do not contradict the corridor and wedges growth policy. Section
14.02-2 stated that “outward metropolitan growth must be confined to designated
growth areas in accordance with Minister’s Directions under the Planning and
Environment Act 1987”. However, this reference has been open to interpretation.
The Dandenong C2 and C5 Panel Report for example, concluded that the
directive to confine urban development to growth areas did not apply to the
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particular case before the Panel as the C2 proposal to allow a non-urban area to
be rezoned for urban development should not be considered as outward
metropolitan growth. Likewise it argued that the other directives in the SPPFs did
not apply, and in this way the Panel believed that the amendments “do not
compromise the strategic intent of state policy” (2000:48). Support for this kind of
interpretation of policy demonstrates a lack of commitment to the retention of
green wedges. The State Government’s unambiguous commitment to
strengthening the protection of green wedges as part of Melbourne 2030 has
once again placed green wedge protection on the planning agenda and this will
lead to an increased awareness of issues related to green wedge protection.
6.3 The interpretation of purpose for green wedges
Planning policy originally developed by the MMBW included a range of functions
and purposes for green wedges. While the policy recognised differences
between areas, the same overall policy applied to all green wedge areas. Both
the Whittlesea C12 and the Wyndham and Melton C20 Panel Reports varied this
approach by arguing that particular purposes could be defined for specific parts
of Melbourne’s green wedges. These panels recognised that green wedges
areas are physically different, have different management issues and that the
objectives for planning for each of the areas would be different. They then
proceeded to determine the primary purposes of specific areas.
This approach assumes that for any particular piece of land there will be a small
number of identifiable primary purposes which outweigh all others. This ignores
the original emphasis on a broad range of objectives for non-urban areas. In
some other cases differential assessments have been made of the environmental
quality of non-urban zones. Nature conservation values sometimes have been
regarded more highly than landscape values, and non-urban zones in parts of
the western and northern areas of Melbourne consequently devalued. Ultimately
the maintenance of green wedges can be justified on the grounds that they serve
as a break to the spreading city, or on amenity grounds such as assisting to
maintain a more “liveable” city. They can be justified by their own existence and
need no other functional purpose. This underlying purpose has always been
recognised in the literature on green belts, as it was by in the original decision to
establish these areas, and has often been reaffirmed.
An example of the reduction of green wedge policy can be seen in the case of
the Eynesbury Station Amendment which highlights the shortcomings of
narrowing objectives for the non-urban areas. The panel identified the need to
retain the bulk of the land for productive agriculture and the protection and
enhancement of environmental assets including the Werribee River catchment as
the most important reasons for recommending approval of development for this
area. Successive government policies have also considered that the issue of
appropriate, well-serviced, planned and integrated, urban development is a major
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reason for rejecting ad hoc development within the non-urban zones, yet this
purpose was not emphasised.
The Whittlesea C12 panel report’s conclusions that a major residential rezoning
was not “contrary to the principles that support the protection of green wedge and
other non-urban areas in Melbourne” (2001:59) presents another illustration of
the dangers of a limited interpretation the purpose of green wedge policy.
The attempt to narrow green wedge policy to objectives for particular areas also
treats each development request in isolation and ignores the effect that individual
urban conversions will have on the integrity of the remaining land, and on the
strength of the policy as a whole. The avoidance of ad hoc decision making is the
major reason why clear metropolitan or state-wide policy should exist and be
implemented over a long time frame, and why green wedge policy should not be
made by local councils or individual panels or be subject to the varying views of
government officials or governments. In recent years, governments and many
planning decision makers have demonstrated an unwillingness to recognise and
maintain a continuity of policy on such a vital issue of metropolitan wide
significance, preferring to continually reinterpret policy according to their
preferences on a case by case basis. This approach spells the death knell for
green wedges and the consistent application of policy.
6.4 The issue of precedent
Any effective policy for the protection of a non-urban area requires firm and
consistent application. Commitment to the policy must be upheld at all levels of
the planning system, including local government, State Government officials and
panels, and the Minister for Planning. Any loss of commitment to the policy by
one part of this system can result in damaging decisions. Some local councils, for
example, have exhibited planning scheme amendments either because they
support rezoning, or wish to pass on the decision-making responsibility to a panel
or the State Government. This can enable some developers to apply extensive
resources in arguing a case. The combination of developer pressure, panel and
council support can accumulate pressure on a state government. Incremental
approvals fuel increased expectations and speculation. Uncertainty is then used
to justify further development. A refusal to entertain amendment applications
avoids this kind of incremental pressure. A requirement that prior approval from
the State Government must be obtained for any amendment for land in the green
wedges will help avoid this problem. A legislated boundary and rural uses will
end speculation and redirect the energy invested in seeking rezonings of nonurban land into innovative rural, agricultural, environmental, conservation and low
impact recreational pursuits in these areas, and into high environmentally
performing developments in new mixed use activity centres and urban growth
corridors where development belongs. Melbourne’s urban development is
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currently at world’s worst standards. A fixed urban growth boundary is the first
essential step to changing this situation.
Each amendment approved in the green wedges acts as a precedent for other
approvals, even for different types of applications. One decision to consider an
amendment application or to approve a rezoning, sends a signal inviting further
applications. Ad hoc rezonings for development are seen to offend against the
principle of fairness, and the consistent application of the same rules to all. The
loss of Sydney’s green belt was caused by such incremental pressure applied to
the State Government by landowners seeking the financial returns granted by
rezonings to others.
There is extensive evidence of the damaging effect of precedent in the green
wedges. The willingness of former planning minister, Robert Maclellan, to vary
the Upper Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges Regional Strategy Plan, and
council planning schemes, soon became so well known among developers,
planning consultants and lawyers, that twenty-five years of bipartisan planning
policy was threatened. Amendments to planning schemes in green wedges have
increased expectations for development by some land owners, and created
intense speculation by development companies in certain areas, particularly in
the Heatherton, Dingley, Keysborough, Frankston and Cranbourne South areas.
Unless this speculative pressure and increased development expectation is
stopped, it is inevitable that the green wedges will be further developed. This
pressure is now so intense, that it can only be relieved by removing the
discretionary nature of decision making from all elements of the planning system
and placing ultimate control of these areas with Parliament.
The power of precedent has been acknowledged by a number of panels
previously discussed. The Kingston L33 Panel assessing the Waterways
development in Keysborough, for example, commented that it would not be
appropriate to grant the Amendment as it was clearly contrary to State
Government policy and that to do so would undermine that policy. The State
Government ignored the Panel’s views and approved the development. This
approval was then used as a precedent for the rezoning of nearby land. The
Panel assessing the Dandenong C2 proposal for land just to the north of the
Waterways development in Keysborough acknowledged that previous rezoning
decisions, in particular L33 in Kingston, had created a precedent it could not
ignore. “It would be fair to say that approval of this development at state level has
opened the door for other similar proposals in the green wedge area”, it argued
(Dandenong C2 & C5 Panel 2000:48). Other panels have ignored or rejected the
possibility of their decisions acting as precedents. The Panel considering the
Eynesbury Station development, for example, argued that its recommendation of
approval would not act as a precedent, or it if did, the precedent would not be a
bad one (Melton C20 Panel 2000).
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Increased speculation can also adversely affect land management. Landowners
who believe that their land could be rezoned in the future may be less likely to
invest in environmental or agricultural management that requires a longer-term
perspective and commitment. The degraded condition of land is often used as an
argument for land development. Urban development is then favoured as a
solution to such degradation over innovative forms of agricultural or other types
of investment. This cycle of speculative expectations, inadequate land
management and urban development was acknowledged in the recent City of
Kingston review into the Heatherton/Clayton South/Dingley Non-Urban Area. The
report commented that recent encroachments on this portion of the green wedge
led to increased uncertainty “fuelling expectations that at some point in time the
non-urban areas will make way for urban development. This climate of
uncertainty has a real impact on both the function and character of the study
area, making it difficult to attract new investment and further degrading the rural
landscape” (Gutteridge Haskins and Davey Pty Ltd 2002:xii). The deliberate
degradation of land, to support an argument that there is little merit in preserving
it, reinforces this process. The potential monetary rewards of urban subdivision
can outweigh all other considerations.
Responsible rural land management requires a long-term perspective, and this
depends on the certainty that the consistent application of policy brings.
6.5 Landowners’ superannuation
The issue of landowners regarding their landholdings as a form of
superannuation arises from the raising of expectations from incremental
decisions. The view of land as a form of superannuation is widespread, and
many landowners in areas as diverse as Werribee South, Manningham and
Keysborough have come to regard subdivision as a right and a matter of financial
equity. This argument is used to justify the excision of a small portion of a larger
landholding or the subdivision of land in its entirety.
This is not a land use or planning issue, but a financial one, and, like the
argument of hardship, should not be the basis of planning policies. It is relevant
here to reiterate the comment from the SENUS report, that
It is not the role of the planning process to provide a better return to the owner of
rural land for superannuation or any other purpose (i.e. superannuation schemes
with property investments cannot argue that land should be rezoned to maximise
the return for their members). Nor can individuals in other situations expect the
planning process to improve the value of their residential, commercial or other
zoned land through rezoning when they wish to retire (Spiller Gibbins Swan Pty
Ltd and TBA Planners Pty Ltd 1997:35).
There are extensive variations between types of rural land, including
geomorphology, soil type, productivity, rainfall, availability of water, and
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environmental value. The proximity of a vast metropolitan area has been used to
argue that rural land near Melbourne is different from all other rural land because
of problems arising from closeness to urban areas, a lower rate of return on
investment than other rural land receives, and difficulties in gaining a viable
farming income from the land. The Metropolitan Farming Study and the Review
of Planning Policies for the Non-Urban Zones considered the rural land
management problems arising from proximity to urban areas, and reinforced the
importance of retaining the non-urban zones, (Aberdeen Hogg and Associates
1977; MMBW 1977). However the principal difference between land in green
wedge areas and rural land elsewhere, is the expectation of development held by
some owners of rural land close to Melbourne that is unavailable elsewhere in
Victoria. Rural landowners whose land is not on the fringes of the metropolitan
area or a large regional centre, are not able to sell or subdivide their land for
residential development. Shifting the urban boundary would relocate
expectations and associated problems to the next rural holdings.
Land management issues can be assisted by removing speculative pressure and in so doing stabilise land prices - and by applying appropriate land
management solutions including proactive programs of assistance for rural
landholders. New types of rural industry, new niche markets, rural investment
and environmental investment consistent with protection of environmental values
also should be encouraged.
6.6 Development as a solution for environmental degradation.
The degraded state of land, or the lack of any obvious environmental value, is
often used as argument for rezoning to an urban use. The alleged lack of
environmental values underlies discussion of many areas such as Epping North
and many of the proposals for development in the south-east green wedge.
Some councils and panels have taken a different view of the problem of
environmental degradation and management. The Frankston C3 Panel
commented that the need for better environmental management, which in the
case of C3 meant better conservation habitat links, more viable rural and
recreation activities, a reduction in through traffic and better management of the
public landscape such as road verges, did not imply a need for more
development, “ in fact the reverse is true” (Frankston C3 Panel 2001).
The recent review of the non-urban areas of Manningham, prepared for the City
of Manningham by the RPD Group of consultants, addressed many of these
issues. A key conclusion of this report was that “there is no realistic or proven
basis to substantiate that further subdivision will produce better land
management. The past subdivision has largely contributed to much of the
environmental management problems that plague the area” (RPD Group 2002).
The Manningham Report proposed that more money and resources be put into
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land management. It offered an innovative and proactive approach to
environmental regeneration that could be used as a model for other non-urban
metropolitan areas. Whilst the program has not yet been implemented by the City
of Manningham, the report may help to change the way environmental problems
are viewed.
Urban development is not a solution to environmental degradation and problems
with environmental management. It will not solve these issues, but simply
relocate them. Urban development, particularly residential development, must
proceed in suitable locations, not merely where there are profits to be made from
rezoning. The purpose of channelling growth into corridors is to enable the
development of better planned and serviced places to live, and to help in the
creation of better communities than if housing subdivisions were allowed to occur
only at the whim of the market.
6.7 The environmental trade-off – destroying green wedges to
save them
It has become common for proposals for residential rezonings within the green
wedges to be packaged with specified environmental improvements in order that
the development may appear to offer a net environmental gain. “Environmental
trade-offs” involve proposing one or more environmental benefits as
compensation for losing others, such as revegetating and restoring one parcel of
land in return for allowing another to be cleared and built upon. Other aspects
traded might include energy efficiency, water reuse or wetlands construction in
return for a loss of landscape value. They may also involve the loss of
environmental values as a means of gaining or maintaining economic or social
benefits, such as providing affordable housing or maintaining agricultural
production in return for losing open land. Some prominent development
proposals which used one of these concepts are the Waterways Estate
development in Kingston, Eynesbury Station, Epping North, and the yet
unresolved case of Burdetts Quarry land in Frankston Amendment C7 in
Langwarrin.
Net environmental benefit is hard to measure and generally arguments for
rezonings on this criterion propose unquantified benefits and losses. The
concept of environmental trade-offs is, however, inherently environmentally
damaging. So much of the Victorian environment has been lost or damaged by
economic development that all remaining environmental values are important.
Trading one environmental value for another will add a new dimension to this
loss.
Underlying some of these arguments is the concept that subdivision in green
belts is acceptable if some sustainability measures such as higher density
housing, and energy efficient and water sensitive design, are used. Yet these
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environmental gains are often small in comparison to the loss of non-urban land,
remnant indigenous vegetation, wildlife corridors and other environmental values.
Developments within green wedges inevitably will be located far from public
transport where residents will have little choice but to be entirely car dependent.
Such developments would be less environmentally damaging if they were placed
within planned growth corridors where public transport can more easily be
provided.
There are a number of other important arguments against the use of
environmental trade-offs to justify urban development within the green wedges.
Environmental trade-offs are essentially ad hoc, depending on the particular
details of each arrangement made. Even if the agreement negotiated is
beneficial for parts of the environment, it remains site specific and therefore
uncoordinated with surrounding land uses. The nature of individual bargaining in
this way undermines and prevents metropolitan wide strategic planning. Green
wedges are an asset for the entire city, and are an integral part of a strategy of
focussing and coordinating growth into appropriate and well planned places.
Development decisions negotiated on an individual basis lead to ad hoc and
uncoordinated decision making.
Decisions made on an individual basis tend to be inequitable and destabilising.
Many major landowners and development and pastoral companies have
considerable resources to argue a case before a council, a panel hearing, the
Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal, or directly to the Department
of Infrastructure or the Minister. Local residents, community or environmental
groups seldom are as well resourced. Landowners also vary greatly in their
capacity to finance a case for development. Many would require the backing of a
development company with capital, subdivision and marketing expertise. It is
very difficult, given such imbalance, to provide a level playing field on which
arguments can be put, despite the good intentions of panel and tribunal
members.
Environmental trade-offs in the form of undeveloped land reserves offered at the
time of development approval may initially appear appealing but unless
considerable capital is provided in perpetuity, the land may not be maintained
properly and further applications for subdivision and development may arise as a
consequence. The maintenance of pockets of environmentally valuable land
may result in parcels of land that are too small to be viable in the long term as a
reserve for wildlife or indigenous vegetation.
Approving urban development on part of a land parcel in order to gain funds for
continued agricultural production on the remainder requires the investment of
sufficient proceeds from development to guarantee ongoing agricultural
production in perpetuity. There can be no such guarantee, yet without it the
basis of the development is undermined. Neither can there be sufficient
guarantee that further developments will not be applied for on the same grounds
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at a future date, particularly if the farming enterprise requires more capital. The
creation of patches of small allotments in rural areas introduces uses that maybe
incompatible with current agricultural practices, and takes land out of potential
production that might compromise the region’s ability to adjust to new and
innovative forms of investment.
The defining characteristic of the green wedges is that the land remains
undeveloped and essentially non-urban in character. Allowing some
development in order to achieve environmental improvements fundamentally
alters the nature of these areas and compromises its possible uses. As the
Frankston C3 Panel noted, the green wedges should not be reduced to a series
of rural facades in between urban developments. The creation of residential
allotments often precedes other developments such as recreation and tourist
developments in the form of golf courses, hotels and conference facilities.
Related urban developments, which can often occur in a Rural Zone without
requiring a rezoning, then place further pressure on undeveloped areas that may
have been protected from development as part of the original trade-off.
It is difficult to provide comparative quantitative assessments of environmental
values, much less the comparison between environmental, economic and social
values. The impact of factors which cannot easily be measured are often
ignored. The creation of rural or rural-residential lots in rural landscapes often
leads to loss of intangible environmental values that may not be rated sufficiently
highly in the process of considering the application.
Finally, the sacrifice of a portion of non-urban land for the sake of the
preservation of another (usually smaller) portion of non-urban land is shortsighted because it is ultimately self-defeating. If this practice were to continue
then no green wedge land would remain to trade-off. The more land that is
subdivided the less viable the remainder becomes, not only for agricultural or
rural industry purposes, but also as a viable environmental area of any
significance.
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7. Conclusion
The green wedges of Melbourne were proposed for preservation as non-urban
areas in the late 1960s and set aside in the 1971 metropolitan plan. This
investigation of recent rezonings has shown that in some areas, most notably the
south-east, planning scheme amendments in the green wedges have proceeded
in such numbers as to threaten the very future of green wedge policy itself.
Enough of the original vision remains of the urban corridor/green wedge concept
for planners, state and local governments, and residents, to use the policy for the
future planning of Melbourne. Over thirty years since it was originally adopted
into planning policy, Melbourne still remains precariously a city built around a
corridor-green wedge model.
Why is it so important that these rural areas are protected from urban
development? They were originally set aside to protect valuable agricultural land,
landscapes, resources such as sand and stone, environmental features and to
provide for recreational uses. The most viable cities in this century will be those
with the best quality environments. Our relationship with our rural hinterland is
critical to the survival of Melbourne as a viable place to live. If we retain this
relationship, we will continue to enjoy the vineyards of the Yarra Valley, the
beautiful landscapes of the Mornington Peninsula and the Keilor Plains, our river
valleys and the forested hills of the Dandenongs and St. Andrews. Lose it and
our city becomes just another casualty to anonymous global urban sprawl,
another city that has obliterated the last vestiges of nature, a second rate
imitation of global cities striving to have more in common with each other than
the countryside around them.
Australian cities have spread across more than one million hectares of rural land
since 1945. On current trends, another 25,000 hectares of rural land will be lost
to urban development in Melbourne by 2021. The Port Phillip region is Victoria’s
second most valuable agricultural area, with production three times greater in
terms of value per hectare than the most productive area, the Goulburn-Broken
region. Melbourne's rich agricultural areas, such as Werribee South and Silvan,
also possess the great advantage of lower transport costs and proximity to
markets.
It is important to preserve green wedges not only for the environmental, resource
and amenity benefits they give to the city, but also because they would make
unsuitable areas for urban settlement. They are generally long distances from
public transport, and their development would massively increase Melbourne's
car dependency and lead to increased pollution, road congestion, energy use
and greenhouse gas emissions.
Perhaps most important, we do not need to develop the green belt. Melbourne's
future growth can fit easily into the designated urban growth corridors in the
south-east, west and north, and within the existing metropolitan area. There is up
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to a 30 year land supply in these areas, comfortably catering for the expected
620,000 new houses in the next 30 years. Locating our future housing is a minor
problem compared to the urban development task faced by much of the rest of
the world.
Melbourne has alternative futures. The future without preserved non-urban areas
can be found in greater Los Angeles and the other vast urban conglomerations of
the United States. The future with green belts can be found in the English
countryside on the fringes of London, or on the edges of Copenhagen or Portland
Oregon. We cannot plead ignorance of the effects of losing this important part of
our city's environment. A renewed commitment to the maintenance of these
areas is required.
However, commitment alone is not enough. There must be policies and
administrative structures to back intentsions. The MMBW originally chose a
structure based on a belief in the effectiveness of land use planning. It developed
and promulgated a strong and clear policy, and implemented it through statutory
non-urban zones. Strategic planning and the statutory land use planning system
were to ensure the continuation of green wedges. However, a lack of
commitment to green wedge protection, a failure of will in the face of relentless
pressure and speculation, the influence of precedents, a lessening in importance
of state-wide strategic planning, a new ideology of a development facilitation and
a reduced regulatory role of government, inconsistency in decision making, a
weakened land use planning system, and changes to the state and local
government structure of planning, are all factors which have led to significant
redevelopment of the non-urban zones. The history of Melbourne’s green
wedges shows that the grand vision of a strategic and statutory planning system
acting to defend the concept of permanent green wedges is failing, and new tools
must be found to do the job.
The current statutory planning system based on the VPPs provides little statutory
protection for green wedges. Statutory policy is weak. Rezonings to allow
residential and other development have become common. The current
standardised Rural Zone has only three prohibited uses. Most development
proposals, including those for industry, major tourism and recreation, commercial
and retail developments can be considered. This means that many urban related
uses do not even require a rezoning.
The failure of statutory planning mechanisms as a means of protecting non-urban
zones, means that a stronger method of protection must be found if the original
strategic intent is to maintained. The only effective method is legislative
protection which draws a line around green wedges, includes strong controls on
uses and developments, and requires a bill to be presented to Parliament for
changes to legislated protection. Any lesser form of control, such as policy which
delineates residential from non-urban areas and allows the discretionary
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statutory planning system to prevail in non-urban zones, will inevitably lead to
incremental urban developments.
The Victorian Government has recently announced that it will take the most
significant step in protecting green wedges and the broader green belt by
legislating for their preservation. For the first time in Australian planning history, a
government has stated that it intends to legislate to define the boundary to the
urban area and prohibit urban uses in the non-urban areas surrounding the
metropolis. This should end land speculation, provide fairness through the
consistent application of rules, and reintroduce certainty for long-term
investments in effective land management.
The imposition of a new Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) is a welcome and
necessary step to end the uncertainty associated with the perception that there is
a soft and movable boundary to the urban area. A concern however remains that
the Government has left the door if not partially open, at least unlocked, by
designating considerable tracts of land outside the UGB adjacent to the growth
areas as areas for either “future urban investigation” or “potential for urban
development to be re-examined” (Department of Infrastructure 2002). The
specifying of these areas would seem to invite landowners within them interested
in urban conversion to immediately begin their campaigns. This would defeat the
purpose of the UGB. The UGB should be placed in such a way as to ensure, to
the best of current knowledge and assessment of future projections, that there is
sufficient land for future growth within the UGB for a considerable period of time.
The supply of available land within the growth corridors can be monitored and the
UGB moved when and if the need arises, subject to Parliamentary approval,
without pre-empting the process by identifying future sites now. Anything less
than a firm legislated boundary to the urban area requiring and act of Parliament
for change will not do the job and will revive the perception that the boundary of
the urban area remains fluid.
This proposed legislation to preserve the green wedges should not be the end of
strategic thinking about these areas, but rather the beginning. There are many
issues about the use and management of the land that need to be addressed,
and these issues vary. Programs of assistance in land rehabilitation and
maintenance, strategic land purchase, incentives and possible redirection into
alternative and more sustainable uses, may now be considered. The future rural
land uses and management of green wedge areas and the green belt may vary,
but underlying the future of these areas is the common need for their retention as
rural land, and protection from urban uses. If properly acted upon, Melbourne
2030 provides an essential strategic context to the future of green wedges and a
model for other cities faced with similar issues.
78
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