A 3-storey apartment building on your fenceline?

The chances of someone building a three-story apartment block next door to your house – without you having any rights to complain about it – will greatly increase in the few months if the Government succeeds in bringing in its new residential zones planning proposal. The proposal will require municipal councils to allocate residential areas under their control into planning zones within which new developments must be multi-storied and residents’ rights to be informed and to protest will be severely restricted.

A meeting called by the Monash Liveability Coalition last Monday evening (June 2^nd) heard from a number of speakers about the pressures on liveability and the losses of citizens rights involved in the new proposal. Bob Birrell from the Monash Centre of Population and Urban Research laid out the implications for urban planning of the recent explosion in Melbourne’s population growth. He suggested that the Government’s attempts to meet the resulting demand for housing were inadequate, ill-advised, and could only lead to the destruction of the neighbourhood character of areas like Notting Hill and Monash more generally. Members of the Legislative Council, Matthew Guy for the Liberals and Greg Barber for the Greens, argued that the Government was panicked by the new population statistics, and was responding with short-term solutions that over-rode the rights of residents, councils, and parliament itself. David Gates, a Notting Hill resident, suggested that planning should relate to the long term needs of current residents rather than the other way around. And Denise McGill, Monash City Councillor, pointed out the difficulties that the council had with authoritarian current and future planning regimes.

Mary Drost, for the Planning Backlash – a comprehensive coalition of residents’ groups from across Victoria – supplied the meeting with a petition to Government asking that residents’ rights be considered, and announced the creation of a new website devoted to keeping Melbourne marvellous (http://www.marvellousmelbourne.org ). And Greg Barber suggested that the Legislative Council may move to disallow the regulatory and legislative changes that the Government will require to implement its new planning regime.

The next meeting of the Monash Liveability Coalition, on Monday 4^th August, will consider practical ways and means of defending residents’ rights to a liveable city.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

(For further information contact Marian Quartly marian.quartly@arts.monash.edu.au)