The Inner West Council has just put on public exhibition its plans for vastly increased housing development in the inner west.
The plans, dubbed “Fairer Future for the Inner West — Council-led alternate planning approach for new housing” are basically for eight to 17 plus storeys, with a six storey perimeter, around the Marrickville shops, Dulwich Hill shops and Dulwich Hill Station.
It aims to replace NSW Labor’s Transport Oriented Development (TOD) plans, and doubles the amount and height of development envisaged under TOD.
The consultants’ report that prompted these increased heights, densities and developer bonus over and above TOD — on the grounds that TOD did not offer enough incentives to developers — should be made public.
At present this key document is secret — apparently even from councillors.
Thrown into this package are a batch of upzonings of parts of Leichhardt, Lewisham. Petersham and Sydenham.for three- to six-storey developments.
Council claims that all this will lead to 31,000 new dwellings over the next 15 years and be a comprehensive answer to the housing crisis. This is magical thinking, typical of Labor’s pretend solutions to crises and challenges facing our society.
The target of 31,000 new dwelling depends largely on lot amalgamations – minimum frontages are a mandated 21 metres. Minimum lot sizes for development appear to be 1000 square metres (m2) and above.
To encourage lot amalgamations, “bonuses” of an extra 10–25% of floor space and height are on offer.
Even with these bonuses, the economic feasibility study accompanying Fairer Future, estimates that less than 30% of the promised figure will actually be built.
As for affordability, initially Fairer Future only required 2% of any development and then only on sites over 2000 m2 for “affordable” housing. (That “affordability” is a very dubious proposition, being 80% of market rent.)
While Fairer Future is principally one big sweetener for developers there is also a blatant appeal to existing owners with Labor Mayor Darcy Byrne assuring them in a letter and email that “no one will be forced to sell their home, but if they choose to do so in the future their property will have an increased value”.
Green space?
The striking first thing about the Fairer Future plans is the lack of green space. You need a microscope to spot any.
The promised extra green space adds up to about half a football field, plus some possible pathways along Iron Cove Creek in Croydon and Hercules Creek in Dulwich Hill which are dependent on deals with developers.
The Inner West has the second lowest amount of public open space per resident in the state and Fairer Future will make it worse. We are already facing a significant shortage of playing fields and there are no new ones in these plans. Fairer Future even cancels the one small park mandated in Hay Street, Leichhardt, as part of the Parramatta Road strategy.
This point about miniscule green open space is not just plucked out of the air. In the survey of residents on planning principles carried out by the IWC last year, the overwhelming majority who responded nominated more public open space as the number one major precondition for new development.
Equally important is that public green space is arguably even more essential to apartment residents as they lack any private open space.
Sorry, I forgot the “town squares” for Marrickville, Ashfield and Dulwich Hill, which will be built with developer contributions and (in the case for Marrickville and Dulwich Hill) situated on former Council car parks.
This has led to some excitement among would-be urban romantics. Yet, these not very grand public places would mostly be in shadow on winter days, as they will be overwhelmed by adjacent 14-22 storey buildings.
Private profit
This paucity of public benefits is in stark contrast to the enormous private profit that flows from any upzoning.
Even these “town plazas” have to be in some doubt too as the councillors have added a proviso to Fairer Future that developer contributions (theoretically to pay for extra council facilities to cater for new residents) should now take the form of apartments transferred to council ownership.
The trouble with this proviso is that it gives council an interest in approving larger developments.
“If you aren’t happy with these plans, make a submission” is the Council majority’s stock answer to critics. This response gets proper urban planning back-to-front. Public consultation and feedback should be the first step, not the last, in the process of planning development. No one knows the neighbourhood better than locals who live there.
One of the objectives of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act is “to provide increased opportunity for community participation in environmental planning and assessment”. These days that is honoured more in the breach than the observance.
As for the boast that Fairer Future is an example of “place-based planning”, genuine place-based planning is pretty nigh impossible without the on-the-ground local knowledge that comes from locals.
Those of us who live in West Leichhardt have had recent experience of the Council majority’s tick-box attitude to public participation and “place-based” planning.
Phase I of the Parramatta Road Corridor Urban Transformation Strategy proposed demolishing 60 homes in four side streets and replacing them with 19 blocks of flats, containing 325 dwellings. Residents warned council that this would destroy important biodiversity areas, that the area was prone to flooding, traffic would be more congested than ever and that water and sewerage infrastructure was antiquated and inadequate.
Sydney Water, the State Emergency Services and the conservation branch of the NSW Department of Planning confirmed those warnings. This did not stop council proceeding to send the unamended rezoning plan into the Department of Planning for “finalisation” — without even looking at the residents’ submissions.
As appears to be the case in most neighbourhoods, West Leichhardt residents didn’t oppose new housing development as such. They proposed as an alternative the vacant and for-sale Best & Less site adjacent to these four streets and, incidentally, with one frontage on Parramatta Road itself.
The final initial observation is that Fairer Future depends almost entirely on private sector developers for the solutions to housing challenges. Council’s promise of 1000 affordable, social housing units for essential workers, young families and the homeless is a very sad aspiration given the challenges we face. And it is unlikely to be met. As my local Greens councillor says, Fairer Future is a plan for more housing, not more affordable housing.
This initial look at the Fairer Future plans does not take into account the deleterious impacts of this proposed huge development on neighbours and the character of our suburbs — something that will emerge in the coming weeks.
Paul Mortier of Save Marrickville has raised the prospect that the new mooted high-rise development will lead to the clearance of lower-rent housing and traditional café and retail premises.
Councillors haven’t finished with this rush to over-develop our suburbs. They intend to adopt Fairer Future at their August meeting. At the May 21 IWC meeting, they commanded the planners — once Fairer Future is adopted — to start work on incorporating 3000-5000 new dwellings at White Bay, more Parramatta Road development and upzoned development in those suburbs that have so far missed out.
Yes, there are some advantages in Fairer Future: it seeks to protect industrial-zoned lands and most heritage conservation areas, but the price is too high.
What we need is urban planning that maintains the living amenity of existing residents and, god forbid, even improves it and extends it to new residents. Fairer Future fails that test.
[Hall Greenland is a former Leichhardt councillor and a member of the NSW Greens. The community consultation closes on July 6.]