South Yarra and Windsor among 25 new ‘activity centres’ identified by Labor for higher-density housing
The Victorian government has announced affluent suburbs such as Prahran, South Yarra and Windsor are among the final 25 areas where it will seize planning controls in an effort to increase housing density.
Two local government areas – Melbourne and Yarra – have also been named “city-wide activity centres” to allow for the rezoning of under-utilised areas.
The government has said it hopes to add 300,000 homes across all 50 centres by 2051, but has not outlined specific height limits for each area.
The premier, Jacinta Allan, said the locations had been chosen due to public transport capacity, access to jobs and services and environmental considerations.
“It just makes sense to build more homes close to these stations, close to these existing services, because they’re also close to jobs, to schools and other opportunities that families look for when they’re looking at buying a home,” she said on Thursday.
Allan made the announcement in Noble Park, which has one of five train stations along the Cranbourne-Pakenham line to be named “activity centres”, along with Caulfield, Dandenong, Springvale and Yarraman.
Bentleigh, Ormond, Glenhuntly, Caulfield and Ormond, on the Frankston train line, will also be rezoned, as well as Elsternwick, Prahran and Windsor on the neighbouring Sandringham line, and South Yarra station, which serves as an interchange for the four suburban lines.
When it announced the plan last year, along with the first 25 zones, the government proposed buildings of between 10 and 20 storeys around the stations and “gentle, scaled height limits and more low-rise apartments and townhouses” of between three and six storeys in the “walkable catchments” nearby.
But the government’s statement on Thursday did not specify height limits.
The new centres also include Chadstone, which is now serviced by buses, as well as Ashburton, East Malvern, Holmesglen and Riversdale and Willison stations in the east.
Locations on the Alamein line will be classified as smaller activity centres to accommodate “modest growth” due to reduced capacity of the train service, as has Bentleigh.
An activity centre is also flagged for the tram stop at Kew Junction.
In the north, Brunswick, Coburg and the tram corridors of High St and St Georges Road in Thornbury have also been listed.
For Melbourne and Yarra, the government will take a different approach, instead considering upzoning of specific sites.
“There’s already quite a bit of height in those municipalities, so we’ll be going street by street, block by block, looking at where we can, with those councils, unlock that unused space that’s sitting there, particularly space that is close to those great public transport connections,” Allan said.
She braced for further opposition to the plan, which when it was announced sparked a highly publicised rally in Brighton, an affluent suburb that was slated for rezoning.
The planning minister, Sonya Kilkenny, said the 50 activity centres will be subject to community consultation.
She noted the government had changed its plans for 10 existing centres, where 60,000 new homes are expected to be built by 2051, after this process.
“We listened to community,” Kilkenny said.
She said it was her expectation planning controls for all 50 will be in place from next year.
The opposition’s planning spokesperson, Richard Riordan, said neighbourhoods were “now under threat”.
“It’s not going to resemble the Melbourne and the city that everyone has loved and has made us one of the most livable cities for a long time,” he said.
“There is more to housing and the way people want to live than being on top of a train station in a 20-storey tower or in a once-leafy street now filled with six-storey apartment blocks. That is not the Melbourne that people voted for.”
Liberal MP James Newbury, who led the protest against the plans in his Brighton electorate last year, described it as the “longest political suicide note in Victoria’s history”.
The 25 new activity centres are: