Monday, December 06, 2010

Voters defend the quarter-acre dream

 This is worth a read and shows the Liberals approach to urban planning.

To read the full story click on the TITLE above.


But on Saturday the suburbs hit back, attracted to Baillieu's promise to return more planning control to local communities, overturn Labor's "keep Melbourne moving" clearway restrictions outside arterial shopping strips and to shift population expansion away from suburban infill to new growth areas farther out. The Liberals vowed to cut the infrastructure charges on greenfield developers, arguing that the "decentralising of jobs to outer urban areas is of major long-term importance to Melbourne".

Second, the housing market is refusing to respond to the mining-fuelled immigration boom that has pushed population growth to its fastest rate since the 60s. And it's not just the mining states. Melbourne has been growing by 93,500 people a year, or 1600 a week. That has generated an unprecedented 200,000 housing supply gap that ANZ economists figure could widen to 400,000 dwellings by 2015.

 The weak supply response is extraordinary given Australia has virtually unlimited available land. The problem is it's tied up in red tape. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says Australia's housing supply "is heavily restricted by existing regulations", including limits on infill density and on city fringe land release. Residential land development is "legally complex and time consuming".

Comment: These are just a couple of paragraphs from the article.


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