In this op-ed, Jo Clay, ACT Greens spokesperson for planning and Member for Ginninderra, asks: What kind of Canberra do you want in ten years’ time? What about in fifty?
The Greens want a vibrant city where people can move around easily. We want to preserve our remaining habitat and make sure we have plenty of trees and green spaces near where we live and work. We want a city where everyone has a home. We want a zero-emissions electric city that can deal with the heatwaves and flooding already locked into our rapidly changing climate.
But in addition to the climate and extinction crises, Canberra is struggling with homelessness, a housing affordability crisis, a booming population and a growing gap between rich and poor. Most cities in the world are facing the same challenges and we must find a way through that looks after our people and our planet.
We Greens back high-quality densification, including the “missing middle” – medium density housing the community have been calling for. This is the only way to tackle the problems we are facing. We need planning and design settings for a compact city that is less reliant on cars. We need careful densification through townhouses and apartments that are close to services. We need green spaces close to home. We need housing options that support people to stay in their community as they age.
The reality is our current planning and development system doesn’t allow us to do what we need to do. We have had a developer-led system run rife. We’ve had building quality problems. Congestion is growing three times faster than any other mainland Australian capital. Public and active transport, schools and services have not kept pace with population growth. We have a mismatch between where the jobs are and where the homes are. Our cheapest homes are on the outskirts of Canberra, locking families and young workers into expensive car-based commutes. We typically either have high-density units or enormous houses for shrinking families and very little in between.
The ACT Parliamentary and Governing Agreement commits to a minimum 70% of Canberra’s urban development occurring within our existing footprint. We Greens want this to be 80% with a view to no more sprawl. We’ve secured a target of 30% tree canopy coverage and plenty of green spaces to offset the heat island effect. We are boosting habitat connectivity. Greens MLA Johnathan Davis is calling for immediate ways to relieve our housing crisis, like regulation of AirBnb to put more homes back into the long-term rental market. Greens Minister Rebecca Vassarotti has increased funding for emergency homelessness services and is rolling out regulatory change for better building quality. Greens Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury is reinstating the rent relief fund and ensuring renters have better living conditions and security. The Australian Greens are working on federal funding for public housing and the tax and superannuation settings that have locked in housing as an investment for some, not a human right for all.
We also need our planning system to provide the choices Canberrans want. Over 80% of Canberra’s residential land is in the RZ1 zone, which mostly allows for single detached houses. This largely prohibits medium density options like separately titled dual occupancies, town houses, low-rise apartments and linked shared space homes.
Many parts of the community are agitating for change. Some argue we should abolish RZ1 altogether, like Auckland did. Some call for more targeted upzoning around group centres and transport corridors which leaves most of RZ1 alone. Some call for inclusionary zoning that mandates or incentivises minimum affordable housing in all new developments. We’ve seen demonstration housing concepts like Manor House (four linked but independent residences in the footprint of a traditional family home). We’ve seen new ways of living, such as cohousing. Many of these options could be combined and some areas might be excluded, like heritage zones. All would require easy access to services and great public and active transport. We need to keep plenty of trees and open space, both on private blocks and in our public realm.
We are four years into a major Planning Review. Some changes are being made to densify. But the Greens are looking for a robust conversation in Canberra about how to densify. This conversation is time critical. We know we need a “missing middle” – it a feature of the 2018 Housing Choices Collaboration Hub and most Canberrans agree it’s a gap. But I’ve heard questions from many people during this Territory Plan and District Strategy about how we do this. What are the yellow highlighted areas in the District Strategy for ‘possible future development’? How will those change?
On Thursday in the Legislative Assembly, I put forward a motion calling for a committee to consider these questions. I was disappointed that my ACT Labor and Canberra Liberal colleagues chose to delay consideration of the motion, which risks deferring it until the second half of the year, after the new Territory Plan is released. We need that community conversation and it needs to happen now. By the time my motion comes back after this delay, an open conversation, through the Committee, won’t take place until the latter part of this year, if it happens at all. That’s after the planning reforms commence.
The Canberra of the future is not just a destination we arrive at. It is a future we create. The way we get there matters. Why can’t we discuss it, in open and transparent way, with good information and good will?
Jo Clay, ACT Greens spokesperson for planning and Member for Ginninderra
