Dear M9 Mayors and CEOs,
The federal government has asked the states and territories to overhaul their planning and zoning regulations to help build 1 million homes across the country:
One way that councils can support this, particularly the M9 group of inner city councils, is to collaborate to eliminate parking minimums from their planning schemes, because parking minimums increase the cost of housing.
Ideally, M9 councils would also impose parking maximums, of e.g. 1 bay per 100 m2 of floor area, on properties within the Principal Public Transport Network (PPTN), to reduce the rate of growth of peak hour congestion in the inner city.
In parallel, Strong Towns has called on cities to reform their planning schemes to eliminate parking minimums, communicating via this powerful video:
Streets Alive Yarra Inc. understands that changes to planning schemes cost time, money, and political capital. One way of decreasing risk is to collaborate to share the burden of these costs. For example, the reform could be managed as an M9-wide project, and implemented consistently across the whole inner city.
The intervention of the federal government offers an ideal opportunity to accelerate reform at the state and local level, let’s not waste it.
Streets Alive Yarra Inc. would be delighted to meet to provide further detail or explanation of the themes raised in this email.
Regards,
Jeremy Lawrence, RPEng
President, Streets Alive Yarra Inc.
Email sent 13th February 2023