With growth in the spotlight, what type of city do we want?

It is likely to sharpen the debate on the city's future, with a former state government urban designer warning that pushing boundaries further back could come at the expense of revitalising the CBD.

On the flip side, the Victorian opposition launched a new policy today aimed at helping local governments open more regional greenfields sites for residential development. As fears about housing affordability grow, they maintain the current building boom is integral to a healthy economy.

A document summing up public views on proposed growth areas was published by the City of Ballarat this month.

It includes submissions on three potential greenfields sites: a northern area around Mount Rowan, a western extension to the existing urban growth zone, as well as a large north-western site straddling Remembrance Drive.

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH MORE GROWTH ON THE FRINGES? OR WOULD YOU PREFER TO SEE MORE OPTIONS IN THE CITY? HAVE YOUR SAY BELOW

Councillors identified the western and the northern parcels of land as the key areas for potential growth zones in a vote at the October 2019 council meeting.

Two other growth investigation areas - the north-western zone and another zone to the east around Warrenheip - were dropped at the time on a council officer recommendation.

The "submissions summary" now published on the council's MySay site suggests the north-western area is now back on the radar. The document cites 11 contributions relating to the area, which has one principal landowner, all in favour of it being used for residential development.

No views were received nor sought for the potential eastern growth zone. A council spokesperson said landowners both within the proposed greenfield sites, as well as those adjoining the existing urban growth zone, were approached for comment.

The question of how the city accommodates its growing population has been thrown into focus in the past year, with a surging rate of land sales and building approvals in growth zones.

Significant government stimulus, in particular the federal government HomeBuilder grant, has played a major part in the faster-than-anticipated rate of newbuilds.

In March, the latest month for which figures are available, the number of new homes approved in Ballarat hit a record high with 250 approvals within the month - the equivalent of more than eight every day. It's replicating a trend seen across Victoria - if anything the growth in Ballarat and Geelong outstripping elsewhere.

The latest population statistics, which go up to the end of June last year, put the current size of the Ballarat municipality at an estimated 111,648. The rate of growth remained a little under 2 per cent annually, but the full impact of the predicted rush to the regions prompted by the pandemic was yet to fully unfold at the last estimate.

The Ballarat Strategy 2040, published six years ago, projected 160,000 residents by 2040. Recent data suggests that size may be reached even earlier: the CEO of the City of Ballarat Evan King recently told The Courier the city had already passed the half-way mark of its 20-year growth projections.

READ MORE: Ballarat population soars almost by the size of Warrnambool since 2001

Meanwhile, rates of infill - or housing development within existing residential areas - have not increased as intended. A key plank of the Ballarat Strategy had been to ensure greenfield growth was evenly balanced with new homes in existing residential areas. However, the vast majority of Ballarat's residential growth has been in the growth area to the west of the city, with that proportion accelerating in recent years.

Even with a questionable yardstick used by the city's planning department - a technicality means many newbuilds on greenfields sites are counted as infill - the proportion is still much lower than the 50/50 strategic goal set out in 2015.

This week, external planning experts have said they are concerned opening up further land for growth could stymie development within existing urban areas of the city.

The debate over this key aspect of Ballarat's future is likely to intensify over the coming months, keeping concerns over the pace of infrastructure development front of mind. The impact of more greenfields development on the evolution of the CBD - with the concern new retail centres could more people out of the centre of town at a time when new life is being sought for the centre of town - is another key discussion point.

It comes after the City of Ballarat recently announced more detailed plans to kickstart the rejuvenation of Bakery Hill, pinpointed as a key area for bringing more people and businesses to the town centre.

The City of Ballarat did not specifically confirm it was considering opening up land. It simply said the next council report - scheduled for midway this year - would recommend detailed boundaries.

THE GROWTH PROCESS

One of the guiding principles is that planning authorities should accommodate projected growth levels for at least 15 years. According to the Department of Environment Land, Water and Planning, this needs to be done "with a clear direction on the areas where growth should occur."

Some local governments may interpret this as opening up greenfield growth areas to satisfy the demand. Steve Thorne, a former urban design director with the Victorian State Government, said those growth areas could also be earmarked away from the fringes.

"It doesn't mean you need rural land, that can be vertical as well as horizontal," he said. "It doesn't presuppose a particular type of development.

"The problem is that we have so refined the planning and legal laws around development that it is much easier to sprawl than it is to do anything else."

Professor Michael Buxton, who gave a well attended talk at the Ballaarat Mechanics Institute last month, said the argument was a spurious one, used by the Victorian government in 2004 to justify an expansion of the Melbourne urban growth boundary.

He cited a RMIT study, which suggested an increase in residential density from 12 to 20 lots per hectare "would have provided the growth area land needed, providing 61 per cent more dwellings and 35 per cent land savings from the business case."

However, the Ballarat Strategy 2015 had identified three potential growth areas within the city: the area around Mount Rowan, the western area beyond Lucas and Bonshaw, and the eastern growth area. The fourth north-western area was introduced at the request of a planning panel in 2016, looking at local planning policy.

An assessment led by external planning company Hansen Partnership ranked all the growth investigation areas for their suitability. Among the criteria considered was access to the CBD, to existing employment hubs, as well as public transport connections, the area's ability to be serviced with water and sewerage and other community infrastructure costs.

The northern area was ranked first with 37 points against the criteria, the western extension next with 32 points, the eastern area third place with 30 points, while the northwestern growth investigation was fourth with 29 points.

According to the report, substantial costs in servicing the northwestern area with critical infrastructure brought that GIA down, but said its opening up could happen when other available growth front land "is nearing full development".

At that meeting, councillors agreed to put the north and west areas for future growth to the planning minister.

In a further council resolution last September, councillors agreed to work with private developers in the technical planning process for the growth areas, including precinct structure plans.

Since then, with land availability in the growth areas reducing fast, and approvals going up, the issue has come under the microscope more and more.

The argument for the status quo model - expanding growth zones - is largely economic. It will be pushed strongly by the city's powerful developer lobby. In Ballarat, with its largely flat topography on the urban fringes, residential development is relatively simple on the urban fringes compared to other areas.

If the availability of housing is kept ticking over, prices will stay relatively low compared to metropolitan Melbourne using a tried and tested model, the argument goes.

Shifts to this status quo are likely to be resisted as happened this month with the state government's announcement of a so-called "windfall tax" for landowners who benefit when their property is rezoned.

Such is the demand for new homes at the moment, the Liberal Nationals opposition coalition has just announced it would allocate $5 million to a "planning flying squad" to help councils open 50,000 new lots in regional areas.

However, the idea is likely to meet short shrift with members of Charter 29, an alliance of planning professionals who are increasingly unhappy about the state's pattern of development.

Both Professor Buxton and Mr Thorne are part of it. With extensive experience at a senior level within the state government, and now the director of private company Design Urban, Mr Thorne explained the reasons behind the group, which is named after Melbourne's 1929 Plan of Development.

READ MORE: The future shape of the city

"We come together really concerned that there was a whole lot of state government policy and a lot of words that weren't translating into things that were being delivered on the ground, in the growth areas in particular," he said.

In the words of its website: "If implementation of the 1929 plan - and other metropolitan strategies that have followed it - had been carried out with greater determination and resolution, Melbourne today would be more compact, better functioning and a more liveable city for all its citizens".

Mr Thorne told The Courier: "What we are seeing in many regional cities is a Melbourne-centric, suburban pattern in these places and it's completely inappropriate.

"These days you can't even swing a cat in your back yard, let alone grow anything. Part of the problem is we're getting smaller and smaller lots with bigger and bigger houses and at some point something's got to give."

No regional city is the same, and Mr Thorne makes the point that areas that lack the large tracts of flat land on the fringes have forced developers to be more inventive in their use of available land in existing areas.

"Wodonga has pretty steep country around it, so it is cost prohibitive to design into those places," he said. "Some of the infill that has happened in Wodonga is outstanding, it's really very very good. It's that thing about not releasing the pressure so we have more intensive development."

The City of Greater Bendigo has an urban growth boundary which will not be looked at until 2024 - and Mr Thorne believes Ballarat planners should be looking at doing the same.

"It's been proven the world over in contexts like North America, when there is an urban growth boundary, you get more intense development, you get better social outcomes, and, the most difficult thing of all, you get job growth. People want to invest in them."

"The further we sprawl, the lower the density that we sprawl out, the more we rely on motor cars to get to anything."

"Greening for the sake of it, when you are still requiring people to drive everywhere to assemble the bits of their lives, is actually just - to use the old cliché - lipstick on a pig. It doesn't matter because we are still expending all of that carbon."

Professor Buxton cited a boundary framework recently adopted by Adelaide City Council as a model that could and should be looked at and be adapted elsewhere.

Mr Thorne does not believe that a greater push towards environmentally sustainable design (ESD) - which councillors approved technical preparations for earlier this month - would compensate for pushing the growth boundaries further out.

"[ESD] should happen anyway. That's a non-negotiable. We should be doing that anyway to deal with climate change.

"By the way, there's less impact on the environment when we have slightly higher densities, because people not only have choice in how they live, they have choice in how they move. And suddenly things like buses become viable because there are more people and potentially more customers."

He said the shopping centres cropping up in growth zones could have a profound impact on CBD life.

"In a relatively small place like Ballarat, the city centre is still the prime place that needs support. At the moment, retail internationally is going through a fundamental change. All of that has been happening at the expense of city centres. Melbourne is a case in point - it's really struggling to get people back in the middle."

Charter 29, would, he hoped, try to nudge authorities into a better way of doing things.

"We look back to what worked yesterday and try to replicate it, instead of saying 'well, what's the kind of future you want? How do we want our children to live?'"

"If you look to America, if you look to New Zealand, they're very good examples of how you do it differently and sadly we are just not learning from that.

"I have to say Victoria is slipping further and further behind. We've become lazy and we've actually got to pull ourselves back again, and get back to innovation and doing things properly."

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH MORE GROWTH ON THE FRINGES? OR WOULD YOU PREFER HIGHER DENSITY DEVELOPMENT IN THE CITY? HAVE YOUR SAY BELOW

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