Submission: Future Living Code Amendment
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Future Living Code Amendment, and for the many years of hard work to bring the concept to this point! UFX has keenly awaited consultation on this Code Amendment, and we are pleased to provide our submission supporting the Code Amendment, with some suggested enhancements.
Urban Future Exchange (UFX) is a provocative and politically savvy social enterprise, leading progressive discussion in urban studies and related disciplines, in pursuit of an urban future for South Australia that is healthy, confident, equitable and sustainable.
Our membership is broad and balanced and includes individuals and corporate associate members from the public, private, not-for-profit and academic sectors. Our members have qualifications and expertise in urban planning, law, design, industrial design, business, health, sustainability, industry and policy amongst many others. As such, the UFX provides a unique and diverse view on South Australia’s urban and regional future.
The basis for this submission comes from a workshop held on the 4th of September with a variety of built environment professionals and community members, who contributed a range of ideas for how this Code Amendment can be improved.
The Urban Future Exchange (UFX) is fundamentally supportive of the Future Living Code Amendment. We commend the initiative to promote "gentle density" and create housing options that meet evolving community needs. Our submission seeks to highlight opportunities to improve the accessibility of this housing model, ensuring that it fulfils its potential as a viable, inclusive housing option.
Opportunities
The Future Living Code Amendment offers valuable benefits to urban communities, particularly in achieving increased density while reusing the embodied energy of existing housing stock, preserving heritage buildings and neighbourhood character. We fully support the amendment's objective of providing smaller housing units closer to essential services, which can enhance affordability as well as ageing in place. Although originally aimed at facilitating ageing-in-place, this amendment has broader applications that support diverse living arrangements and housing flexibility.
The creation of a new mechanism for building more housing is undoubtedly a good thing considering the current housing crisis, but it is particularly good in that it provides for smaller housing, located close to services. While ageing in place may have been the original impetus for this work, its implications are much broader, and it can have an important and positive role in alleviating the housing crisis.
We note also that this could overcome the as-yet unresolved issues relating to ancillary accommodation if it were to be applied more broadly, as the question of being “self-contained” would be resolved.
We are also supportive of the development of small dwelling design guidelines to provide clarity to potential developers. This could ideally also be used by DA planners to assist in assessing the more generic Performance Outcomes, if it can be worked into an appropriate legislative framework.
In general, given our support for the concept, our focus is on reducing the barriers to ensure that more co-located housing can be developed.
Issues and Concerns
Ultimately, our concerns with the Code Amendment are that it is too restrictive, and puts unnecessary barriers in the way of positive planning outcomes.
The major barrier is of course that this applies to such a narrow geographic extent. Given that this has evolved from a DPA, it is not surprising that this only applies to specific Councils, but it feels like a missed opportunity. The Code, of course, was intended to remove these types of Council specific policies, and so this feels contrary to the intent of the new system. There are many areas not included in this Code Amendment where co-located housing could have particular benefits, such as North Adelaide, Norwood, Mile End, Croydon and township areas like McLaren Vale.
Given its broad benefits, and the philosophy behind the Code, we believe that the geographical extent of the Code Amendment should be expanded. This would ideally be by transitioning it from an Overlay to General Development Policies. We appreciate that there are reasons why this may not be possible in this Code Amendment, but we encourage consideration of this sooner rather than later.
We expect that car parking would be a key barrier. Needing to create so many new parking spaces would be challenging on many sites, and would divert space that could be used for housing. In particular, we object to the inclusion of visitor parking in Table 1- creating parking that is likely to have very low occupancy would be a waste of space on the site which is counter-productive. We therefore suggest that the visitor parking requirement be removed in order to not prevent the development of otherwise viable co-housing.
Indeed, we would argue that the car parking requirements should be removed entirely. Co-housing is well suited to a car-free lifestyle, and requiring car parking means that this lifestyle is more difficult. Ultimately, the market can determine that if people want to live in a house with off-street parking, they will. Council policies around On-Street Parking can then do the burden of this regulation, rather than adding yet further costs on housing.
If the Commission is unwilling to consider removing car parking requirements overall, perhaps co-housing could be added to Table 2 of Transport, Access and Parking so that in high-frequency public transit area, car parking requirements are removed or reduced.
We are also concerned that there is some ambiguity about whether “stacked” parking is allowed. It is not generally going to be possible to achieve an arrangement where cars are not stacked- so this should be clarified and permitted.
The requirement to include a land division is also a barrier to the development of co-located housing, and seems to add little value to the outcome. Families developing multi-generational housing are likely to be early adopters, and many of them would likely be put off by the requirement to do a land division and then pay tens of thousands of dollars in additional fees that go with that.
There is merit to restricting the nature of land division for co-located housing given its specialised nature, but those restrictions can be applied in an alternative manner that does not put as much of a barrier in place.
In a similar vein, the requirement for communal space may present another barrier. While communal open space is a convenient solution, if suitable areas of private open space can be created, then is this reason enough to refuse the application? We note that the inclusion of communal open space in the definition means that this may lack flexibility, and could lead to a repeat of the ancillary accommodation definition issue.
Another issue is that the lack of DPFs could make it hard for DA planners to assess proposals for co-located housing considering the vague wording of some Performance Outcomes. This could make it difficult to determine what sort of a standard is expected e.g. how convenient is convenient enough to satisfy PO 7.1? Hopefully this potential issue can be solved by design guidelines, however these may need to be enforceable under the Code.
In terms of urban greening, we note that the usual Performance Outcomes about soft landscaping, and the Urban Tree Canopy Overlay requirements are applicable. This is positive and supportive, although we also note that the soft landscaping DPF’s generally clarify specifically that the site area should use average site areas for group dwellings and residential flat buildings, so co-housing should be added to this list for clarity.
Another, more minor question is whether the location of utility connections on such small sites may create challenges? Do utility connections need to be nominated at Planning Consent to show that this is feasible?
Recommendations
In light of the points raised, we recommend the following adjustments to the Code Amendment:
Remove or reduce geographical restrictions by transitioning from an Overlay to General Development Policies to support broader application;
Reduce or eliminate car parking requirements, especially in areas with good public transportation access to facilitate co-located housing;
Remove the land division requirement for co-located housing;
Adjust the definition of co-located housing so that it does not require communal open space, and review the proposed PO 4.1 accordingly; and,
Clarify policies on car parking convenience and pedestrian access to offer clear guidance to designers and DA planners.
We believe these recommendations will contribute to the successful implementation of the Future Living Code Amendment, supporting a more flexible, inclusive, and community-friendly approach to urban density.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this submission.