North Ward Meeting 2019
Deputy Mayor Steve Staikos and Councillors Tamara Barth and George Hua, invite North Ward residents to attend a Councillor Ward Meeting to help shape the future of housing and neighbourhood character in Kingston.
Invites will be sent to all North Ward residents in the coming weeks.
Current estimates show that Melbourne will grow to 7.9 million people by 2051. Melbourne can’t keep sprawling outwards, so we’re facing the challenge of how to accommodate more people without losing the character and amenity of our neighbourhoods. Kingston Council has long-planned for population growth to be centred around our key activity centres, close to public transport, shops and services. This has allowed us to protect the neighbourhood character and amenity of our quieter residential streets.
To address these challenges, Council is undertaking a Housing Strategy and Neighbourhood Character Study with consulting firm, Ethos Urban. The Housing Strategy component is a twenty-year plan to manage housing growth and change across all residential areas in Kingston. This strategy also provides a basis to review residential zones across the municipality. We need to undertake this work as we currently have interim zones in place. The new residential zones need to be implemented before the interim zones expire.
The Neighbourhood Character Study involves a detailed assessment of neighbourhood character in Kingston’s residential areas and the creation of design guidelines to influence what new development should look like.
Council has been working collaboratively with our community to develop a first draft of both the Housing Strategy and Neighbourhood Character Study. Kingston Council has held Ward Meetings, community meetings, online and hard-copy surveys, listening posts, guided and self-guided walking tours and established a Community Panel – representing a wide cross-section of Kingston residents.
We’d like your feedback on the draft Housing Strategy and Neighbourhood Character Study.
As Councillors, we ourselves still have some queries about the proposed draft, such as the removal of two protections that General Residential Zone 3 residents currently enjoy under our local planning policy – average lot size subdivisions limited to two dwellings and double storey developments encouraged to the frontage (discourage two storey in the backyard), so we’re keen to hear community feedback before anything is finalised.
