After a hectic 18 months of debate about building heights in Hobart, it’s time to draw breath before locking ourselves into new height constraints that we are likely to regret in the months and years to come.
Let’s be clear. No one, least of all me, is arguing that Hobart should turn into some of sort of “Shanghai by the Derwent” with skyscrapers hundreds of metres tall.
But neither do we want to impose a building height limit than turns our city into a monoculture of buildings, stopping the current renaissance of our inner-city in its tracks.
This is because the effect of unrealistic building caps – particularly at the low heights proposed by the Hobart City Council’s Planning Committee at their meeting on Monday night – will be to restrict available floor area, thus forcing developers to eschew design aesthetics in favour of maximising what little space they have left available.
Unfortunately, what has developed over recent months in Hobart is a form of bias where developers who propose even moderately tall buildings are pilloried and hounded out of town, while at the same time there is literally a race to the bottom by some to cap building heights.
This week’s ramming through Hobart City Council’s Planning Committee of last-minute changes to the proposed building height regulations exemplifies this movement.
It appears the last-minute amendments from the Lord Mayor were drawn-up without council officer review or wider community consultation, and even some of the Aldermen on the Planning Committee were blind-sided.
It serves to further undermine public confidence that the decision-making process undertaken by some Aldermen is anything more than lowest common denominator populism as opposed to genuine evidence-based decision making.
These last-minute amendments also make a disrespectful mockery of the process Council has undertaken so far on the height issue, including of the work of Council’s own officers and consultants.
Remember that Council engaged and paid a consultant to write a report on building heights. This report recommended building heights in Hobart be as high as 75 metres, which is just slightly higher than the height of the new RHH, now the tallest building in the Hobart CBD.
Subsequently, Council officers decided that a maximum of 45 metres plus up to 15 discretionary metres (60 metres total) be applied.
And then, on Monday night, the Lord Mayor, without any consultation, reduced this by more than 20 percent to 45 metres across the central business zone.
To the best of my knowledge, no peer review has been undertaken of Mr Woolley’s work – or of the Council’s subsequent changes to it – and certainly not of the Lord Mayor’s arbitrary and personal attempt to further constrain building heights.
Nor has there been any sort of economic impact analysis on the proposed height limits in terms of project viability. Consequently, if projects are rendered unviable as a result of these amendments, the reinvigoration of our city will effectively stop.
Perhaps worst of all, there has been no consideration or investigation of what building height limits would mean for housing development in the CBD, at a time when it is badly needed.
The world over, it is acknowledged that urban infill and the creation of new inner-city living is preferable to urban sprawl – it’s even Green Party policy last time I checked – but here in Hobart we are seemingly intent on making this as difficult as possible.
As an illustration, this week we have the ridiculous situation that, on very day the Planning Committee voted to dramatically curtail building heights and housing availability in Hobart, the University of Tasmania conceded that it doesn’t have enough housing for its students, who have been advised to look on Gumtree for options.
Rather than ram through radical new height limits, Council should defer consideration of the matter while proper analysis of the implications of the proposed changes is undertaken.
A change of this nature should not be rushed.
We’ve been debating this issue for more than 18 months – a few extra months to get it right won’t hurt anybody.
The Property Council of Australia supports a building height limit but not without due-diligence and proper factual analysis.
Let’s be clear. No one, least of all me, is arguing that Hobart should turn into some of sort of “Shanghai by the Derwent” with skyscrapers hundreds of metres tall.
But neither do we want to impose a building height limit than turns our city into a monoculture of buildings, stopping the current renaissance of our inner-city in its tracks.
This is because the effect of unrealistic building caps – particularly at the low heights proposed by the Hobart City Council’s Planning Committee at their meeting on Monday night – will be to restrict available floor area, thus forcing developers to eschew design aesthetics in favour of maximising what little space they have left available.
Unfortunately, what has developed over recent months in Hobart is a form of bias where developers who propose even moderately tall buildings are pilloried and hounded out of town, while at the same time there is literally a race to the bottom by some to cap building heights.
This week’s ramming through Hobart City Council’s Planning Committee of last-minute changes to the proposed building height regulations exemplifies this movement.
It appears the last-minute amendments from the Lord Mayor were drawn-up without council officer review or wider community consultation, and even some of the Aldermen on the Planning Committee were blind-sided.
It serves to further undermine public confidence that the decision-making process undertaken by some Aldermen is anything more than lowest common denominator populism as opposed to genuine evidence-based decision making.
These last-minute amendments also make a disrespectful mockery of the process Council has undertaken so far on the height issue, including of the work of Council’s own officers and consultants.
Remember that Council engaged and paid a consultant to write a report on building heights. This report recommended building heights in Hobart be as high as 75 metres, which is just slightly higher than the height of the new RHH, now the tallest building in the Hobart CBD.
Subsequently, Council officers decided that a maximum of 45 metres plus up to 15 discretionary metres (60 metres total) be applied.
And then, on Monday night, the Lord Mayor, without any consultation, reduced this by more than 20 percent to 45 metres across the central business zone.
To the best of my knowledge, no peer review has been undertaken of Mr Woolley’s work – or of the Council’s subsequent changes to it – and certainly not of the Lord Mayor’s arbitrary and personal attempt to further constrain building heights.
Nor has there been any sort of economic impact analysis on the proposed height limits in terms of project viability. Consequently, if projects are rendered unviable as a result of these amendments, the reinvigoration of our city will effectively stop.
Perhaps worst of all, there has been no consideration or investigation of what building height limits would mean for housing development in the CBD, at a time when it is badly needed.
The world over, it is acknowledged that urban infill and the creation of new inner-city living is preferable to urban sprawl – it’s even Green Party policy last time I checked – but here in Hobart we are seemingly intent on making this as difficult as possible.
As an illustration, this week we have the ridiculous situation that, on very day the Planning Committee voted to dramatically curtail building heights and housing availability in Hobart, the University of Tasmania conceded that it doesn’t have enough housing for its students, who have been advised to look on Gumtree for options.
Rather than ram through radical new height limits, Council should defer consideration of the matter while proper analysis of the implications of the proposed changes is undertaken.
A change of this nature should not be rushed.
We’ve been debating this issue for more than 18 months – a few extra months to get it right won’t hurt anybody.
The Property Council of Australia supports a building height limit but not without due-diligence and proper factual analysis.
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