Leading Melbourne urban planners have cautiously welcomed a fresh blueprint for Victoria's development but say the government must take action once it is finalised.
The government announced Plan Victoria, late last year.
Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny said the government had already announced "bold reforms", in seeking to build 800,000 new homes in the next decade.
"But it's just the beginning - a new plan for Victoria will give Victorians a once in a generation opportunity to have a say on how we shape our cities, towns, regions and communities for decades to come," Ms Kilkenny said.
By 2050, Victoria's population is expected to exceed 10 million, with eight million people living in Melbourne alone.
Successive governments developed Melbourne 2030 and Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 to shape the city, but have fallen well short of accommodating at least 70 per cent of housing growth within its established suburbs.
Melbourne University Urban Planning associate professor Crystal Legacy said Plan Victoria was picking up the fact there had been significant population increases in regional centres.
"From a broader planning perspective, previous plans have put in place urban growth boundaries and Green Wedges - Melbourne 2030 did that," associate professor Legacy said.
"I think we have to consider very carefully how we will prioritise these lands; agricultural land is incredibly important, not only for economic productivity, but also food resilience."
Associate professor Legacy said her fear was strategic planning documents and processes tended to focus on the bigger infrastructure items like housing and transport, while open space and agricultural land issues were relegated to a "second or third tier" consideration.
For 20 years, strategic plans for Melbourne had been about concentrating development where jobs and services were located, she said.
"If you look at urban development, over the last 20 years, in the context of all these plans we have had, it's really, really hard to see how they have really helped us out," she said.
"We live in a very market-dominated planning system, we tend to blame the planning system for our outcomes but we need stronger and more transparent planning.
"We need planning that stands up to the power of large developers, as well."
Municipal Association of Victoria president David Clark said his organisation welcomed a plan for the whole state but said it also needed to be nuanced enough to consider the regions.
"Metropolitan Melbourne needs a plan in its own, we fully get that, but you can't just do a second hand job on the regions, it absolutely has to be a proper plan," Cr Clark said.
He said there were also concerns about loss of productive agricultural land to housing, on the outskirts of cities, such as to the west of Ballarat.
"It's building on some of its most productive land, that's its (council's) challenge," he said.
He said the government had to be given its due in saying it would carry out the study.
"The worst thing we could end up with is some general directions, which is what we have got now, and some population targets for each municipality," Cr Clark. "That would take us nowhere, in terms of a planning sense."
Director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University Jago Dodson said it was "timely" to take stock on planning for Melbourne's future.
"There is a real weakness in Plan Melbourne, it was developed and released in 2017," professor Dodson said.
"Little more than 12 months after that we saw the announcement of the Suburban Rail Loop, which essentially required a rewrite of the plan because of the extent and scale of that project."
"I really hope that it is not just accommodating business as usual, but it will bring some real transformative vision and thinking for the state," professor Jago said.
"I hope it will bring a range of voices, perspectives and actors into the consultation process, and it won't be another plan, cooked up in the back rooms of Spring Street (Parliament)."
He said the real challenge with plans was their implementation.
"In the modern era, governments quite like to have freedom of movement, in terms of the decisions they make," professor Jago said.
"As circumstances change they want some flexibility to respond to the political imperatives of the day - that can conflict with, or weaken, the capacity for long-term planning."
That resulted in "episodic and haphazard" responses that "goes with the flow" and followed rather than led, he said.
Andrew Miller
I'm a general reporter with Stock & Land, with a special interest in irrigation issues. I completed my cadetship, with the Age, in 1980. Over my career, I've worked for ABC radio news (Mt Isa, Qld) and at provincial and suburban newspapers.
I'm a general reporter with Stock & Land, with a special interest in irrigation issues. I completed my cadetship, with the Age, in 1980. Over my career, I've worked for ABC radio news (Mt Isa, Qld) and at provincial and suburban newspapers.
