In late 2024, the Victorian Government announced an additional 50 'train and tram zone' activity centres to help deliver more than 300,000 new homes across Melbourne by 2051. For young families and first-time buyers priced out of Melbourne's inner suburbs, it should sound like good news. For residents already living in those suburbs, it feels like something else entirely.
A further 25 activity centres were identified in October 2024, and included a range of centres along existing train and tram routes, particularly focused on well-serviced areas in the middle and inner eastern, southeastern and western suburbs. The government has finalised planning controls for the first 25 zones, which include Brunswick and Coburg. The new controls seek to facilitate the development of 60,000 new homes within 10 activity centres and their catchments by 2051.
The scale of what the government is proposing here cannot be overstated. The Victorian Government's commitments in Victoria's Housing Statement: The Decade Ahead – 2024 – 2034 includes support for the construction of 800,000 homes in Victoria over the next decade, through a range of planning and land-use reforms. This is not incremental change; it is a fundamental shift in how Melbourne is built.
The case for urgency
The economic logic is straightforward. Grattan Institute modelling shows that if Victoria hits the government's housing targets, rents could be 13 per cent lower than they otherwise would be by 2034. Infrastructure costs for a new home in an established suburb can be between half and a quarter as much as the same home on the urban fringe. In other words, building apartments near trains saves money and creates more affordable housing. Similar reforms in Auckland, starting in 2016, contributed to a home building boom that reduced rents by 28%.
The government is right to emphasise that Melbourne cannot solve its housing problem by building more houses on distant fringes. The Neighbourhood Residential Zone – the most restrictive residential zone in Victoria – covers more than 42% of residential land within ten kilometres of the Melbourne CBD. This zoning restriction has crippled supply in exactly the places where Australians most want to live: near jobs, services, and public transport.
The streamlining of approvals also addresses a real problem. The introduction in 2001 of the ResCode provisions, which control medium-density housing, had quietened community unrest about unit development housing that had troubled state governments throughout the 1990s. However, the system's promise of customised outcomes to reflect character in individual areas came at a cost in terms of certainty and processing times. Developers and councils both report frustration with glacial approval processes that can take years and produce inconsistent outcomes.
The legitimate concerns
Yet the pace of these reforms has triggered genuine anxiety in affected suburbs, and not all of it is reflexive NIMBYism.
In Brunswick and Coburg, residents and community groups are raising alarm about infrastructure that is already stretched. They are being introduced without fully addressing safety issues, infrastructure strain, transport pressure or proper community consultation. Specific complaints include water mains that leak, sewerage systems that overflow after heavy rain, and traffic conditions that residents say are already unsafe.
Coburg High and surrounding schools are already at or beyond capacity. Childcare waitlists are growing. Maternal and child health services overwhelmed. There is no plan for new schools or expanded early-learning facilities to match projected population growth. These are not trivial concerns. Building 300,000 homes is meaningless if the people living in them cannot access schools or health services.
More fundamentally, many residents feel that the planning process itself has been hijacked. The new system removes decision-making authority from local councils in favour of state-level ministers. If a proposal meets the numerical standards of the code, councils must approve it, and residents lose the right to appeal. Developers can now go directly to the state government, bypassing local consultation entirely.
In one case, a nine-storey apartment building in Brunswick was approved by the planning minister within 24 hours of local council voting to oppose it. This is not a system designed to reflect community values; it is a system designed to remove friction from development approvals. The question is whether removing that friction serves the public interest or merely the interests of developers and the state budget.
The political calculation
The Opposition has been clear about its opposition. The party has committed to tearing up the plans if it wins the state election in November. The Brunswick Residents Network said it was concerned the area's environmental and historical character and its liveability would be lost under the new plans. The state is now attempting to aid more developers to easily get permits by cutting out the process with council and residents. BRN said it was blindsided and perplexed by the proposed 16-storey height limits on some narrow roads away from Sydney Road, such as around Albert and Thomas streets.
Yet support for housing densification is not trivial either. Ultimately there is no way for Victoria to achieve its housing goals without boosting housing supply in established suburbs. In the face of local opposition, similar efforts in NSW to boost density around train stations have proved popular with the electorate. Young Melburnians struggling to save a deposit, retirees wanting to downsize without leaving their neighbourhoods, and families desperate for smaller units all stand to benefit. For them, community opposition to new supply simply means they cannot afford to live in the suburbs they want.
The genuine tension here is between two groups of voters: existing residents who value neighbourhood character and local control, and aspiring residents locked out of those same neighbourhoods by supply constraints. The government has calculated that the latter group is larger and more politically important, especially among younger voters.
What comes next
It is understood that short term actions (likely within the next 6 months) will include the identification of 25 more centres, as well as the finalisation and gazettal of the new planning scheme controls for the pilot 10 activity centres. The government intends to move quickly, before the November state election, to lock in reforms that would be politically difficult to reverse.
The honest answer is that nobody knows for certain whether this approach will work. Auckland's experience is encouraging but not determinative. Different cities have different constraints, different markets, and different political cultures. Victoria's infrastructure is certainly more stretched than Auckland's was when it began its reforms.
What seems clear is that the government has made a trade-off: speed and supply for community input and local democracy. That might be the right call. Victoria does need more housing, and it needs it faster than the old planning system could deliver. But it is still a trade-off, and anyone claiming otherwise is not being honest about what these reforms actually do.
For now, the next 300,000 Victorians have been promised homes near good transport and jobs. How many of them will actually be built, how good they will be, and what their communities will look like remains to be written.