Planning for development in established residential areas

 

The City of Unley is an established inner-metropolitan area of Adelaide. The council subscribes to .id's online community profile - profile.id and social atlas - atlas.id and makes them available to the community via their website.

The population peaked at 47,000 in 1947 and then declined. Since the 1980s the population has been relatively stable with a marginal increase at the last Census.  Recent growth has been due to medium density housing.

A Section 30 review is a requirement of the SA Development Act. It focuses on the changing development needs of an area to ensure that the council’s development plan is appropriate for the future needs of the city.

One of the problems in conducting a Section 30 review in older, established areas is the need to recognise and preserve the areas that define the character of the city, while still allowing for development of an appropriate type to allow the city to grow and increase in diversity.

The City of Unley recently used their .id community profile to assist in conducting their Section 30 review.

David Brown, Principal Policy Planner for the City of Unley

“We needed to map out our strategies for the future, while being sympathetic to the nature and character of our city.  To do this, we looked closely at four major areas of strategy:
·    Economic
·    Environmental
·    Social
·    Residential

We needed to understand Unley’s population trends, how household sizes were changing, dwelling density and dwelling type.  The .id community profile enabled us to look at these issues at a suburb level – so we could recognise key differences within our council boundaries.

 

Note the interesting relationship between the increase in larger households, despite the dwelling stock moving more towards medium density...

Also, consistency is important. When we engage consultants, such as our recent social development strategy conducted by UPRS, we supply consistent demographic data for them to use, so we are not using disparate data sets.”

Which product did they use?

The Unley .id community profile - profile.id supplied the majority of information for the Unley Section 30 review, and will also form the basis for future reviews.