Baillieu Reviewing Green Wedges, Creating Replacement Melbourne 2030

It seems a new ‘metropolitan planning strategy’ is being created, that will simultaneously review the green wedges, looking at the potential for the them to absorb some more development. Just a few more drags of the ciggie for the ‘green lungs’ of Melbourne eh. Meanwhile this ‘new' strategy:

''We have got to get it right,'' Planning Minister Matthew Guy told The Age. ''It is not about trashing everything in the past, it is about creating a document that has broad community input, and not sham input … about how Melbourne is going to change.

Given this is the first information we’ve had on it, and that Baillieu is developing it within his own office (not the planning minister’s office?) with his recently headhunted man, David Vorchheimer (got to be a big job for one guy?), I don’t know how well this ‘broad community input’ is really going.

Will it be different from directing development to activity centres and transport hubs? Will it do something positive like lay down a UGB that actually respects the ‘B’ part of the acronym? Let’s wait and see. Also see more on the planning minister in this article from the Age’s Jason Dowling.