An activity centre is centre with a focus on retail, employment, services, housing, transport and social interaction. They range in size and intensity of use from smaller neighbourhood-scale shopping strips and centres to larger hubs and precincts that serve a broader community.

Activity centres are shopping strips and community hubs; centres that play a vital role in daily life offering shopping, employment and access to community facilities.

Neighbourhood activity centres in Stonnington are smaller local centres spread across the municipality and consist of a mix of high streets and villages, each with a distinct character.

Increasingly, activity centres and their surrounding residential areas are accommodating housing growth, supporting people to live closer to a range of shops, services and transport.

A Framework is a strategic document that identifies a vision, built form objectives, strategies and future actions to support the growth and development of neighbourhood activity centres.

Considered planning and urban design guidance can play a significant role in generating successful and well-functioning places and lively neighbourhoods.

Housing growth is expected to continue and intensify across Melbourne, including across Stonnington. Accommodating growth with good access to transport, shops, jobs and services supports more compact sustainable neighbourhoods. However, it is important that new development is well designed and responds positively to its context to enhance sense of place and our neighbourhoods’ unique identity, as well as maintaining appropriate levels of amenity for residents and visitors. It is also important to guide outcomes in the public realm, to ensure our streets and public spaces are attractive and safe.

Stonnington’s smaller activity centres have been developing without a plan or specific built form controls. This has made it more difficult for Council to guide new development, including the height and form of buildings and public realm upgrades, the provision of open space, as well as advocate for new transport links to support these centres. Setting a framework for development provides greater clarity and certainty for the community, landowners and development on built form, infrastructure provision and public realm outcomes likely to be achieved.

The Activity Centres Strategy will influence new development, public spaces and infrastructure within our local centres. Subsequent implementation of the Framework through changes to the Stonnington Planning Scheme will affect the planning controls that apply to land and identify public realm improvements. The interactive map on this webpage highlights some components of the Framework that are relevant for each centre.

The City of Stonnington has an existing network of well-connected and evenly distributed activity centres of varying sizes and roles across the municipality.

Planning has already been completed for Stonnington’s major and large neighbourhood activity centres, including Chapel Street, Glenferrie Road/High Street, Toorak Village and Hawksburn. In addition some of our smaller activity centres have also been considered, such as Waverley Road (opposite Caulfield train station) and Gardiner Village.

This Framework focuses on the 17 smaller neighbourhood activity centres which have not been the subject of strategic planning to date.

The NAC Framework proposes that neighbourhood activity centres with identified heritage values will have mandatory building envelope controls (heights and setbacks).

The mandatory height and setback controls proposed for the eight neighbourhood centres with existing / potential heritage buildings include:

• Four storey maximum building height,

• Street wall height to match existing development, and

• Six metre setback from street wall.

These controls will ensure that building heights respect the scale of existing heritage places and upper levels are visually recessive. Mandatory controls have a higher chance of being successfully applied within a planning application process, given they cannot be varied without a planning scheme amendment. Planning Practice Note 59: The Role of Mandatory Provisions in Planning Schemes allow the use of mandatory controls in areas of high heritage value.

A floor area ratio (FAR) is a type of planning control that sets a specific amount of development that can occur on a site. The FAR is the ratio of the total floor area of a building(s) in relation to the size of the site. When combined with other built form guidance, a FAR allows for variation in the height and shape of buildings. This will help to ensure that new development is more responsive to its specific context as well as providing greater certainty in relation to the expected density.

Essentially an FAR identifies the volume of the building, while allowing for flexibility in terms of its form. A good visual image is to visualise a piece of plasticine. The FARs determine the amount of plasticine (the specific amount of development) for a site. The designer has flexibility to shape the plasticine, but can not ask for any more. There is a set amount of volume, but flexibility in how it is shaped.

FARs are coupled with additional controls (discretionary) which set objectives – including maximum allowable overshadowing, setbacks from sensitive interfaces for instance to ameliorate unacceptable off site amenity impacts.

The diagrams here explain the concept of FARs and how they can result in different building types. For example, a FAR of 3:1 allows for a total floor area up to three times the size of the site itself. This could be up to three storeys if 100 per cent of the site is developed or six storeys if only half the site is developed.

FARs provide several benefits, including:

• Greater certainty to landowners and the community by setting a clear and realistic level of development.

• Facilitating contextual design and allowing tailored responses to varying site characteristics and variety of forms.

• Ensuring that future development is fits comfortably within the size of the site.

• Delivering a range of different building types, rather than developing each site to its maximum envelope.

• Delivering a known development yield, allowing more effective forward planning for population growth in terms of services and infrastructure.

Floor area ratios are proposed to apply to the neighbourhood activity centres considered in the Framework that are not affected by a current or potential heritage overlay.

Floor area ratios have a long history in Sydney and Perth and have been (re)introduced in parts of the cities of Melbourne, Port Phillip and Moonee Valley.

The Framework tailors built form controls for each centre to respond to each centre’s context.

For example, for activity centres with heritage properties or precincts, new developments are proposed to have a maximum building height of four storeys. This is to allow the valued heritage character to remain the focus.

Council invites you to tell us about your neighbourhood centre and what change and improvements you would like to see including any comments and suggestions based on the draft Framework. You can share your views in a number of ways outlined on this page below.

Council is managing the preparation of the Neighbourhood Activity Centres Framework and the consultation process to inform it. Council has used independent consultants to prepare the background analysis and the technical aspects of the Framework. The Final Neighbourhood Activity Centres Framework will be considered by Council following review of the community feedback.