Sustainable Urban Planning

Urban Growth Management 213

within larger rural holdings – placing constraint on the division of large farms
into minimum units by controlling the density of permitted dwellings. With
this approach ‘rural’ plots less than ten acres (4 ha) in extent – the recommended
minimum – are intended for sole single-household occupancy. Thereafter, through
illustrations depicting ‘Dwelling Yield and Acreage Protected’, Arendt arrives at
an array of the kind retabulated here as an Ex-urban density formula(figure 5.5)
which could be elastically amended or compressed for sparsely wooded localities

• my preference being that Arendt’s ‘acres’ were applied as ‘hectares’! This is not
  a quibble, for time and again in Barnett’s ‘two acre zoning country’ the neigh-
  bours are in dispute about noxious, to them, land uses (intense chicken, goat, and
  pig penning), oversized buildings (feeding sheds, glasshouses), spray drift, and
  always noise. If you want peace and tranquillity, be advised to build in the middle
  of a large plot and take on some agri-silviculture, for, excepting well-wooded non-
  farm tracts, I would recommend the minimum desirable urban-rural retreat as
  8 ha (20 acres) and advise that the figure 5.4 performance guidelines prevail as a
  minimum.

The figures 5.4 and 5.5 prescriptions work out acceptably for some landscapes,
fail with others – notably coastal zones and sparsely wooded uplands – and are
usually not sensitized to accommodate the vagaries of good-to-bad soil types,
open-and-wooded treescapes, and flat-to-steep topography. It is always aestheti-
cally desirable to cluster (group) the dwellings of adjoining titleholders together
as much as possible, andto site all dwellings well back from public access roads,
and alsoto closely regulate and monitor all manner of detail – massing, profile,
colour, reflectivity, texture in accordance with the figures 5.4 and 5.5 criteria. The
procedural basis for achieving a rural-in-character outcome involves adhering
to a fixed exclusive rural zoning minimum – the economically viable farm size for
operational and viable farming relative to a subject landscape. For large rural tract
holders the only development option then comes down to assessing an estate
break-up into minimum-sized economically viable farm units – thus far and no

Tract (acres) Dwellings permitted Acres per dwelling

Up to 10 1 10 or less

10 to 21 2 5 to 10.5

21 but less than 35 3 7.0 plus

35 but less than 65 4 8.75 plus

65 but less than 105 5 13 plus

105 but less than 145 6 17.5 plus

145 but less than 185 7 20.7 plus

185 but less than 225 8 23.1

Thereafter an average of one dwelling per 50 acres of landholding

Figure 5.5 Ex-urban density formula (patterned on Arendt 1994).
Applied in association with the performance guidelines given in figure 5.4.