A timely and interesting post from across the ditch. Oz readers should note that 'section = block'. Anyone who has puzzled over the eventual future of suburbs of McMansions with their 4 - 5 bedrooms, multiple bathrooms etcetera will possibly see a link with this rural trend.
Couples who don't follow the Costello line on three kids. Couples who eventually split could spur a revolution in home re-design and title splitting. McMansions into strata units to cater for all those suddenly diminished household units.
What McShane sees on a rural canvas could morph into something more urban, particularly as gas prices/peak oil looms. Let's hope the regulators are ready for it.

This mindset of planners to assume that a subdivision into two lots must automatically involve two lots of equal size is enfuriating to those who have seen the consequences.

I have three adjoining properties in one of the most densely settled non-urban areas in the country and there is not the slightest doubt that the most sought after housing unit is for a detached house on a small lot (1000-5000m2) that is surrounded by bush or farmland.

A major portion of all my renters over the past two decades has been lone parent households seeking to maintain the dignity that urban living no longer offers to a single income earner.

And despite the widespread implementation of measures that proport to "protect" good agricultural land, it seems that no planning boofhead can get it through his tiny brain that the best way to preserve a farm is to allow a few rental houses on small blocks to diversify income sources and cover overheads while maintaining the farming operation.

Instead, they have used "minimum lot size" prescriptions as a trigger for denying landowners any sort of development rights on any lot that is smaller than double the minimum lot size.

And this gives us absurd situations like the one at Main Arm Village in the Byron hinterland where a "rural settlement strategy" is compelling an additional 170 urban lots in a village of only 10-15 houses but denying even a single extra lot to each of the surrounding land owners. Nobody wants their little hamlet turned into a suburb but each of the 170 house blocks could be added to each large holding in the valley with zero visual or environmental impact.

And it is not just the single mums who prefer a few neighbours when living in the countryside. Most women, half of humanity, find complete isolation a bit threatening and favour small cluster developments. So do commuters and off-site workers who appreciate their own little neighbourhood watch while they are away.

Once again, we have these inappropriate urban "square pegs" being hammered into a rural "round hole".

What an informative article! I note the use of some very succinct descriptions of aspects of the outworking of the so-called planning process. One that particularly could be gainfully emblazoned across the media firmament is that of "..... how to keep people locked up behind metropolitan urban limits." This certainly seems to have been the policy in NSW since the enactment of the 1979 Environmental Planning and Assessment legislation.

Clearly, at least in NSW, the conservation of so-called productive agricultural land has been used as one of the main excuses for, or more correctly, smokescreens of, exactly this process of keeping people locked up behind metropolitan limits. It is deliciously ironic that in at least one locality that policy has back-fired right in the faces of the intended beneficiaries (the people-silo builders and developers) and their government 'mates'. To get at the most convenient sand, which is of course required for ongoing construction behind those metropolitan urban limits, the NSW government runs the risk of being seen to have imposed restrictions for nigh on 30 years on rural residential subdivision of exactly the type mentioned in the article, not just to lock people up within those limits, but also to effectively hold down the values of the properties which it now wants for its mates to mine for sand. The resemblance of at least this one State in Australia to the tyrant-run city-states of millenia ago grows more marked by the day.

One can only wonder to what extent these policies have artificially inflated the cost of living space over those years, and how exposed the Australian financial industry is should a collapse in the artificially inflated values in the 'konzentrazionlageren' occur. No wonder their dogmatic adherence to ongoing high migration. Australians know this 'lebensraum' exists, know that nobody need be displaced for them to enjoy it, and know that to do so all they need is employment or retirement income and for the sort of governments we have been saddled with to get, or be got, out of the way. "Ein Reich, ein Volk, ...."