Tamworth Regional Council enters space age, plans to use satellite data for new local environmental plan

Director of Liveable Communities Gina Vereker said Tamworth Regional Council plans to use the space-age tool to aid in designing the city's new local environment plan (LEP).

Council planners are currently drawing up a new LEP with an eye to loosening restrictions on the construction of more sustainable, more affordable inner-city living.

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Rules like minimum lots sizes, housing setbacks and minimum carparking requirements could either go completely, or be rolled back, on thousands of plots across the city.

Ms Vereker said the council also wants to use the plan to "green the city".

The council will deploy satellite imagery to illustrate the 'urban heat island effect' in the city, where suburbs with fewer trees experience substantially higher ground-level temperatures than suburbs with more of them.

"It's of course going to show that it's a lot hotter when you haven't got shade or trees than it is if you do have," she said.

"It's again getting that message out there. Although we're only doing it for the CBD and for Bridge Street precinct, we want to use that to then send a message: if you have shade it's about five degrees cooler. And now we'll have the evidence to support that."

Council will both loosen existing setback rules, which require a gap between homes and lot boundaries, and take action to encourage more trees within setbacks from the street.

The council wants to offer an "incentive instead of just getting out the stick" to improve the design of future homes, she said.

Ms Vereker said the city was growing up, and it was time to permit buildings for people who wanted to live a metropolitan lifestyle.

The days when everyone wanted to live on a rural block with four bedrooms and a long drive to work were over, she said.

"The more we get new residents moving in the more that's more of the the vibe," she said.

"There are people, which you wouldn't have got before, saying 'I want to live in the city centre. And I'd be happy to live in a apartment with a nice balcony that overlooks the park or whatever so I can walk everywhere.' I don't think you would have got that 20 years ago. I think the community's changing."

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Suburban options will always be available, but the city will offer different housing options as well, she said.

The new LEP was about "rationalising the rules" and accommodating for a fast-growing city.

"Not everybody who's going to live in the CBD in an apartment needs two or three parking spaces and hopefully they won't have two or three cars!

"So that's where certainly we should be able to ease up on the parking requirements."

The council has already slashed the minimum lot size in the new estate of Arcadia from 600 square metres to just 450, to allow more dwellings per hectare.

New homeowners will probably have to wait until next year for the changes to take effect.

Ms Vereker said the new LEP probably will not be gazetted by the planning minister until 2023, on current schedule.

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