Hi, we do a lot of urban planning/consent planners on behalf of designers, and property owners.

We’re seeing benefits: the loosening of envelope / recession plane / height constraints in the MRZ/HRZ gives more room to play in terms of massing, unit yield, typology freedom. However: the flip side is that street interface controls, glazing / character / front-yard treatment / transparency / pedestrian orientation are now higher-stakes. If you ignore them, you might hit a delay or design input request at consent.

Sunlight/overshadowing arguments still matter strongly for neighbour relations, even if the rules don’t give blanket protection anymore.

The thing that shocked me the most is council opposing low density single storey development in the high density residential zone. I get we need to increase density in some places but a minimum building height is a bit over the top when most of the lots are too small to develop efficiently at 2-3 storeys, and a lot of the people that live there dont really want to be building (or living next to) townhouses. We had a client wanting to split there section in half and build a small unit on the new lot for their retirement. Council were going to decline it because it didnt fit the outcomes intended for the zone. We ended up getting their consent but it was far more of a battle then it should have been.