News / Planning
Car-free housing development approved in Coburg North
No on-site car parks will be provided for more than 100 town house residents

Mark Phillips
MERRI-BEK Council has waived residential car parking requirements in a decision which allows the city’s first major car-free town house development to go ahead in Coburg North.
The project by Brunswick-based developer Nightingale Housing on the site of an industrial foundry in Sheppard Street will contain no residents’ car parking spaces for 72 dwellings.
Instead, the developers will only be required to provide five spaces for a car share operator, two for visitors, one for disabled access and two for a loading zone.
The project is the first time Nightingale’s car-free model, which has been used extensively for apartment projects in Brunswick, has been adapted to a medium density town house development.
The council chamber erupted into spontaneous applause after the council’s Planning and Related Matters committee approved the project at its first meeting for 2025 on Wednesday night.
Nightingale plans to build 72 one, two and three bedroom town houses on the 10,000 square metre site in Sheppard Street, which borders Hosken Reserve and is a few hundred metres from Sydney Road and Merlynston Station.
Nine dwellings would be sold to an affordable housing provider at a 20% discount to the market rate.
Nightingale’s housing model actively discourages car ownership, and most of its apartment projects have had no on-site parking. Critics say this has resulted in some Nightingale residents parking their cars in nearby streets.
Normally, a development of this size would require the provision of 100 on-site parking spaces for residents, but Nightingale argued that the proximity of public transport made this unnecessary. In place of car parking, 217 spaces for bikes would be provided, along with access to a car share scheme for all residents.
Providing on-site parking would have added about $50,000 to the cost of each unit, the developer said.
The application was referred to the PARM committee primarily because the changes to car parking requirements were a significant deviation from the planning scheme.
The site is located near Sydney Road and the Upfield railway line.

Nightingale co-founder and acting managing director, Jeremy McLeod, told the meeting that the project would be unviable if it was not allowed to waive the parking requirements.
“We ask that you understand we’re in a housing crisis, not a car parking crisis and that housing is a basic human right, car parking is not,” he said.
“If we have to reduce the number of housing to put in more car parking, the only thing we can do is to reduce the number of affordable housing.”
Other speakers in favour of the project included Jonathan O’Brien from the pro-housing development YIMBY Melbourne group.
But Emma Mountjoy, who lives near the project, warned the lack of on-site car parking would have a negative impact on neighbouring residents because it would result in cars being parked in the streets instead.
She said there needed to be more scrutiny and additional conditions to offset the impact of additional traffic.
“The Nightingale car-free model is great in theory, I’m all for it. I’m really on board with what they’re trying to do but I just don’t believe it works in Coburg North … Coburg North is not Brunswick. People in my community are far more likely to feel the need to own a car,” she said.
Councillor Sue Bolton, in whose Bababi Djinanang ward the development is located, said local residents had been provided with no rights to object to the project.
Bolton said she wanted to see the project go ahead, but suggested Nightingale could purchase land nearby to provide additional residential parking.
Deputy Mayor Helen Politis voted against the project after foreshadowing an alternative proposal for Nightingale to provide 30 parking spaces on the site.
But Cr Natalie Abboud said the council had to support housing projects which encouraged reduced car usage.
After almost two hours of debate, the permit with reduced parking was approved by a clear majority of nine councillors out of 11, with only Politis and Mayor Helen Davidson voting against it.
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