Australia

If "Business as Usual" is So Utterly Broken, Why Do We Still Keep Doing It?

Ross Elliott — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 13:29:26 -0400

“Business as usual is broken” I’ll say to someone. Their head nods in furious agreement. Whether that head belongs to a property industry professional, a government minister, a senior bureaucrat or a tradie doesn’t seem to matter. The realisation that business as usual is broken is now universally accepted by all except the most ardent lovers of regulatory overreach.

The question then becomes, if it is so broken, why do we keep applying business as usual techniques to solve the problem? Why don’t we discard the things we know are not working, especially the things that are working against us, and adopt a different strategy?

The signs of a broken system are everywhere. Our housing market is the most widely reported failing: median prices in capital cities are now 10 times median household incomes – and still rising. That places us as among the most expensive housing markets in the developed world. Sydney – at 14 times incomes – is second place in the world. Not a prize you want. Even Adelaide – yes Adelaide – at 10.9 times incomes, is in the top 10 least affordable cities in the world, relative to incomes. Most Australian capitals are in the top 10 or 15 globally – ahead of cities like greater metro London, Singapore or a host of US cities with bigger economies and populations.

Bringing new supply into a market at a speed which is remotely close to meeting demand is now a task that is beyond us, using business as usual techniques. Our performance could only be described as miserable and – with the exception of national politicians who keep talking targets as if they will somehow magically be delivered – no well informed person seems remotely hopeful that our supply side mechanisms are up to the task. To use the fad phrase, they are “not fit for purpose.”

One proposed ‘solution’ has been a call for more planners to
cope with the increasing complexity of land use regulation and development
assessment. But so far, the rate of growth in complexity is outpacing the
growth of planners. Jonathan O'Brien of Inflection Points wrote an interesting piece relating the number of planners to the delivery of housing stock.

Read the rest of this piece at The Pulse.

Ross Elliott is a leading industry practitioner with over 35 years' experience in property and urban development across a number of industry sectors. He has held senior roles with the Property Council of Australia as Executive Director, National Chief Operating Officer, and National Executive Director of the Residential Development Council. Ross has been a frequent writer and guest speaker on urban development themes both in Australia and the US. In 2018 he published a piece on Australia in a global study of suburban development by the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism (Cambridge, Mass.) Ross is also founding director of suburban issues think tank Suburban Futures.

Chart: courtesy The Pulse, data source is Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Delusion Down Under

Robert Bryce — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Nearly three dozen countries have legally binding targets to achieve net zero. The list has some notable countries including Russia and Ukraine. In addition, Nigeria, the European Union, Canada, and the Republic of Moldova, have all pledged to slash their carbon dioxide emissions to zero over the next two decades or so.

While all of these countries are mouthing the words about net zero, none will come anywhere close to achieving zero emissions for the simple reason that the goal can’t be achieved — or, to be more specific — net zero can’t be achieved unless these countries intentionally sabotage their economies, ban all hydrocarbon use, and in doing so, plunge their people into starvation and penury.

But amid all the tomfoolery about net zero, Australia’s barmy plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 stands out for its stubborn disregard for the facts and physics of global energy. The recent re-election of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Labor Party shows that plenty of Aussie voters like the idea of renewable energy. A survey released last December by the leftist Australia Institute found that 80% of the people it polled put solar and wind among their top three favored forms of energy. Alt-energy may poll well, but it’s clear that Albanese’s plan to slash emissions by 43% by 2030, hit net zero by 2050, and turn Australia into “a renewable energy superpower” is a mirage.

I’ve been in Australia (population: 27 million) for more than a week, doing speaking engagements about the country’s net zero plans. Thus far, I have visited Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, and Melbourne. (I will be speaking in Melbourne on Monday and Sydney on Wednesday.) Since I arrived, local newspapers have published at least one article per day on the country’s disastrous energy policies, including articles about the soaring cost of electricity, the failing plans to use “green” hydrogen, and looming shortages of natural gas due to the premature shuttering of the country’s coal plants.

Let’s take a closer look at the Delusion Down Under.

Affordability matters. Given that, let’s start with prices. Aussie households have seen their energy costs rise by more than 40% over the past three years alone. The news clip above was published in the Australian Financial Review’s weekend edition. It explains that electricity rates across Australia will continue rising as the country’s electric grid is forced to accommodate more alt-energy.

Read the rest of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.

Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: Australian Gothic illustration, by Picsart.

Global Tally Of Alt-Energy Rejections Passes 1,000

Robert Bryce — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

The rejections keep coming. Since the beginning of May, a provincial government in Queensland has rejected an enormous wind project, a county board in Illinois spiked a solar project, and a district council in East Devon vetoed a battery project.

Let’s take those in order.

Last week, a $1 billion wind project in central Queensland was rejected by provincial authorities. The 450-megawatt project, which included battery storage, faced fierce opposition from local residents. According to one news report, 142 residents responded to the government’s request for comments, and 88% opposed the project.

One of the project opponents was a grazier (the Aussie’s word for rancher) named John Ellrott. He told a reporter from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that “the Moonlight Range has got some very significant flora and fauna on it that needs conserving and doesn't need to be flattened...We don't need all our ranges covered in wind towers.” The rejection of the wind project adds more friction to the Australian government’s barmy plan to achieve net zero by 2050. (More on that below.)

Solar projects continue to see fierce opposition. In mid-May, county officials in Will County, Illinois, voted 16-5 to reject plans for a solar facility in New Lenox Township that was opposed by the township and nearby homeowners. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, “More than 80 residents of the nearby Fieldstone Subdivision signed a petition stating the commercial solar energy facility would negatively impact their property values.”

Battery projects are also being rejected. In mid-May, the BBC reported that planners with the East Devon District Council rejected a lithium-ion battery storage project “after a three-and-a-half hour debate which saw residents raise concerns about fire risks and pollution. Despite the developer stating its equipment was 100% safe, examples of BESS [battery energy storage system] fires around the country were highlighted as evidence about why the scheme should be refused.”

As I have explained many times, these rejections don’t fit the narrative that’s relentlessly promoted by climate activists and their myriad allies in the legacy media about “green” energy. But the numbers are real, the numbers are growing, and they provide irrefutable evidence that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the growth of alt-energy. In all, when combining the 814 rejections of wind and solar projects in the US that I have documented in the Renewable Rejection Database with the global rejections of solar, wind, and batteries, the total number of alt-energy rejections or restrictions now exceeds 1,000 — it’s 1,011 to be exact.

Read the rest of this piece at Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: Queensland cattle rancher John Ellrott has refused to lease his property to Big Wind. Credit: ABC News & Ellie Willcox.

Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2025 Edition Released

Wendell Cox — Tue, 13 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

This annual report assesses housing affordability in 95 major markets across eight nations (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the, United States). The 2025 edition covers the third quarter of 2024.

Key Points

Ratings: The report uses a median price-to-income ratio (“median multiple”) to determine affordability.

Affordability Categories: Housing markets are rated from “affordable” to “impossibly unaffordable” based on their median multiple (Table ES-1).

Geography: Housing markets are labor markets (which are also metropolitan areas or functional urban areas), largely defined by the “commuting shed.” Housing affordability comparisons can be made, (1) between housing markets (such as a comparison between Adelaide and Melbourne) or (2) over time within the same housing market (such as between years in Adelaide).

Variations within Nations: The report emphasizes that affordability often varies significantly between markets within the same country. National averages aren’t always representative.

Housing affordability in 2024 is summarized by nation in Table ES-2.

Details on housing affordability for all 95 markets, displayed by median multiple, are provided in Table 3 and by geography in Table 4 of the full report.

For the fifth year in a row, Pittsburgh (PA), in the United States, was the most affordable market in Demographia International Housing Affordability. This year the Pittsburgh median multiple was 3.2, which is moderately unaffordable.

The least affordable market in Demographia International Housing Affordability in 2024 was Hong Kong, with a median multiple of 14.4, followed by Sydney at 13.8, San Jose, at 12.1, Vancouver at 11.8, Los Angeles at 11.2, Adelaide at 10.9, Honolulu at 10.8, San Francisco at 10.0, Melbourne at 9.7, San Diego and 9.5, Brisbane at 9.3 and Greater London at 9.1. All of these markets are rated impossibly unaffordable.

Existential Threat to Middle-Income Households

Among high-income nations, middle-income homeownership was once widespread, with house prices aligned with incomes. Since the 1990s, however, prices have surged —especially in
markets governed by urban containment strategies early (e.g., San Francisco, Sydney, London)— with homes now costing 9–15 times household income.

This shift is linked to the international planning orthodoxy, which restricts urban expansion through greenbelts, urban growth boundaries (UGBs), rural zoning, and compact city policies. While intended to increase density and sustainability, these policies have severely limited land supply, raising land and housing costs and making housing unaffordable for the middle class.

Nearly all severely unaffordable housing markets follow the urban containment model. The resulting land scarcity inflates prices, particularly near UGBs. This pattern, rooted in the UK’s 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, has spread virtually around the world.

Purpose of Urban Planning: Urban planning is meant to improve lives. As Jane Jacobs said: “If planning helps people, they ought to be better off as a result, not worse off.” Yet urban containment has made many people worse off, by virtue of its association with substantially worsened housing affordability.

Current planning approaches emphasize multifamily housing and other densification while restricting new detached homes at the fringe—strategies that helped create today’s crisis.

Counterurbanization: Middle-income households are increasingly leaving expensive markets for more affordable places—a trend especially visible in Canada and the U.S. These moves reflect long-term structural problems. People are “voting with their feet,” to obtain the housing denied them in markets with deteriorated housing affordability. Without major reform, this migration seems likely to continue.

Elaboration and sources are in the full report. Click here to read and download the full report.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with Unleash Prosperity in Washington and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985), which was a predecessor agency to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Image and charts are from the report. Charts by the author; cover image for the report from the GPA Archive, Carol M. Highsmith collection and used under CC 2.0 License.

Winning Suburbs is the Key to Winning Elections

Tue, 06 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

There’s a great line from the comedy show Kath & Kim, where the very suburban Kim expresses her desire to be like affluent city people. “I want to be effluent Mum," she says. "You ARE effluent, Kim," replies the equally suburban Kath.

The new political geography of affluent inner urban residents viewing life differently (and voting differently) to suburban and regional voters was proven again in the recent Australian Federal Election of 2025. The geographic pattern has previously been obvious in booth-by-booth results for recent State and Local Government elections, and the same happened for the Federal poll.

Inner city areas of our major urban areas are two things at the same time: they are much wealthier than suburban city dwellers, and more inclined to vote for far left/Green causes. The concentration of affluence in inner cities has been underway for many years, as inner urban areas were gentrified. Whether it is Sydney’s Balmain, Melbourne’s Richmond, or Brisbane’s New Farm, once working class/industrial areas are now home to the wealthiest people, living in the most expensive real estate, enjoying the highest levels of urban amenity and living the highest standards of living. They’re increasingly oblivious to the lives and issues of their fellow Australians.

This graph shows how it looks for Brisbane’s New Farm and West End, compared to middle and outer suburban areas. The same story is repeated across other cities in the country.

This level of income disparity also explains why voters in these areas view life differently to the suburbs. Worried about waiting lists for health care? Nope, they have the highest levels of private health cover. Worried about school class sizes or education generally? Nope, their kids attend the best private schools. Worried about the cost of groceries? Nope, they shop at Harris Farm markets in trendy areas. Worried about the cost of fuel? Nope, they probably have a taxpayer subsidised Tesla (soon to be traded in protest at Elon Musk’s MAGA conversion). Worried about crime and personal safety? Not really, they have private security or live in impenetrable apartments. Worried about being told you have to return to the office and can no longer work from home? Not really, the office for them is very close to home, plus they probably have managerial positions. Worried about immigration, housing shortages and the housing affordability issue? Not really, they can afford to live in high end areas and will outbid others if that’s what it takes. Worried about the cost of electricity? No, they can afford it - but are more worried about carbon emissions and climate change – so the very high cost of energy transition is worth it.

It's the irony of modern politics though that these affluent inner-city residents are also the ones most likely to vote for leftist/Green causes – many of which are anathema to their own interests. There would not be too many suburban superannuation accounts with over $3million that will be subject to an unrealised gains tax, for example.

Read the rest of this piece at The Pulse.

Photo: New Farm Riverwalk, Brisbane River views from Bowen Terrace by Chris Olszewski, under CC 4.0 License. Graphs: courtesy author.

Housing Affordability Is Killing the Aussie Dream – And Our Birth Rate

Rob Burgess — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 20:28:39 -0400

The steady decline of fertility rates in Australia presents a multifaceted challenge with wide-reaching implications for the nation’s social, cultural, and economic future.

Fertility rates are a critical indicator of societal health, influencing inter-generational stability, economic growth, and family dynamics. Sustained low fertility leads to shrinking workforces, increased dependency ratios, and growing financial pressure on public services such as healthcare and pensions. These systemic strains hinder productivity and innovation, making it imperative for Australia to address the factors contributing to its fertility decline.

At the heart of this issue is the growing gap between Australians' aspirations for family life and the realities imposed by financial and systemic constraints—chief among them being housing affordability. Despite a consistent desire for family formation, young Australians are finding it increasingly difficult to achieve their ideal family size due to rising property prices and limited access to suitable housing. This phenomenon is reshaping Australia’s demographic landscape, particularly in major cities like Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, where fertility rates have dropped to historic lows.

Australia stands at a pivotal moment, with its largest demographic cohort of individuals in their prime childbearing years poised to shape the country’s demographic future. Failure to implement meaningful policy reforms that enables access to affordable, family housing will only deepen the demographic and economic crisis for generations to come.

Fertility Decline in Australia

Healthy fertility rates are fundamental to the functioning of society, influencing its cultural, economic, and social structures. It therefore follows that any prolonged decline will impact these systems, reshaping family dynamics and slowing national economic growth. As Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution observed, “You don’t upend a 12,000-year-old social order without experiencing cultural side effects.”

As already evidenced in countries such as Japan and Italy, the economic impacts of sustained fertility declines are significant. As the workforce shrinks, the tax base needed to fund essential services like healthcare, pensions, and aged care diminishes, even as demand for these services grows due to an aging population. Over time, this strains resources and fosters systemic inefficiencies. With a reduced future labour force, economic growth slows, limiting innovation and productivity.

Furthermore, weakening birth rates erode intergenerational ties and increase dependency on government institutions to provide support that families once provided while undermining personal responsibility and individual rights. Any shift from family-based support to government dependence poses several risks and challenges, a concept perhaps best summed up by Ronald Reagan when he quipped that "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Separate to the societal effects of declining fertility, yet no less severe, is the more personal and deeply emotional impact associated with the profound grief being experienced by those facing involuntary childlessness. The subject of increasing research, childlessness often proves to be not only isolating but acutely painful, not just for the individuals directly affected, but also their parents who often grieve the absence of grandchildren. With childlessness on the rise, these impacts will only worsen creating long-term repercussions for family cohesion and societal well-being.

Given these far-reaching consequences, it is crucial to examine the factors driving fertility decline. While cultural and lifestyle shifts play a role, financial barriers—particularly housing affordability—have emerged as the dominant constraint on family formation.

Read/download the rest of this piece (PDF opens in new tab or window).

Rob Burgess is a town planner with over 25 years of experience, having worked in both the public and private sectors. Applying evidence-based insights, Rob’s expertise lies at the intersection of population dynamics, town planning, and property markets. He is regularly engaged to undertake market research, provide strategic advice to clients, and sharing his thoughts on current and future trends. Rob is a Principal with Quantify Strategic Insights.

How Sydney CBD Became a Capital of Luxury Urbanity

John Muscat — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 20:28:38 -0500

With a great deal of success, urban development elites have been able to sustain the illusion that Central Business Districts or downtowns are still the functional metropolitan centres they were five decades ago. In The New City’s new feature report, Rise of Luxury Urbanity as a System: Sydney CBD, we set out to explain how the truth is different. Opinion leaders seem content for people to assume CBDs have changed in only cosmetic ways, essentially the same but with taller skylines. But since at least the 1980s, they have drifted far from the standard functional definition proposed by geographer Raymond Murphy in 1971: a region “draw[ing] its business from the whole urban area and from all ... classes of people.”

The mid-twentieth century was a time of tensions between booming suburban peripheries, driven by mass motorisation, and stagnating post-industrial inner-cities. After the 1980s, however, these former industrial-mercantile junctions or ‘classic’ CBDs were fitted up as global high-amenity enclaves. Some call this a “shift from the city as a site of production to one of consumption.” Over recent decades Sydney CBD has evolved in a more exclusive and upscale direction, hosting around a tenth of metropolitan jobs compared to nearly half in the 1950s. The pandemic forced some belated acknowledgement of this reality but notions of natural centrality persist.

In today’s post-material economy, the CBD’s status comes from a disproportionate share of public infrastructure rather than any inherent productivity advantage. Where the spatial order of the old industrial-mercantile CBD was arranged around functions, the contemporary ‘centre’ is laid out for amenities. Called ‘luxurification’ by some scholars, the new urban logic takes form as an upward spiral of amenity enhancements feeding off surging land values, gentrification and ‘sustainable urbanism’. Scaled up amenities make premium grade development more feasible as they amplify the capital that developers can substitute for land on high-priced sites. Luxurification is thus sweeping through most features of the CBD landscape, including all types of building stock and the streetscapes in between.

Using concepts proposed by urban geographers, at least five internal trends have been converging to make Sydney’s ‘post-CBD’:

Breakdown of the unipolar ‘core-frame’ structure made up of service and industrial functions arranged in concentric rings, and rise of multipolar high-amenity precincts, each resembling a walkable resort-style campus.
Spread of the upmarket ‘primary retail core’ as a general feature beyond the ‘Peak Land Value Intersection’ into other functional zones.
Decline of the downmarket ‘secondary retail zone’ in conjunction with gradual restrictions on motor vehicle access and confinement of entry to passenger rail corridors and bicycle paths.
Reshuffling of workspace across emerging precincts, inside and outside the traditional office core, offering amenities like harbour views, landscaped foreshores, green-rated buildings and revamped streetscapes around transit-hubs.
Penetration of residential development into the CBD, even the former retail and office cores, from the peripheral ‘zone of transition’.

The classic CBD was functionally and socio-economically diverse

In the wake of advancing post-war suburbanisation, there was a surge of interest in the CBD amongst American geographers during the 1950s. Based on their field work in nine mid-sized US cities, researchers Raymond Murphy and James Vance conceived the Land Value Method of delimiting outer CBD boundaries. They pinpointed the district’s Peak Land Value Intersection (PLVI) and traced the values of lots or blocks spreading outwards in concentric circles until values declined to five percent of PLVI value. In most cases the PLVI was “located within a few hundred feet of the [district’s] geographic center”, and from there “land values decrease rapidly at first as one leaves the peak intersection.” A city’s “maximum pedestrian concentration and … greatest vehicular congestion” were typically found at the PLVI.

Read the rest of this piece at The New City Journal.

John Muscat is a co-editor of The New City Journal.

Faster, Better, More: How to House Australia

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 14:48:19 -0400

This paper, by property expert Ross Elliott, explores the reasons behind our current housing shortages and identifies a range of policy measures which have contributed to – rather than alleviated – the magnitude of the current housing ‘crisis.’

To download the full paper click here.

It also proposes alternatives to the policy settings which could significantly improve both the volume and affordability of basic housing.

The paper does not touch on the provision of social housing: this is a government responsibility and is not something that can be delivered in volume by the market. Generally there have been inadequate initiatives to involve the private sector in public housing development.

Failures by governments to provide adequate social housing, or to better manage the existing social housing stock, are exacerbating the housing ‘crisis’ but this paper is focussed on the delivery of new market housing where greater volumes and real gains in affordability are possible.

Key findings

Worsening housing affordability owes itself to a series of policy decisions around population growth, land use, taxes and regulation. These decisions by Federal, State and Local Governments were mainly made around the late 1990s/early 2000s – also the point at which affordability began to deteriorate and housing shortages began to appear.
Since 2000, Australia has gone from a median house costing 4 to 5 times a household income, to now nearly 10 times. Australia is now amongst the least affordable markets in the world.
Rapid population growth via Federal Government immigration policy is a key driver of housing demand. Recent decisions to rapidly increase population growth have exacerbated an already failing regulatory and land use policy environment which is unresponsive to demand.
Taxes, as they apply to new housing (including the GST), now amount to roughly one third the cost of a new house or apartment.
Limited outer suburban growth in favour of higher urban densities – described by the RBA as ‘the zoning effect’ – also adds substantially to the cost of housing.
The preferred urban model of higher densities within a constrained boundary has been the de facto planning model for three decades. However, higher densities are proving to take longer and cost a good deal more than the detached house alternative. It is now virtually impossible to deliver a new two bed unit for less than $1.3 million in the Brisbane region. Increasing the supply of the more expensive housing product will not improve affordability.
The introduction of upfront “per dwelling” housing levies (also known as developer levies) has immediately flowed through to higher prices for the new dwelling buyer.
Planning regulations have expanded exponentially, adding to costs and time. The 1990 Planning Act was 120 pages in length. It, including related provisions and referred acts and provisions, now numbers in the thousands. This has not delivered any perceived improvements in planning.
Building code changes – such as recent National Construction Code amendments – have also added significantly to new house costs while all existing households – irrespective of how energy inefficient or disability unfriendly – are exempt. These additional costs levied on new housing only are both unfair and ineffective.
There has also been a widely reported escalation in housing construction costs. Poor productivity and excessive union wage demands have mostly affected the higher density housing market though there are flow-through effects in the cottage building sector which has to compete in the same market for trades.
It is theoretically possible to reduce the costs of a new house by $120,000 and a new home unit by $160,000 by taking a series of relatively simple measures, not including benefits that would flow to lower costs via simplified regulatory processes.
The current ‘crisis’ is not something that happened to us. We did this to ourselves via policy decisions outlined in this report.

Key recommendations

Population growth must be slowed to a pace that regulatory and supply side industries (development and construction) can accommodate. This is a Federal Government responsibility.
A new compact between all levels of Government – each of which ‘clips the ticket’ on housing in their own way – is essential for meaningful reform to the new housing market.
Policy makers and regulators are advised to focus on means to improve the volume and lower the cost of new housing – detached and attached. Attempts to moderate or adjust the entire housing market via incentives or regulatory tweaks are a distraction.
Alternatives to the upfront charging of infrastructure associated with new housing projects need investigation. Successful alternatives such as MUDs (Municipal Utility Districts) or related instruments warrant a try, even if just a pilot project.
Unnecessary and largely ineffective building codes which penalise the new housing sector only, but which exempt all established housing, should be reversed.
The supply of land for outward suburban expansion around major cities is deliberately restricted via urban growth boundaries. A quarter century of evidence tells us these have a detrimental effect on the competitive market for land for housing. They should be relaxed to encourage greater competition and downward pressure on englobo land prices.
The preferred model of urban consolidation via infill housing must be re-evaluated in the context of consumer preference, in addition to the real challenges of identifying sites, obtaining approvals, and construction costs. As the preferred model of urban development, it is taking longer and costing us more.

Read or download the full report here

Image: report cover

Rise of Luxury Urbanity as a System: Sydney CBD

John Muscat — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 20:28:58 -0400

In 1971, after a lifetime researching and explaining the Central Business District, American geographer Raymond Murphy gathered his knowledge together in The Central Business District: A Study in Urban Geography. Murphy defined the CBD as a region “draw[ing] its business from the whole urban area and from all ... classes of people.” But that definition would soon be redundant.

Since at least the 1980s, central areas of many world cities like Sydney have evolved from classic industrial era CBDs into more exclusive socio- economic phenomena. The mid-twentieth century brought tensions between a growing suburban periphery driven by mass motorisation and a stagnating, post-industrial inner-city. After an interval at the crossroads, urban centres were refitted as global high-amenity enclaves. These former industrial-mercantile junctions, which distributed goods across whole regions, now radiate little more than inflated land and property prices. Some call this a “shift from the city as a site of production to one of consumption.” Disruptive events like financial crises and the recent Covid- 19 pandemic shaped the course of this evolution.

Sydney’s classic CBD morphology peaked in the 1970s and has been fading ever since. Occasionally, the emerging phenomenon rates a mention in academic literature and popular journalism, but there is still no consensus about its character or economic logic. Many seem reluctant to concede its discontinuity from the classic CBD, fearing to unmask a new stage in the concentration of privilege.

Politicians, property developers and academics tend to downplay the CBD’s loss of functional centrality in Greater Sydney. Since the 1950s, the legacy CBD’s relative share of metropolitan jobs has plummeted from almost a half to around a tenth, and in today’s post-material conditions owes more to a disproportionate allocation of amenities than any unique productivity advantage. The pandemic forced some recognition of reality but notions of natural centrality persist. “The CBD is Dead, Long Live the Central Social District” proclaimed an article by former NSW Cities Minister Rob Stokes. Suggestions that CBD-centric planning is bad for housing affordability, commuting or small business formation are generally disputed.

For a better perspective it is useful to contrast features of today’s ‘post- CBD’ with elements of the classic CBD structure as identified by urban geographers in the literature.

While the spatial order of the old industrial-mercantile CBD was arranged around functions, the contemporary ‘centre’ is laid out for amenities. This new urban logic, called ‘luxurification’ by some scholars, takes form as an upward spiral of amenity enhancements, feeding off soaring peaks in the land value cycle, gentrification on a global scale and ‘sustainable urbanism.’ On very high-priced sites developers will typically maximise returns by substituting capital for land, building larger and taller structures. Scaling up amenities in the structures and on the surrounding ground plane can augment capital. Thus luxurification is sweeping through most features of the CBD landscape, reaching office, retail, leisure-hospitality and residential building stock as well as the streetscapes, transit facilities and public spaces in between. In the office sector, where the CBD vacancy rate is now at a 30-year high, this is commonly referred to as a “flight to quality”.

Read the rest of this piece at The New City Journal (PDF).

John Muscat is a co-editor of The New City Journal. The article above is excerpted from the introduction to his report.

In Praise of Sprawl

Rob Burgess — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 20:28:58 -0400

Delayed decision-making, bureaucratic dithering, and the stubborn resistance of NIMBYs have all been frequently cited as planning-related barriers to the development of much-needed housing. Seldom, however, does the conversation shift to the impact that containment and densification policies are having upon Australia’s escalating housing crisis.

Against a backdrop of rapid population growth, and in the face of rising social and economic costs, the ‘contain-and-densify’ approach to managing our cities is, simply, no longer fit for purpose. It is increasingly clear that a departure from this entrenched model is crucial. Left unaddressed, the downward spiral that is this nation’s housing crisis will continue, leaving the aspirations of an ever-growing number of Australians in its wake.

The path forward demands a nuanced, evidence-based approach that reconciles the urgent need for affordable housing with practical urban development strategies. Only then can we ensure a future where housing affordability and accessibility are within reach of all Australians, marking a pivotal shift towards a genuinely successful model of urban growth.

Beyond Boundaries

Urban growth boundaries (UGBs) are artificial regional boundaries, enforced by authorities to contain the development of residential and other urban uses of land to mandated areas. They have been a cornerstone of urban planning policy in Australian cities since they were first introduced by the Victorian Government’s Melbourne 2030 policy in 2002. Since its introduction, the contain-and-densify model has been unable to deliver the number of dwellings required, the type of dwellings sought, or housing in the locations intended. The social engineering required to force households into smaller housing is proving to be both politically unworkable and financially unfeasible.

Read the rest (pdf opens in new tab/window)

Photo: from the article cover, courtesy the author