The policy and practice of apartment provision: a test case for Australia’s New Urban Agenda

Abstract

Despite the low-density form of Australian cities, metropolitan planning policies have long supported urban consolidation and residential densification, with the objective of achieving a more sustainable urban form. However, recent high levels of apartment development, especially in the capital cities, have failed to deliver the social and environmental advantages anticipated from providing higher density housing in established areas. Instead, rapid densification has occurred alongside, and is directly related to, a substantial decline in the affordability of housing for rent and purchase, and spatial polarisation of housing markets.Drawing upon the author’s direct involvement in policy development and regulatory reform, the paper provides a detailed investigation of the policy, governance and regulatory frameworks for apartment development in Australia’s major cities, and the specific attempts in recent years to reform these to achieve better outcomes. The research uses Ball’s ‘structures of housing provision’ framework of housing systems analysis to offer a unique contribution to the literature on urban sustainability transitions.The paper finds that apartments represent a persistent problem for Australian planning and, furthermore, that resolving this problem will be critical to managing Australia’s transition to urban sustainability, while improving access to quality, affordable housing. Relevant strategies and successful points of intervention are identified.Apartments as a development type pose a unique set of challenges for planning and other regulatory systems. Recent proliferation of apartments has highlighted the contingent nature of existing development controls, which have evolved in conjunction with market processes and established structures of housing provision, principally suburban housing growth. Apartment development presents a challenge to this established model, akin to the challenge that integrated sustainable development represents for planning systems as a whole. This paper provides a framework for understanding emergent pathways from the current impasse and some practical directions.