Density is not a dirty word – unless you’re protecting your privileged patch

Like ego, density is not a dirty word, or is it? If you follow some of the recent density debates in this town you might think it is the dirtiest of words.

The impending density nightmare in Sydney’s Inner West (thanks for that headline BTW SMH) might have you confused. The nightmare isn’t the housing crisis in this city but the mental anguish the settled and privileged suffer when the thought of the mere possibility of using their land more efficiently to house others is raised. First world problems.

So, what did the Inner West Council (IWC) want to do. Like all amalgamated councils from the semi-failed local government reforms of 2016, it was funded by the state government to consolidate its various local environmental plans (LEPs) into one LEP. That has happened and the new IWC LEP is nothing new in a policy sense, other than a few retrograde kicks at density (more on that later). 

It’s meant to be a short-term LEP, which in local government land can mean a five-10 year duration or when everyone forgets it was a short-term plan (whichever comes first). 

Well, my understanding was that it was a clear-the-decks kind of LEP and then straight into some proper planning. That’s where you look into the future and figure out what people/your community need (which is different to want) and make some planning changes to allow those needs to be addressed.

And in the IWC there are a few big things happening. New metro rail stations to open in 2024 at Sydenham, Marrickville, and Dulwich Hill and a new metro west station in Ashfield further out.  Metro rail and density sound(ed) like a good idea.

And there is the odd commercial centre that might be a good place to live. A bit of density there might be okay. The proposals were modest – made sense (to me at least) – and planned to put the density where the infrastructure was. Isn’t that the big complaint – that increased populations don’t come with increased infrastructure?

A consultation round was started and in an open and transparent fashion various studies and images of these plans were available. 

Weird chatter emerged on social media: “this is all too soon”; “I am shocked and surprised this is happening”. Really, the rezonings on the Sydenham to Bankstown line have been around in various forms for almost 10 years. Or the classic, “council wants to build an eight-storey building on your home.” A rezoning is not an acquisition. 

A rezoning is mostly a gift in value and more choices to the property owner. And the strange reporting in the SMH emerges – in one article New Zealand is praised for solving its housing problems with density but in Sydney a very modest attempt at building more houses is a nightmare – all in the same edition. Then the cluey councillors at the IWC swoop on their own staff. The well-considered studies and imagery of these modest plans are disappeared from the IWC website CCP/Weibo style and replaced with the following.

I am reliably told the councillors were all offered briefing on these studies. They just don’t show up. I think they call that plausible deniability.

The councillors shafted those proposals good and proper with a one-page memo and a unanimous vote. How dare the council officers propose a bit of forward planning. With that one pushed to the gutter, the councillors can get back to planning their own de-amalgamation. It would be satire if it were not true.

So, what’s wrong with doing nothing and thinking density is a “nightmare”?

Do we just embrace the idea that some people live in the Badlands, like a dystopian Netflix series? Maybe we won’t need fences– the real estate market takes care of excluding people.

Density is more houses; it helps solve our housing affordability problems and is a response to need. Density is efficiency; it makes better use of good land; it makes public transport use more viable; it can put people closer to jobs and opportunities. It can also help finance local government so they can do things. It can be a tool to promote equity and fairness in cities. And busy and dense cities have a buzz about them that is fun and enlivening. 

Density in established areas is becoming a necessary response to climate change

The floods and fires are not happening in Sydney’s inner west, eastern suburbs, or the lower north shore. As extreme weather and the events that go with become the norm, a certain fortification of cities around the established “good bits” is going to become necessary climate change adaptation?

Or do we just embrace the idea that some people live in the Badlands, like a dystopian Netflix series? Maybe we won’t need fences– the real estate market takes care of excluding people.

Then there is what I would call the “standing still” issues of entropic and demographic change that need density. Old stuff falls apart naturally and should be rebuilt to today’s needs. The post war baby boomer demographic bulge is biting. Aging populations generally mean smaller household, where households grow without population growth. 

And then finally the big existential issue is that you can’t solve problems without change and the opportunities it creates. Halting or deferring change is avoiding the tasks of cities.

The IWC current anti-density position is not new and completely consistent with most local planning in Sydney. But it’s a bit ironic given the often stated progressive and caring stance of these councillors. In their actions they tell us that their care is for the well housed, not the renter or the young home buyer. They grabbed a headline, but the smaller cuts and the long term trends are always there. 

The IWC prohibited dual occupancies in all R1 zones in its new LEP (this sort of tweaking the edges of land use policies is mostly anti density and it happens all over Sydney).

From 21 November 2021, the new Housing SEPP prohibited small boarding house in many R2 Low Density Residential zones across metropolitan Sydney in collaboration with various anti density local government authorities. (I thought a housing policy was meant to promote housing?)

In general, current state housing policy has killed off the emerging new generation boarding house sector, which was in fact developing blocks of studio apartments. I saw plenty of evidence in my work that this policy was working. The emergence of a new standard in the boarding house accommodation sector forced out some of the worst accommodation (for example, broom closets with a shared bathroom). But remember, housing diversity and change is a nightmare.

The new Housing SEPP has moved the new boarding houses industry away from the private sector and relies more on the community housing and public housing sector. The new private sector equivalent is now called co-living and the incentives are not as attractive.

The incentives for the private sector to build boarding houses and smaller built-for-rent housing projects are reduced. That’s all a great pity because we need supply and both sectors working hard. Don’t get me wrong – I am a socialist, well not really: I only say that when I am cornered at a PC gathering. I am really a social democratic because the private sector has the money and moves faster but it needs smart government.

A Housing SEPP that thinks housing problems are going to solved by the community and public sector, or more onerous requirements on the private sector, is avoiding risk but also the solution – more supply.

Then there are the historic retreats on density that have taken place slowly but surely over the past 40 years. Zones that were reasonably flexible or allowed residential flat development in established Sydney now prohibit such development.

The common theme I see here is that many of the areas that were developing some density in the early and mid 20^th century around the then tram lines have now been down zoned. There are two to five-storey Art Deco residential flat buildings in the inner west, lower north shore, and eastern suburbs siting on R2 Low Density Residential zoned land (this means a residential flat building is a prohibited land use). 

The future for these sites is apparently a dwelling house or dual occupancy (and not even that sometimes). Remanent density hangs on courtesy of strata titling and Existing Use Rights. The purpose of these down-zonings wasn’t really to convert these lovely old buildings into houses, and that happens more often than you would think too, but to make sure none joined them.

Then there’s the old Schedule 7 of the then Local Government Act residential flat buildings from the 1960s and 1970s (these were the Complying Development of their day – easy). These are the two to four-storey red or cream brick flocks of bats (block of flats) that are so maligned. The perimeter concreting can be a bit oppressive during summer, but I always liked the way every bathroom got a window. That is an old fashion courtesy lost on our more sophisticated looking current residential buildings. They are solid buildings that did get housing density moving. Those bad boys are gone too (in terms of new play mates) and often hang on, in a zoning sense, courtesy of Existing Use Rights.

And don’t forget all the procedural obstacles to density in this city

Lodge a housing DA and feel the love. Endless reports and hurdles to tick off. I am awaiting the requirement for the report on all the reports report.

The hurdles don’t just stop at the lodgement. There is the humiliation of deferral and accompanying additional information letters. Council’s need to design your proposal because even though it is now mandatory to use a registered architect to design a residential flat building, we don’t trust professionals.

The best story I was told came from an architect friend doing a warehouse conversion in Leichhardt.  The DA was endlessly amended, the council officers went on leave, had a lot of RDOs and then got a new job. Another emerged a few weeks later. It was deferred and amended again, almost a dozen times. The project became like a stew left in a communal kitchen. Everyone felt they could add something.

Finally, the manager intervened and decided to put his touches on the proposal and wrote the architect a “you should do this” letter. 

The architect scratched himself and thought that sounds a lot like the proposal I originally submitted two years ago, I am over this, the client is haemorrhaging cost, I am just going to resubmit the original scheme. He did and it was approved.

Funny story but it kept people out of a home for a year or two and when they got there that home cost more that it needed to.

These processes of dedensification haven’t done much for our city other than enrich existing property owners, create some cute low density housing precincts in very convenient locations and make day-to-day statutory planning consulting quite lucrative (thank you). But underlying that cuteness is a cruel lockout for most.

There is also a stunting of the city’s evolution. The great phases of this city were built quicky when ambition, wealth and new populations came together. The great terrace house townscapes of the inner city all got built over a short period from the mid-1880s to mid-1890s (before the city fell into depression).  As did the great precincts of Interwar residential flat buildings in the mid-1920s to early 1930s before the city again fell into depression.

One of the great lapses of current land use planning is that today’s approaches seem to think a more generalised expression of ambition, wealth and population growth is something this city can’t handle. The current boom, that started in the mid-1990s and is still going, has not really been able to fully and equitable express itself in our built form. 

Mostly that money has gone into bigger and better houses for the few (where those places could have been for the many) and the real growth and density is quarantined on busy roads, in commercial centres or in some middle or outer ring suburbs. 

Calculating planners and politicians like some of the middle ring places out west or to the south-west because it is relatively easy to shove a bit of density onto these diverse, often non-English speaking, communities who are poor letter writers. Fringe suburbs or the end of the rail line is also a great place for density because there is no one there to complain.

I suppose that’s the expression of our current historic boom – calculation and unfairness.

Density in established Sydney is often on the decline.  It’s not really about the up-zonings but rather a consistent theme of down-zoning and delaying any change that might allow for density.  At a public meeting on a new medium density rezoning or a housing proposal, someone inevitable quotes Joni Mitchell, “So they paved paradise, put up a parking lot” or the arcane Pete Seeger’s Little Boxes.”

I prefer homage to Neil Young, “look at density on the run in the 2020s”.  (Apologies to his song After the Gold Rush “Look at mother nature on the run in the 1970s.”  I think he may have been on the same side as Joni.)

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