National Urban Policy

As the National Urban Policy consultation period closes, the Commonwealth must now work to guide and incentivise states to build compact, affordable cities, with abundant housing for all Australians.

The Commonwealth should adopt a sixth goal within the National Urban Policy: make our cities affordable

The best way to make our cities affordable is to reduce housing costs, and that the best way to reduce housing costs is to make housing abundant.

The National Urban Policy therefore must be prescriptive: we need to pursue compact cities in which more people are able to live.

The Federal Government must work with states and territories to ensure housing is permitted to be built in more places across our entire country.

It’s time to remedy the measurement deficit within urban policymaking

We call for an end to unaccountable urban planning policies.

Urban planning departments across Australia consistently fail to measure the costs and externalities of the policies they impose, and as a result are able to do immense damage to our country with almost no accountability.

The Federal Government must develop best-practice frameworks for measurable policy outcomes and better cities for all. 

Australia must move away from hyperlocal decision making, and toward representative consultation 

The main outcome of current “consultation” is fewer homes for fewer people.

Our bureaucratic and overly technical planning system privileges the voices of older homeowners at the expense of renters, young families and aspirational residents who by chance of fate or privilege happen to not already live in wealthy, desirable areas.

We have to enfranchise our cities’ silent stakeholders: the people who want to live there, but whom our planning systems lock out.