Sydney desperately needs a groundswell of support for new urban housing to grow
SYDNEY needs to follow the likes of New York, San Francisco, Seattle and London, and embrace the The Yes In My Back Yard movement if it has hopes of becoming a truly global city.
NSW
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IT seems the closer we get to the NSW election the stronger the rhetoric against development becomes. Sydney must now be the leading NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) city in the world.
And much of the downward spiral is coming from politicians on both sides siding with the forces against any new development. The likely scenario is that the planning system will go into a pause mode for a year and that it will take another two years to ramp up the supply of the new housing that we need.
No one has changed the targets of 725,000 new homes needed in Sydney over 20 years, but the deliverers of new housing are finding that the planning system is on hold, that the pause button has been firmly pressed. The NIMBYs are winning.
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But there is another approach that has developed a movement across global cities including New York, San Francisco, Seattle and London called YIMBY.
The Yes In My Back Yard movement is championed by younger people wanting affordable housing in well-designed developments in urban areas.
In Australia there is only one YIMBY centre and that is in Brisbane. Yet Sydney is the city that desperately needs a groundswell of support for new urban housing.
We need YIMBY SYDNEY.
A negative attitude to new development began at the end of last year when the government renamed Priority Precincts as Planned Precincts.
The word around the development industry is that these precincts have now become Paused Precincts. The hope in the government is that the cranes will keep the supply of new housing going right up to the election.
But the supply chain of the next round of housing projects is being put on hold so that electorates are given breathing space to get used to change.
Let’s look at some of the political signals that could lead to a housing supply vacuum.
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The Labor member for Macquarie Fields Anoulack Chanthivong has sent a flyer to all in his electorate titled “Stop the Squeeze” that says new development must stop.
Deputy Leader of the state Labor Party Michael Daley has been in the media recently decrying the overdevelopment at Pagewood along Anzac Pde, and the Labor mayor of Ryde Council Jerome Laxale has called for a two-year stop to all development in his council area.
It turns out that he is the Labor candidate for the seat of Ryde in the March election.
On the Liberal side, the current member for Ryde Victor Dominello has gone out fighting against overdevelopment, calling it “Enough is Enough”. But the biggest pause has been by the government’s “Missing Middle” code for terrace houses being put on hold for a year for 50 councils across the state.
Clearly the terrace house code has been used as a proxy for an anti-development position, and the government agreed.
Local councils emboldened by the NSW government’s backdown on terrace houses are now seeing the opportunity to stop all development. The Northern Beaches Council requested a moratorium on state planning policies that supported affordable housing, seniors housing and disabled housing.
Presumably these types of housing did not fit the local character of the northern beaches. Many other councils are now feeling that the pre-election environment is the opportunity to stop development.
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But there also seems to be a pause button pressed on the so-called Planned Precincts along Anzac Pde, at St Leonards and Macquarie Park. Long-awaited master plans for these precincts seem to have got lost in the complex planning system.
A ray of light does exist in the appointments by NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet of a Productivity Commissioner and a Chief Economist with both to look at housing affordability. I suspect by the time they get fully up to speed housing approvals will have tanked and they will be tasked with a rescue mission to ramp up the housing supply industry.
It would all be so much better for consumers of new housing if we didn’t have the populist slow down that comes with state elections so that the planning system could ensure that the 725,000 new homes required were being put through the planning system and being built.
Sydney needs a YIMBY movement just like Brisbane, New York and London to remind politicians that we are a global city.
Chris Johnson is CEO of Urban Taskforce
Originally published as Sydney desperately needs a groundswell of support for new urban housing to grow
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