Will Sydney’s apartments ever become more family friendly?

Sydney is well on its way to embracing high-density living, but one group has missed out in the push to increase the number of homes available in the city.

Families, says Canterbury-Bankstown Council town planner Liam Apter, have not been given good opportunities to live in high-density areas connected to train stations and nearby shops – and it’s not because they don’t want to live there. The problem is the types of apartments available to them.

Schandel and Carlos Fortu with their son, Hugo, 9, live in a spacious three-bedroom apartment in Meadowbank.Credit: Janie Barrett

“A cramped, two-bedroom apartment shouldn’t be the only way people can live in a [town] centre that’s well connected – you need more options,” he said.

As councils across Sydney adapt housing strategies to cater to the state government’s transport-oriented development plans, which will bring more high-density housing built near train stations, several have introduced requirements for developers to deliver a minimum number of three- or four-bedroom homes in new builds.

Liverpool Council, in the city’s growing south-west, changed its planning requirements in mid-2024 and requires at least 20 per cent of new units to have three or more bedrooms. Other councils including Parramatta, The Hills Shire and Lane Cove have taken similar measures.

Apter, a strategic planner in the council’s city shaping and design team, and his colleagues are finalists in the Big Ideas competition at this year’s Sydney Summit, hosted by the Committee for Sydney and supported by The Sydney Morning Herald.

The team will pitch that the NSW government change the state’s apartment design guide and planning legislation to force new developments to include a certain minimum of three- or four-bedroom apartments.

“[Councils] can’t individually solve this problem because developers could build elsewhere,” Apter said.

“We all agree that increasing density is important, but it’s always the detail, and ‘how do we do it’? And I think there are multiple answers.

“Family-sized apartments is one piece of it, and it’s not the silver bullet to the housing affordability crisis, but I think it’s a way to set us up for success.”

Apter will present the idea at the summit at the International Convention Centre on Tuesday.

The convenience of apartment living – and not having to do gardening or fix roof tiles – attracted Schandel Fortu, director of planning at urban development group Ethos Urban, and her husband to a rare three-bedroom apartment in Meadowbank, within the City of Ryde Council.

“It’s the size of a small house, but I get the benefits of apartment living,” she said. “My son’s daycare is next door, his school is 50 metres away. I catch the ferry every day to work, my husband catches the train. We don’t even use the car apart from on weekends.”

The size of Fortu’s 150-square-metre home was recently mandated as a minimum size for three-bedroom apartments in The Hills Shire. In Parramatta, the minimum size for three-bedroom units is 100 square metres, which can often be the difference between having enough storage to operate family life effectively or being forced to move out.

Schandel, left, says her family’s three-bedroom unit has worked well.Credit: Janie Barrett

Families also need public infrastructure: if green spaces and pools, for instance, are not in the vicinity, families will demand access to such spaces in the form of bigger gardens and their own pools.

“I grew up in Blacktown and we had our own swimming pool and backyard because you wouldn’t feel safe going to a [poorly maintained] park,” Fortu said.

“But [in Meadowbank], I can see from my balcony the park my son goes to with his friends to kick a ball and yell out that it’s time for dinner. They’re safe spaces which are overlooked and kept to a high standard.”

Adding turnkey apartments – configurations of studios connected to two-bedroom apartments, sold as a singular unit but accessible via two entrances – could also help families transition to apartment living, she said.

Planning Minister Paul Scully, who is leading NSW Labor’s ambitious zoning reforms, said the government’s upcoming pattern books for housing design would allow families to choose the design and make-up of townhouses, terraces and apartments, meaning they could choose the number of bedrooms based on their lifestyle.

“As our preferences for housing change and our demographic make-up shifts, the product that people want will also change,” he said.

“From larger family-friendly apartments to more single dwellings, we will continue to reform the planning system to cater for this choice.”

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