Ross Grove, Western Sydney Regional Director, The Property Council of Australia
The recent release of the 2022 Flood Inquiry Report effectively wipes tens of thousands of planned new dwellings off the map.
Naturally the cogs of bureaucracy move a tad more slowly and the language used is a tad more diplomatic, but the underlying message is clear: flood planning controls will be more conservative, and housing supply in these areas will be reduced.
It’s tough medicine for industry and people looking to buy new housing on the periphery of Sydney, but nobody benefits from a situation where housing is built on land that is flood-prone beyond historically anticipated projections.
It does leave an open question for our city’s urban planners though: If we’re not going to build housing for people in the areas previously identified, master planned and agreed to, then where will we build new housing?
Part of the flood review features a suggestion that we build more apartments, and while that type of housing works for people like me, it’s not for everyone.
In fact, recent years have shown demand patterns in Western Sydney to be quite the opposite, with homebuyers, particularly owner-occupiers indicating a firm preference for low-density homes on the edge of Sydney.
You can attribute a range of explanations for this trend whether its lifestyle, amenity or affordability, but the overall signal is that the market wants greenfield development to be a significant and legitimate part of the city’s future growth.
The question is how and where are these new houses going to be delivered? It does not seem reasonable for government to have all the answers to this one in the fortnight following the release of the review, and the industry also has some heavy-lifting to do in providing thought-leadership and practical solutions.
Clearly there will need to be a reassessment of the invisible line between urban and rural parts of Sydney. Ideally both of these catchments should be expanded.
The rural boundary should be extended to incorporate areas that will be designated as flood-prone and undevelopable, while the urban areas should incorporate flood-free sites with the services, infrastructure and development capacity to deliver growth.
This is where the property industry can help. In 2011, the then-Planning Minister Brad Hazzard launched a “developer nominated sites” process asking landowners to nominate opportunities for additional housing growth that might not have previously been considered by government.
This is the sort of process where ideas can be evaluated, scored on merit, and ranked according to their potential to deliver growth at zero or a relatively limited cost to the taxpayer.
We’re now eleven years on from when this work was last started.
Sydney’s infrastructure landscape has changed dramatically, along with the industry’s capacity to innovate and create new solutions to meet the challenges of a supply and affordability crisis.
Perhaps it’s time to dust off this process and see what industry can bring to the fore.