SYDNEY – Australia’s largest city, Sydney, has been struggling for years to boost its housing supply and address its increasing population pressures, and the authorities believe they have finally found an answer.
The solution, proposed by the New South Wales government, is to build residential hubs – often involving high-rise apartments – within walking distance of the growing number of train stations.
It will represent a stark transformation for Sydney, a sprawling city where over 70 per cent of the dwellings are houses and low-rise apartments.
Sydney has about 5.3 million residents, up from 4.2 million in 2003, mainly due to international migrants. In the past two decades, the main countries of origin of migrants in Australia were India, China, Britain and the Philippines.
The addition of 185,000 homes will help NSW to try to achieve its goal of building an extra 76,000 homes a year.
At a cafe near a train station in the Sydney suburb of Bella Vista, an area selected for increased residences, Mr David Sipple told The Straits Times that adding large-scale housing or high-rise flats “will spoil the area”.
But the 71-year-old, a retired labourer who has lived in the suburb for 14 years, said he accepted the need for higher-density housing.
“It’s the most sensible thing to do,” he said. “The government has spent a lot of money on improving public transportation. If they are going to build high-rise apartments, they should put them near train stations.”
The train station at Bella Vista, in north-west Sydney, opened in 2019. It is one of several new stations rolled out under a massive overhaul of the city’s rail network that will connect western Sydney to the Central Business District (CBD).
The new stations, along with expansions of existing stations and new light rail lines, have provided an opportunity for the government to try to add a much-needed boost to the supply of high-rise housing.
About 53 per cent of Sydney’s properties are houses, 27 per cent are high-rise apartments, and the remaining 20 per cent are mainly low-rise apartments.
The authorities believe this mix will need to change to accommodate a rising population and growing concerns about congestion. Rents in Sydney have risen by 14 per cent in the past year and property prices by 11 per cent.
“The simple truth is, we don’t have enough well-located homes for the people who make up our city – and that has to change if we want our kids to be able to afford a home in Sydney and not leave for other states,” Sydney Premier Chris Minns told reporters on Dec 7.
The government plans to initially boost housing within 1.2km of eight stations – including Bella Vista – to add about 48,000 high-rise and medium-rise apartments.
A further 138,000 homes are due to be built within 400m of 31 stations across the state. The first homes are due to be completed by late 2027, but the entire set of housing is due to take 15 years.
While it may be some time before the sale price for the apartments that are being built is determined, the average apartment price in Sydney was about A$830,000 (S$741,000) in November.
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Local residents and councillors have largely appeared to welcome the proposal for new rail-based population hubs.
Housing policy expert Bill Randolph from the University of Sydney told ST that building more housing around transport hubs was a “good idea”. But he said the government needs to ensure that these new hubs include crucial infrastructure such as schools, parks, facilities for cars and green spaces.
“It is all very well to rezone,” he said. “What can go wrong is that development can take place and that the infrastructure won’t be there to support the population.”
A lack of sufficient roads to cope with larger numbers of residents would also make some areas unsuitable for high-rise hubs, some local mayors have said.
Acquiring land for large-scale developments would also mean buying out existing property owners. This, noted Mr Darcy Byrne, mayor of the Inner West Council in inner Sydney, would be almost impossible in certain suburbs where property prices have soared.
In Rozelle, for instance, the average house costs A$2.3 million and an apartment, A$1.4 million.
“You’d have to find a Saudi sheikh or a Russian oligarch to afford the astronomical cost of buying up blocks of homes for redevelopment,” he said.
In Bella Vista, Mr Mark Christo, a 28-year-old labourer who rents a property a short drive away in the suburb of Northmead, said he was not opposed to more construction of high-rise apartments, but noted that “a lot of high-rises can ruin views”.
Mr Sipple said most Sydney residents would probably prefer to live in houses, but accepted that shifting towards high-rise apartments was inevitable. “You can’t stop the population growth,” he said. “There’s room to develop out here, and it will become a more densely populated area. That’s progress.”
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