Density worries millennials
Should cities grow outwards or upwards?
MILLENNIALS are more worried about the increasing population density in our cities than older generations, an exclusive new poll reveals.
A YouGov Galaxy survey of 1660 southeast Queensland residents found people are split over whether our cities should grow upwards-- or outwards — to accommodate the 794,000 extra homes forecast to be needed over the next 25 years.
Overall, 46 per cent say the priority when planning future development should be on limiting urban density, while 38 per cent say the focus should be on controlling sprawl into greenfield areas.
But among Millennials, 50 per cent were more concerned about infill crowding, peaking at 56 per cent among 25 to 34year-olds.
YouGov Galaxy managing director David Briggs said it could be because more young people were already living in built-up areas and experiencing the impacts first-hand.
Property Council Queensland executive director Chris Mountford said the poll result was “surprising” and reinforced the need for a wide variety of housing styles to be made available.
“We need more studio apartments, more one and two-bedroom apartments, more housing for older people and people with disabilities, more townhouses, more houses in traditional greenfield developments.
“People need different housing for different phases of life.”
The State Government’s Shaping SEQ regional plan encourages the development of “missing middle” dwellings — terraces, townhouses and selfcontained granny or Fonzie flats sharing land with a house — that sit between the detached house and high-rise apartments which currently dominate.
Mr Mountford says a complexity of planning rules across the region makes it challenging to retrofit existing suburbs with a range of housing types.
Minimum residential lot sizes range from 600 sqm in Lockyer Valley to no limit in Logan and Moreton Bay.
James Tuma, national director of city-shaping specialist Urbis, said density was not only inevitable but essential to avoid a housing affordability crisis that would create growing social inequity between wealthy residents of inner-suburbs and those consigned to living long distances from employment and services.
“Density does not mean you can’t have character. You can have charismatic higher-density developments which are sympathetic to the character of the area and to the subtropical climate.”
Leafy suburban streets would remain part of southeast’s Queensland’s identity but for many people amenity meant access to busy vibrant work, entertainment and dining precincts.
Chris Isles, executive director of Place Design Group, said we needed to “make our suburbs work harder’’ by providing more housing in the form of backyard flats, while keeping the trees which are part of the city DNA.
US research has identified heritage protections as a significant barrier to development. No similar studies have been done here but some planners and architects point out that many of our traditional timber and tin character homes are in just the inner-suburban locations where higher-density development would be most logical.
“We might need to lose some of it so that we can keep most of it,” Mr Isles said. “We have timber and tin around many of the transport hubs that really should have good quality high-density projects … where you could accommodate another 2000 or 3000 people.”
Photo: Contributed