Our regional plan won’t end well

 ‘Shaping SEQ’ is the latest version of the regional plan for SEQ. But given massive social, economic, demographic and technological change are the underlying assumptions out of date?

In fairness, the latest incarnation of our regional plan was never intended as a fundamental rethink, only an update: the presumption being that the underlying principals were sound but fine tuning was needed. 

The terminology has certainly changed. From ‘compact settlement’ in the 2000s we moved to ‘missing middle’ and now ‘gentle density.’ But they generally mean the same thing: contained geographic growth via a growth boundary within which growth will happen, meaning in turn higher forms of density given reducing availability of land suited to - but not permissible for - development. 

But consider the market signals now screaming at us: a severe shortage of housing; tent  villages; worsening affordability (now some of the worst in the world); longer and more costly commutes to places of work, education or healthcare; lengthy hospital wait lists and ambulance ramping; worsening metro wide congestion; rising school shortages; questions around future water and energy supply; a construction industry incapable of responding to the pace of rising demand; record high construction costs; shortages of seniors care; shortages of child care; a planning system where obtaining the paperwork for a project approval can take longer than actually building the thing… it’s quite the list. 

Population growth is one factor rendering the assumptions in these plans now redundant. Australian population growth in the early 2000s was just 1% to 1.5%. It’s now over 2.5%. In raw numbers, growth (mainly due to the Federal Government’s immigration policies) has risen to 624,000 last year compared with around 230,000 in the early 2000s.  That’s a massive increase, never envisaged by regional plan authors. 

Rapid growth in demand requires rapid increases in supply – something we are failing miserably at, across multiple fronts. Not only has minimal extra land been ‘zoned’ for urban expansion  (growth boundaries remain largely unchanged) but our regulatory systems are now less fluid and less responsive. It now takes longer to gain approval from authorities for development, and the costs are also higher. Land capable of development is harder to find, and when you do find it, developers can face several years of pre-lodgement and assessment before a decision is made to allow or deny it. If allowed, it then needs to be built. 

Add to this the increasing reliance in our regional plan for higher density to accommodate growth. The realities of today’s construction market are such that the higher the density, the higher the cost. A two-bedroom apartment needs to sell for over $1million for it to be worth doing after all taxes, codes and compliance costs are added to the land and construction cost. Hence we are now mainly only building density for millionaires. The construction outlook is more benign in that further rapid increases are less likely, but prices are unlikely to fall. Building density will remain the more expensive housing form, and arguably also one that takes longer.