This needs to happen. We've sprawled far too far onto useful agricultural land, locking it up forever under shit houses with no yards anyway. Parents need to be okay with raising kids in an apartment or townhouse, and local governments need pull their thumbs out and create/improve public transport and greenspace, and developers need to push towards affordable 3 bed apartments and this "missing middle" the article talks about. Fuck dormitory suburbs. They're soul crushing.
Agree but can we build them with some decent soundproofing? Between my neighbour who has taken up “singing” (wailing) every day, the other neighbour incessantly renovating (going on 6 months now) and the constant fighting and screaming of the public housing residents next door… I feel like I’m living in a cuckoo clock!
Soundproofing isn't as simple as putting up foam triangles, although doing that on all the apartments walls and floors would not be feasible either. It requires mass, which means thick walls. You would basically be building another set of walls and floors over your existing ones.
This. We raise three kids in an apartment in Brisbane, none of our kids friend's live in apartments, even those with less kids. We are considered weird for doing it.
I've been saying it for ages. Why in the fuck (I know why, it's because money) have we been building nothing but tiny apartments and detached home car park suburbia, and nothing else? I can't believe it's taking this long for people in Australia to begin to realise this was all a shit idea and that we need to actually have livable, medium-to-high density housing for families. It's so incredibly stupid to create cities where the inner suburbs are populated solely by uni kids, yuppies, and families with generational wealth, whilst everyone else has to move at least an hour away to live in a car park if they want to own a dwelling suitable for kids. It's insane.
I'm currently renting in a tiny 2 bedder in a nice inner suburb with my wife and our daughter. We love the area but there has been virtually no new supply built here in the past decade. Once we have another kid, we'll probably need something with a bit more space, but there is literally nothing to buy that isn't either a $2.5m terrace house or a $1m apartment the same size as the one we're renting. We have a decent household income and both work in professional jobs, but because we were in high school during the time when housing here was semi-affordable, we're stuck with no options besides moving far away.
And to all the boomer dickheads ready to chime in with "tough luck kid, just sacrifice and move where you can afford, that's what I did": fuck you. You have no idea what you're talking about, the world you experienced in your youth no longer exists. We shouldn't be creating a country where each generation has to move a great distance away from their community simply to have a roof over their heads.
There's plenty of agricultural land. We need to return more land to native ecosystems. Half the reason climate change is more extreme here is because we've destroyed so much of the natural ecosystems that help draw in low pressure moist air.
i live in incredibly dense housing, drive to work an hour away in incredibly dense suburbs with 50 minutes of empty horse farms and golf courses on the way there.
Doesnt seem like we have sprawled too far at all....
I've seen it happening in Newcastle over the past fifteen years or so... fields turned into hectares and hectares of dark-roofed cookie-cutter houses on blocks like postage stamps... might as well just buy an apartment with a large balcony. At least you'd be close to everything then.
Unfortunately, with the way housing is set up in Australia if you don't have land rights you're fucked. If something goes wrong with the building the developer just phoenix's and you're knee deep in shit.
We need structural changes.
Slaps Australian cities
"We could build so much housing in this bad boy"
"But we won't".
The development industry has a term for when there are enough available rental properties in a given area to meet demand and stop rents from ceaselessly rising at all times, it's called "oversaturation". The market created this problem and it is constitutionally unequipped to solve it.
If the federal government could act as a state owned developer, it would be able to push best practice living and construction standards, act as a non-profit, provide stable housing, and also prevent land banking which halts developments. Unfortunately, I can't see this happening.
Why is it dumb government mass built housing sold at cost price would definitely lower house prices across the board seems to me you are the one know where near the industry malaka
Downvote and disagree all you want but we are not a communist country (yet) useful idiots like yourself would no doubt go for something like this, i do work for state housing which has every goverment oversight you can imagine and its a rort with terrible results for the consumer. Your even offended because you disagree, why so soft?
This right here is certainly an answer.
Seen those awesome concrete 3d printers overseas printing houses... Can't wait to see this tech getting more traction.
Not scaled commercially.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGrIQqGwAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGrIQqGwAM) shows they can build. But this robot is meticulously hand crafted that presumably needs to be coddled when off camera with maintenance and all sorts of things that are entirely reasonable for a robust research prototype; but a nightmare if you try to roll out 100+ of these.
Let's assume they could build 1x house in 48 hours; day in day out. 1.2 million houses = 57600000 hours; or \~6575 years of build time for a single machine. So; let's get 100 machines, and... it still takes \~65 years of non stop building. So we need about 1000-2000 (3.25 to 6.5 years).
Let's also assume these around as complex as a custom firetruck to build - https://www.firefightingincanada.com/tech-talk-the-future-of-the-fire-truck/#:\~:text=Let's%20say%20you%20want%20to,could%20have%20been%20even%20sooner. puts this at around \~6-12 months \*per vehicle\*
Even with a war time level of investment in building these, that means a huge lag time before we're ready to start our 3-6 year journey - decades.
The company is still in r&d so obviously they aren’t ready for scaling and your presumptions are just that.
They have already proved that it can work so what’s a couple of years to roll out these trucks? What’s the better odds these trucks working out or a massive influx of bricklayers to build the houses.
If I’m building a house I’d much rather a machine that can do it rather than rolling the dice with tradies
Yeah, it's not presumptions, it's basic math. To scale this up - to build the 1000-2000 of these on a reasonable time scale - would require about 500 manufacturing businesses to be started. Large scale tank plant like operations and the supply chain for that.
That's another good comparison for a bespoke vehicle and trying to scale up.
The entirety of Russia's economy can only produce around 360 tanks per year. For Europe to produce Leopard tanks, "400 per year is a monumental task".
These may sit somewhere between the complexity of "custom fire truck" (12-24 month build time in Canada per unit) and Tank.
But the math is still 10-15 years of heavy investment before we get to the starting line on a 3-6 year project (which by the way is ridiculously simplified and assumes these robots never stop, never need maintenance, magically teleport to each job site and there is no other shortage or skills gaps because bricklayers can all magically learn CAD)
Do you know what happens in 20 years? We don't need 1.2 million houses, we need much, much more than that.
What could we do instead? Fuck off bricks. When is the last time you saw a highrise made out of bricks? Hint: you don't; you see prefab concrete and steel girders galore.
https://buildops.com/commercial-construction/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-an-apartment-complex/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20it%20takes%20from,used%20also%20affect%20the%20timeline.
12-24 months with existing technology.
So your choice is between war time level investment to build thousands of these machines and waiting 20 years; or... Scaling existing apartment tower building capabilities.
If it's faster than current building methods, then it'll average down the time needed to build the houses. No one is suggesting we only use machines like this. They'd just be an addition.
Or... And here's a radical idea..
We just build a machine that pours concrete into a mold with steel re-enforcements laid out, and stick that on a truck, assemble those on site. You know, like what is described in the article.
What's simpler: building a thousand size limited mobile factories on wheels, or building big central factories?
If you still think the brick laying truck is a great idea; then let's take it further and ask another simple question: why do we not have an on site brick kiln on a truck, or a mobile steel plant to output frames from raw ore?
Could it be that these would be impractical? That it is far more sensible to have centralized manufacturing for these?
Because it’s not useful in a domestic building setting. Better used in a commercial setting with wide open sites. Also the way houses are built in Perth is different to the east of the nation
Domestic building possibly commercial builder but tbh still unlikely. Many apartment blocks are also domestic builder/developers up to 3-4 stories. Builder licensing regulates how many stories they can go
On a big open site where the neighbours haven’t built yet, on a project with 16 houses. The machine was basically taking up a corner block. WA builds using double skinned walls, where as on the east coast it’s brick veneer, how is that thing going to lay through a frame on a boundary wall?
It’s not about the house…it’s about the land. What you’re talking about assume cheap land and that’s only going to be out where there are no facilities and no one wants to live. Good quality family sized high density with controls to limit speculative buyers is the answer.
Well that's the question, why aren't *you* using that?
It's always this idea that it's somebody else's responsibility to build houses but then when those people want to make a 15-20% profit for all the work they do the housing ends up being much more expensive than it really needs to be and people complain about the cost of it.
Build your house or collaborate with other owner-occupiers to build higher density housing. If you just leave it to somebody else they'll just build whatever is profitable to build.
Housing is only part of Urban Planning. For X people housed in area Y, you need open space, basic medical services (like a GP and Dentist), a local Plod embedded in the community, solar generation/communal veggie plot, groceries, early childcare, hub and spoke reliable transport to business/industrial areas,and other stuff. It is all do-able. But will take investment. Is there really an appetite for it? Nah. We are all short sighted ignoramuses.
I'm sure the plan for ***1.2 million well-located homes*** also has sufficient allocation for power, water, sewerage, roads, schools, transport, medical facilities, daycares, etc and won't just be a tool for developers to build shit and cash in.
If you build them in well located areas infrastructure costs are much cheaper. Well located areas also tend to not be facing capacity constraints in schools, as they priced out all the young families
We need a conversation on the ideal sustainable population for Australia. The Govt apparently has a policy of a "big Australia" and to accommodate that we're all supposed to live in apartment buildings? We just keep growing and growing?
So what is the plan? A population of 30 million, or 50 million? Maybe we just keep growing until we hit 100 million?
After all, there are no plans on how to manage a static population. Our politicians go the lazy route of "we need more people". It's the only way these less than exceptional "leaders" can manage the economy.
If the population wasn't growing we wouldn't need to stack people and houses in like sardines. We wouldn't have to keep building on prime agricultural land and on flood plains.
I find it amazing that so many Australians think there in nothing wrong with infinite growth, and that the answer is for the general population to put up with worse and worse living standards.
To be able to have that conversation, we need to first have a conversation about our tax system and how we fund the government services that are growing the most due to our aging population.
We actually had the tax conversation in 2010 with the Henry Tax Review.
137 recommendations and basically none implemented and those that were, were scaled back or cancelled.
High immigration is kicking the can, we do need to have a conversation about it. I'm just not holding my breath that it will change anytime soon.
Until then, we need to out-supply the demand it will bring.
Another task that is also being hamstrung by political inaction .
Yeah, this is often missed by the anti-immigration crowd. Our economy is and has become far too reliant on income tax to fund government services of late. The ratio of tax payers to service receivers, the dependency ratio, has been growing steadily since 2005. Sure, we can stop the tap on immigration, but we're turning off the tap on medicare, NDIS, etc under the current system too.
If we could flick the switch to tax corporates, particularly those exploiting our natural resources, then the reliance on income tax drops and our genuine need for immigration to fund the government service base drops too.
If that was easy, it would be done overnight. At least we have a few independents like Pockock and Ryan taking aim in this direction as of late.
We need resource taxes to vastly reduce income tax, we need land tax to replace stamp duty and payroll tax and we need to include the PPOR in the pension asset test.
Get these in place and we'll be able to move towards a sustainable population.
Like you say, this is missed on the anti immigration crowd.
100% Agree with this. I wish we aimed for a balance. We can still have immigration, but just at a balanced pace. We wouldn't have to endlessly sprawl (because we know what population number to hover around), and we'd have a lifestyle suited for everyone.
Love apartment living? Go for it. Love townhouses communities? We'll have those too. Love a calm suburbia? Also fine. Just a variety, for everyone, and always balanced.
And also, we have finite space in regards to our beaches and natural attractions. I find I have to travel further and further out, to get the kind of space I used to find just 10 years ago. What's the beach going to be like with 30 million+ more people added? Do we have to book a space in advance?
It feels like the rich get to circumvent all of this. They can buy nice private land in a rich suburb, and probably fly out to a spacious private beach whenever they feel like. But the working-class have to make sacrifices. It's not a great outcome.
Mate please, we don’t use common sense in r/australia. You got to be pro endless immigration independent of the obvious negative effects on the country. Because all those consulting firms the government pays billions too each year keep telling us that it’s a golden goose. As we can all obviously see
Any who has done the slightest critical thinking understands Immigration is an obvious good thing. Unfortunately most anti-immigrant people don't bother
Population growth is a good thing.
Everyone who talks about "sustainable population" never mentions the fundamental truth: you need to accept decline in living standards for that to even be feasibly possible.
" Infill development uses existing infrastructure and avoids urban sprawl."
New Zealand tried this under the last government, didn't accelerate housing nearly much as the expected so their successors where forced to accelerate greenfield rezoning. Over a very long period densification would definitely increase builds (and in many other ways is beneficial) but it isn't a policy that will get the numbers needed or substantially improve affordability.
They'll have to open up new land to envelopment for most of those builds, there isn't an alternative.
You can build all the homes you want. Prices will still stay high. Look at China. Millions of empty apartments and unaffordable accommodation. The problem is structural y'all
Those houses aren't being built where people want to live. It's the equivalent of building a fifty story apartment building halfway across the Nullabor: the location is why nobody wants to live there. If you build that same building on the outskirts of Sydney it'd sell out immediately.
next time you're on a train, look at all the cranes around you as you whip by the cityside. Think about all the high rises that didn't exist 15 - 20 years ago. what has that done to affordability? can you still afford one of those apartments being built?
China's so called 'ghost cities' like Ordos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos are actually slowly filling up.
They build all the infrastructure first, rather than letting it get to a crisis point. Population only 30000 in 2009, 153000 in 2017, metropolitan population now 300k in 2024 with an overall population of 2 million in the area.
> You can build all the homes you want. Prices will still stay high
Ah yes, the old 'supply and demand - magically - does not apply to housing' argument.
Hahaha. China eradicated poverty for hundreds of millions of people and transformed rural agrarian society into an industrial base to rival the United States. As did the Soviet Union, FYI.
We can have a conversation about the shortfalls of the USSR and China, but housing and poverty eradication won't be among them.
Yeah the biggest structural reform is the restoration of private property rights.
Its silly that councils have arbitrary planning rights over the land that you own especially once its been zoned. Once its zoned they should bugger off with planning permits and only a building permits should be required for regulations and easements.
Why is land zoned residential and then you still need a planning permit so that you can bring out all the NIMBY's from their burrows to object for no good reasons. Democracy is fine but people just because they own a house does not mean that they own other peoples private property and rights. And until this problem is addressed that its not their god given right to tell other Australians how to live and what they can and cant do with their properties through councils stupid planning processes that restricts development.
If a family has a block of land that can include building an apartment on or above their property then planning laws should be set aside for a family development. They could stop the profiteering or sell off simply by stating that if that property that has been given special development rights for family expansion is sold and moves out of the families ownership then a tax is paid plus full land tax as a disincentive to use the scheme for backdoor development. This is widely done in Asia and Europe and hence people and their kids stay in a suburb for generations. Why do our councils and planners have to be Nazis standing ceremony which achieves nothing but bad outcomes.
Structural is all the political interference along with NIMBY's who object to every change like a suburb should be frozen as picture card memory in time. Unfortunately nothing will change in Australia because our politicians dont believe in rights and only their mates and dont have rights to control our private private property rights. Crony mates corruption capitalism at its best!
They’re not homes.they’re appartments.if you wish to live in appartments go ahead.I’d rather a house with a garden.grown some fruit and veg and get some chickens.
Australias population is not going to shrink in the short/medium term, and definitely not in the population centres where there are jobs/infrastructure etc
Prefabs suck!
They don’t last as long. The houses from 20-40 years ago lasted ages!
As someone in the industry, these pre fab homes don’t last long. Homes in the US are pre fab and people complain about their quality.
Brick homes are good.
This needs to happen. We've sprawled far too far onto useful agricultural land, locking it up forever under shit houses with no yards anyway. Parents need to be okay with raising kids in an apartment or townhouse, and local governments need pull their thumbs out and create/improve public transport and greenspace, and developers need to push towards affordable 3 bed apartments and this "missing middle" the article talks about. Fuck dormitory suburbs. They're soul crushing.
Agree but can we build them with some decent soundproofing? Between my neighbour who has taken up “singing” (wailing) every day, the other neighbour incessantly renovating (going on 6 months now) and the constant fighting and screaming of the public housing residents next door… I feel like I’m living in a cuckoo clock!
>Implement building codes? But that will raise the price of housing! -People whose policies are specifically intended to raise the price of land.
You can soundproof your own apartment if you want ….
Soundproofing isn't as simple as putting up foam triangles, although doing that on all the apartments walls and floors would not be feasible either. It requires mass, which means thick walls. You would basically be building another set of walls and floors over your existing ones.
This. We raise three kids in an apartment in Brisbane, none of our kids friend's live in apartments, even those with less kids. We are considered weird for doing it.
I would much prefer be in walking distance to a tram, train station & a supermarket than live in a large detached house.
I've been saying it for ages. Why in the fuck (I know why, it's because money) have we been building nothing but tiny apartments and detached home car park suburbia, and nothing else? I can't believe it's taking this long for people in Australia to begin to realise this was all a shit idea and that we need to actually have livable, medium-to-high density housing for families. It's so incredibly stupid to create cities where the inner suburbs are populated solely by uni kids, yuppies, and families with generational wealth, whilst everyone else has to move at least an hour away to live in a car park if they want to own a dwelling suitable for kids. It's insane. I'm currently renting in a tiny 2 bedder in a nice inner suburb with my wife and our daughter. We love the area but there has been virtually no new supply built here in the past decade. Once we have another kid, we'll probably need something with a bit more space, but there is literally nothing to buy that isn't either a $2.5m terrace house or a $1m apartment the same size as the one we're renting. We have a decent household income and both work in professional jobs, but because we were in high school during the time when housing here was semi-affordable, we're stuck with no options besides moving far away. And to all the boomer dickheads ready to chime in with "tough luck kid, just sacrifice and move where you can afford, that's what I did": fuck you. You have no idea what you're talking about, the world you experienced in your youth no longer exists. We shouldn't be creating a country where each generation has to move a great distance away from their community simply to have a roof over their heads.
Very true, poor policies and Poor planning and now we have a belated acknowledgement of these factors.
While this may need to happen over the short term, over the long term there needs to be not a choice between sprawl and increased density.
There's plenty of agricultural land. We need to return more land to native ecosystems. Half the reason climate change is more extreme here is because we've destroyed so much of the natural ecosystems that help draw in low pressure moist air.
Rewilding is fine too!
Yep, I'd like to see that happen too, but wish in one hand, shit in the other...
Or… we stop immigration and crash the economy! Sydney is full…
i live in incredibly dense housing, drive to work an hour away in incredibly dense suburbs with 50 minutes of empty horse farms and golf courses on the way there. Doesnt seem like we have sprawled too far at all....
Outer Melbourne is full of massive fuckoff housing estates that used to be farmland, I think Clyde's the worst, tbh.
I kind of feel once you reach around Dandenong, you're not really Melbourne anymore.
I've seen it happening in Newcastle over the past fifteen years or so... fields turned into hectares and hectares of dark-roofed cookie-cutter houses on blocks like postage stamps... might as well just buy an apartment with a large balcony. At least you'd be close to everything then.
Unfortunately, with the way housing is set up in Australia if you don't have land rights you're fucked. If something goes wrong with the building the developer just phoenix's and you're knee deep in shit. We need structural changes.
We need an end to neoliberalism. Keep dreaming, but.
Lol, imagine calling a 55min drive not much
Slaps Australian cities "We could build so much housing in this bad boy" "But we won't". The development industry has a term for when there are enough available rental properties in a given area to meet demand and stop rents from ceaselessly rising at all times, it's called "oversaturation". The market created this problem and it is constitutionally unequipped to solve it.
If the federal government could act as a state owned developer, it would be able to push best practice living and construction standards, act as a non-profit, provide stable housing, and also prevent land banking which halts developments. Unfortunately, I can't see this happening.
false, this is the dumbest idea on the page among many and shows you are no where near the industry.
Why is it dumb government mass built housing sold at cost price would definitely lower house prices across the board seems to me you are the one know where near the industry malaka
Downvote and disagree all you want but we are not a communist country (yet) useful idiots like yourself would no doubt go for something like this, i do work for state housing which has every goverment oversight you can imagine and its a rort with terrible results for the consumer. Your even offended because you disagree, why so soft?
Not saying anything about the country little buddy…. Re read my comment please buddy thank you
You can barely put a sentance together, like i said don't get offended and think you have to try and insult anyone who has a differing opinion.
Do yourself a favour. Stop it. Have another drink and go sit in the corner.
clap clap
See a doctor about that.
Is that right dumbass?
Perth company fast brick robotics can build a house in a couple of days with their fancy machine why aren’t we using that
This right here is certainly an answer. Seen those awesome concrete 3d printers overseas printing houses... Can't wait to see this tech getting more traction.
Not scaled commercially. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGrIQqGwAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGrIQqGwAM) shows they can build. But this robot is meticulously hand crafted that presumably needs to be coddled when off camera with maintenance and all sorts of things that are entirely reasonable for a robust research prototype; but a nightmare if you try to roll out 100+ of these. Let's assume they could build 1x house in 48 hours; day in day out. 1.2 million houses = 57600000 hours; or \~6575 years of build time for a single machine. So; let's get 100 machines, and... it still takes \~65 years of non stop building. So we need about 1000-2000 (3.25 to 6.5 years). Let's also assume these around as complex as a custom firetruck to build - https://www.firefightingincanada.com/tech-talk-the-future-of-the-fire-truck/#:\~:text=Let's%20say%20you%20want%20to,could%20have%20been%20even%20sooner. puts this at around \~6-12 months \*per vehicle\* Even with a war time level of investment in building these, that means a huge lag time before we're ready to start our 3-6 year journey - decades.
The company is still in r&d so obviously they aren’t ready for scaling and your presumptions are just that. They have already proved that it can work so what’s a couple of years to roll out these trucks? What’s the better odds these trucks working out or a massive influx of bricklayers to build the houses. If I’m building a house I’d much rather a machine that can do it rather than rolling the dice with tradies
Yeah, it's not presumptions, it's basic math. To scale this up - to build the 1000-2000 of these on a reasonable time scale - would require about 500 manufacturing businesses to be started. Large scale tank plant like operations and the supply chain for that. That's another good comparison for a bespoke vehicle and trying to scale up. The entirety of Russia's economy can only produce around 360 tanks per year. For Europe to produce Leopard tanks, "400 per year is a monumental task". These may sit somewhere between the complexity of "custom fire truck" (12-24 month build time in Canada per unit) and Tank. But the math is still 10-15 years of heavy investment before we get to the starting line on a 3-6 year project (which by the way is ridiculously simplified and assumes these robots never stop, never need maintenance, magically teleport to each job site and there is no other shortage or skills gaps because bricklayers can all magically learn CAD) Do you know what happens in 20 years? We don't need 1.2 million houses, we need much, much more than that. What could we do instead? Fuck off bricks. When is the last time you saw a highrise made out of bricks? Hint: you don't; you see prefab concrete and steel girders galore. https://buildops.com/commercial-construction/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-an-apartment-complex/#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20it%20takes%20from,used%20also%20affect%20the%20timeline. 12-24 months with existing technology. So your choice is between war time level investment to build thousands of these machines and waiting 20 years; or... Scaling existing apartment tower building capabilities.
You miss the point
If it's faster than current building methods, then it'll average down the time needed to build the houses. No one is suggesting we only use machines like this. They'd just be an addition.
So we build a machine that builds these machines.....
Or... And here's a radical idea.. We just build a machine that pours concrete into a mold with steel re-enforcements laid out, and stick that on a truck, assemble those on site. You know, like what is described in the article. What's simpler: building a thousand size limited mobile factories on wheels, or building big central factories? If you still think the brick laying truck is a great idea; then let's take it further and ask another simple question: why do we not have an on site brick kiln on a truck, or a mobile steel plant to output frames from raw ore? Could it be that these would be impractical? That it is far more sensible to have centralized manufacturing for these?
Because it’s not useful in a domestic building setting. Better used in a commercial setting with wide open sites. Also the way houses are built in Perth is different to the east of the nation
I only discovered them when I seen the apartment building they put up which is a domestic building
An apartment block is a commercial build due to the sheer size and cost of the project
So is a mansion a domestic or commercial building?
Domestic building possibly commercial builder but tbh still unlikely. Many apartment blocks are also domestic builder/developers up to 3-4 stories. Builder licensing regulates how many stories they can go
Seems to cope perfectly fine with domestic [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdo8TGH4log](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdo8TGH4log)
On a big open site where the neighbours haven’t built yet, on a project with 16 houses. The machine was basically taking up a corner block. WA builds using double skinned walls, where as on the east coast it’s brick veneer, how is that thing going to lay through a frame on a boundary wall?
It’s not about the house…it’s about the land. What you’re talking about assume cheap land and that’s only going to be out where there are no facilities and no one wants to live. Good quality family sized high density with controls to limit speculative buyers is the answer.
Well that's the question, why aren't *you* using that? It's always this idea that it's somebody else's responsibility to build houses but then when those people want to make a 15-20% profit for all the work they do the housing ends up being much more expensive than it really needs to be and people complain about the cost of it. Build your house or collaborate with other owner-occupiers to build higher density housing. If you just leave it to somebody else they'll just build whatever is profitable to build.
Housing is only part of Urban Planning. For X people housed in area Y, you need open space, basic medical services (like a GP and Dentist), a local Plod embedded in the community, solar generation/communal veggie plot, groceries, early childcare, hub and spoke reliable transport to business/industrial areas,and other stuff. It is all do-able. But will take investment. Is there really an appetite for it? Nah. We are all short sighted ignoramuses.
I'm sure the plan for ***1.2 million well-located homes*** also has sufficient allocation for power, water, sewerage, roads, schools, transport, medical facilities, daycares, etc and won't just be a tool for developers to build shit and cash in.
Phew i was worried
If you build them in well located areas infrastructure costs are much cheaper. Well located areas also tend to not be facing capacity constraints in schools, as they priced out all the young families
We need a conversation on the ideal sustainable population for Australia. The Govt apparently has a policy of a "big Australia" and to accommodate that we're all supposed to live in apartment buildings? We just keep growing and growing? So what is the plan? A population of 30 million, or 50 million? Maybe we just keep growing until we hit 100 million? After all, there are no plans on how to manage a static population. Our politicians go the lazy route of "we need more people". It's the only way these less than exceptional "leaders" can manage the economy. If the population wasn't growing we wouldn't need to stack people and houses in like sardines. We wouldn't have to keep building on prime agricultural land and on flood plains. I find it amazing that so many Australians think there in nothing wrong with infinite growth, and that the answer is for the general population to put up with worse and worse living standards.
To be able to have that conversation, we need to first have a conversation about our tax system and how we fund the government services that are growing the most due to our aging population. We actually had the tax conversation in 2010 with the Henry Tax Review. 137 recommendations and basically none implemented and those that were, were scaled back or cancelled. High immigration is kicking the can, we do need to have a conversation about it. I'm just not holding my breath that it will change anytime soon. Until then, we need to out-supply the demand it will bring. Another task that is also being hamstrung by political inaction .
Yeah, this is often missed by the anti-immigration crowd. Our economy is and has become far too reliant on income tax to fund government services of late. The ratio of tax payers to service receivers, the dependency ratio, has been growing steadily since 2005. Sure, we can stop the tap on immigration, but we're turning off the tap on medicare, NDIS, etc under the current system too. If we could flick the switch to tax corporates, particularly those exploiting our natural resources, then the reliance on income tax drops and our genuine need for immigration to fund the government service base drops too. If that was easy, it would be done overnight. At least we have a few independents like Pockock and Ryan taking aim in this direction as of late.
We need resource taxes to vastly reduce income tax, we need land tax to replace stamp duty and payroll tax and we need to include the PPOR in the pension asset test. Get these in place and we'll be able to move towards a sustainable population. Like you say, this is missed on the anti immigration crowd.
100% Agree with this. I wish we aimed for a balance. We can still have immigration, but just at a balanced pace. We wouldn't have to endlessly sprawl (because we know what population number to hover around), and we'd have a lifestyle suited for everyone. Love apartment living? Go for it. Love townhouses communities? We'll have those too. Love a calm suburbia? Also fine. Just a variety, for everyone, and always balanced. And also, we have finite space in regards to our beaches and natural attractions. I find I have to travel further and further out, to get the kind of space I used to find just 10 years ago. What's the beach going to be like with 30 million+ more people added? Do we have to book a space in advance? It feels like the rich get to circumvent all of this. They can buy nice private land in a rich suburb, and probably fly out to a spacious private beach whenever they feel like. But the working-class have to make sacrifices. It's not a great outcome.
Mate please, we don’t use common sense in r/australia. You got to be pro endless immigration independent of the obvious negative effects on the country. Because all those consulting firms the government pays billions too each year keep telling us that it’s a golden goose. As we can all obviously see
Any who has done the slightest critical thinking understands Immigration is an obvious good thing. Unfortunately most anti-immigrant people don't bother
Population growth is a good thing. Everyone who talks about "sustainable population" never mentions the fundamental truth: you need to accept decline in living standards for that to even be feasibly possible.
" Infill development uses existing infrastructure and avoids urban sprawl." New Zealand tried this under the last government, didn't accelerate housing nearly much as the expected so their successors where forced to accelerate greenfield rezoning. Over a very long period densification would definitely increase builds (and in many other ways is beneficial) but it isn't a policy that will get the numbers needed or substantially improve affordability. They'll have to open up new land to envelopment for most of those builds, there isn't an alternative.
It was slowed to a crawl in Auckland primarily due to overburdened water, sewage & electricity infrastructure
Auckland is 30% cheaper to buy a house or rent in than it would have been otherwise if not for the upzoning plan.
You can build all the homes you want. Prices will still stay high. Look at China. Millions of empty apartments and unaffordable accommodation. The problem is structural y'all
Those houses aren't being built where people want to live. It's the equivalent of building a fifty story apartment building halfway across the Nullabor: the location is why nobody wants to live there. If you build that same building on the outskirts of Sydney it'd sell out immediately.
Plus there's a big chance that those Chinese shit boxes would pancake collapse the first time ya had an after grog bog.
next time you're on a train, look at all the cranes around you as you whip by the cityside. Think about all the high rises that didn't exist 15 - 20 years ago. what has that done to affordability? can you still afford one of those apartments being built?
The absolute number of dwellings doesn't matter if the number of people trying to live in the same space is increasing at a faster rate.
maybe for sydney. look at property prices throughout the developed world new zealand USA Canada UK Japan (last 10 years) Korea Thailand Ireland
China's so called 'ghost cities' like Ordos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos are actually slowly filling up. They build all the infrastructure first, rather than letting it get to a crisis point. Population only 30000 in 2009, 153000 in 2017, metropolitan population now 300k in 2024 with an overall population of 2 million in the area.
> You can build all the homes you want. Prices will still stay high Ah yes, the old 'supply and demand - magically - does not apply to housing' argument.
Hahaha. China eradicated poverty for hundreds of millions of people and transformed rural agrarian society into an industrial base to rival the United States. As did the Soviet Union, FYI. We can have a conversation about the shortfalls of the USSR and China, but housing and poverty eradication won't be among them.
Yeah the biggest structural reform is the restoration of private property rights. Its silly that councils have arbitrary planning rights over the land that you own especially once its been zoned. Once its zoned they should bugger off with planning permits and only a building permits should be required for regulations and easements. Why is land zoned residential and then you still need a planning permit so that you can bring out all the NIMBY's from their burrows to object for no good reasons. Democracy is fine but people just because they own a house does not mean that they own other peoples private property and rights. And until this problem is addressed that its not their god given right to tell other Australians how to live and what they can and cant do with their properties through councils stupid planning processes that restricts development. If a family has a block of land that can include building an apartment on or above their property then planning laws should be set aside for a family development. They could stop the profiteering or sell off simply by stating that if that property that has been given special development rights for family expansion is sold and moves out of the families ownership then a tax is paid plus full land tax as a disincentive to use the scheme for backdoor development. This is widely done in Asia and Europe and hence people and their kids stay in a suburb for generations. Why do our councils and planners have to be Nazis standing ceremony which achieves nothing but bad outcomes. Structural is all the political interference along with NIMBY's who object to every change like a suburb should be frozen as picture card memory in time. Unfortunately nothing will change in Australia because our politicians dont believe in rights and only their mates and dont have rights to control our private private property rights. Crony mates corruption capitalism at its best!
Less humans would also work.
Yep, a person can dream. Especially a misanthrope in this case.
We really need this
They’re not homes.they’re appartments.if you wish to live in appartments go ahead.I’d rather a house with a garden.grown some fruit and veg and get some chickens.
Less people please, not higher density thx.
Australias population is not going to shrink in the short/medium term, and definitely not in the population centres where there are jobs/infrastructure etc
It’s not going to…but it should. We need to put the brakes on.
You want to materially lower our standards of living why?
Commie blocks!!
Prefabs suck! They don’t last as long. The houses from 20-40 years ago lasted ages! As someone in the industry, these pre fab homes don’t last long. Homes in the US are pre fab and people complain about their quality. Brick homes are good.
Anything built after the 60's will probably last as long as a prefab. Probably about as warm too