Great piece that confirms the wildly held view that state govt and councils bottleneck with zoning restrictions. Let the market decide how and where to build to give people more choice on type of housing and avoid the 2 hr daily driving time to commute to and from work. Density isn’t a killer of cities but an asset to culture and social fabric.
Also, I know it’s only one block so barely with mentioning but down the street from me in Neutral Bay on the lower north shore of Sydney there is a block of land that could easily support a 3 storey building with up to 6 apartments, it’s currently home to one tree, some grass and a swing set, with a plaque containing the name of the ‘park’
In 5 years of living here and walking past it multiple times every week I’m yet to see even once a kiss on that swing or a family sitting on that grass, I did once see 2 teenagers smoking under the tree
I’m sure there would be outrage, mainly from the neighbours who would have windows looking over there fence if an apartment block was to be built, if it was suggested to build there, but I would happily lead a campaign to get apartments built there and as step one would happily check it multiple times a week for community use and provide photographic evidence of its constant emptiness as a pre-buttal to the NIMBYs who would no doubt claim it’s important community space (despite the fact there are 2 hockey fields surrounded by green space less than 200 metres away that themselves are barely used other than by organised sport and dog walkers
Reading this piece I kept thinking after each section ‘sure sounds like these guys have the ear of Chris Minns’ and then lo and behold near the end you indicate that this in fact the case
The other good thing about having Minns onside is that unusually for a centre-left politician he and his team seem to understand the communication environment we live in today so hopefully he won’t just have to jam this stuff through over objections but will actually be able to take the community on the journey with us as he changes people’s attitude to development, I feel he is going to be an important ally so keep the pressure on him yes for sure, but understand he’s a politician and maybe be prepared to cut him some slack at times if the doesn’t 100% match your preferred policies and timelines every step of the way, he knows better than you the importance of community buy-in as he’s the one who has to worry about being reelected, just accept that he’s on your side (my side) and that we’re all aiming for the same outcome but the incentives for activists are not always perfectly aligned with those of politicians even if he is on your side
Great piece that confirms the wildly held view that state govt and councils bottleneck with zoning restrictions. Let the market decide how and where to build to give people more choice on type of housing and avoid the 2 hr daily driving time to commute to and from work. Density isn’t a killer of cities but an asset to culture and social fabric.
https://heathsteadco.substack.com/p/housing-is-broken-everywhere-why
Also, I know it’s only one block so barely with mentioning but down the street from me in Neutral Bay on the lower north shore of Sydney there is a block of land that could easily support a 3 storey building with up to 6 apartments, it’s currently home to one tree, some grass and a swing set, with a plaque containing the name of the ‘park’
In 5 years of living here and walking past it multiple times every week I’m yet to see even once a kiss on that swing or a family sitting on that grass, I did once see 2 teenagers smoking under the tree
I’m sure there would be outrage, mainly from the neighbours who would have windows looking over there fence if an apartment block was to be built, if it was suggested to build there, but I would happily lead a campaign to get apartments built there and as step one would happily check it multiple times a week for community use and provide photographic evidence of its constant emptiness as a pre-buttal to the NIMBYs who would no doubt claim it’s important community space (despite the fact there are 2 hockey fields surrounded by green space less than 200 metres away that themselves are barely used other than by organised sport and dog walkers
Reading this piece I kept thinking after each section ‘sure sounds like these guys have the ear of Chris Minns’ and then lo and behold near the end you indicate that this in fact the case
The other good thing about having Minns onside is that unusually for a centre-left politician he and his team seem to understand the communication environment we live in today so hopefully he won’t just have to jam this stuff through over objections but will actually be able to take the community on the journey with us as he changes people’s attitude to development, I feel he is going to be an important ally so keep the pressure on him yes for sure, but understand he’s a politician and maybe be prepared to cut him some slack at times if the doesn’t 100% match your preferred policies and timelines every step of the way, he knows better than you the importance of community buy-in as he’s the one who has to worry about being reelected, just accept that he’s on your side (my side) and that we’re all aiming for the same outcome but the incentives for activists are not always perfectly aligned with those of politicians even if he is on your side
Great set of recommendations that are very feasible.