Urban planner David Shearer on why Canberra needs dense housing in the inner suburbs.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00The pressure is that all of those inner suburbs were designed originally in Canberra as cottages
00:07on normal residential blocks.
00:10So as Canberra looks to become more compact and a more densely populated city, there is
00:17going to be more pressure on those inner areas to deliver the housing that people who want
00:23to enjoy the same sort of lifestyle that people who already live here have.
00:29So if not, if we can't find a way to basically repopulate these areas that were originally
00:39just suburban houses on large gardens and that have had, you know, people raise their
00:45families there.
00:46The way that it makes sense to do that is to find land within these inner areas that
00:52is basically underutilised or can be put to better use without compromising green space,
00:58without ripping down countless numbers of trees.
01:03And it is a challenge because the areas that are available, even interstitial sort of spaces
01:09between other areas, are areas that are valued for other reasons.
01:14So the challenge is to find areas that really have little inherent value and the number
01:23one target has got to be at-grade car parks.
01:27An at-grade bitumen or dirt car park is a soft target and it's not a high-value asset.
01:34Cars can go underground or they can go elsewhere.
01:37So these are the places that are naturally suitable for that type of more intense development.