Skip to main content

Reading

Leadership

Words
Tract

Date
February 2025

Sydney, much like every capital city in Australia, is in the grips of a housing conundrum.

Karmi Palafox, Principal Planner in Tract’s Sydney team, sat down with Nic Fildes from the Financial Times as part of their global Future of Cities Report to discuss the complexities of increasing housing supply and affordability in the picturesque Harbour City.

The recent TOD (Transit Oriented Development) reforms announced by the Minns Government are a step in the right direction, building on decades of planning principles driven by clustering housing, transport, employment and amenities to improve both affordability and liveability.

This presents an opportunity to unlock underutilised spaces within existing urban areas.

A mixture of housing typologies – including dual occupancies, townhouses and a diversity of apartment blocks – all have a role to play in helping the city ‘optimise — rather than maximise — its urban space without impinging on the “green and blue grid” that gives the city its character’.

Read the full Financial Times article Low-rise Sydney plans on density to tackle housing squeeze, by Nic Fildes below.

Read the full story
“We have to increase housing density but not lose Sydney’s identity.”

— Karmi Palafox

The latest

Play network strategies for community connection
Play network strategies - clare della bosca
Play network strategies for community connection

Play network strategies for community connection

Tract’s Play Space Design Strategist, Clare Della Bosca, recently presented on the importance of user-centred design and play network strategies…
Behind the Market Square Vision
Market square - vision for market square geelong - westfields
Behind the Market Square Vision

Behind the Market Square Vision

Geelong is a ‘global city’ – but what do great cities around the world have in common? Their lifeblood is…