Affordable Housing, Urban Renewal and Planning: Emerging Practice in Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales

Urban renewal—redeveloping and enhancing underutilised or disadvantaged urban areas—provides major opportunities and challenges for Australian urban policy. Containing population growth within existing urban areas through higher density housing forms has become a central goal of metropolitan planning, both in Australia and internationally (Boyle & Mohamed 2007; Altes 2009; Bunker & Searle 2009). Renewal strategies can support such containment, maximising the use of existing infrastructure and minimising the need for land conversion on the city fringe, while adding to new housing supply. However, new housing delivered in urban renewal contexts is not necessarily affordable to those on low and moderate incomes (Aurand 2010), while poorly designed containment policies may undermine housing supply and affordability more widely (Dawkins & Nelson 2002). This is a major policy concern given Australia’s growing shortage of dwellings affordable to low income households, particularly in the capital cities (NHSC 2011).