The NSW government says a new low and mid-rise housing policy is expected to unlock 112,000 new homes over the next five years. From Friday, planning rules across the state will be changed to allow dual-occupancies, terraces, townhouses, and residential flats within an 800-metre radius of 171 town centres and stations. The policy aims to tackle housing affordability by filling the gap between high-rise apartments and suburban sprawl.
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One thing I don’t agree with is measuring such plans by radius. It should be by the shortest walking path to the station. Sometimes, this is far more than 800 m.
Ideally yes, but it’s computationally painful to do at scale. I think of an X00 metre radius as approximating a walk-shed with a somewhat longer distance.
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The approach is typically measure a 800m walking (not driving) radius then apply that to the development pattern so that you get height transitions mid-block not across street. Some will be slight under or over the 800m.
Due to poor urban design, I can easily find places within 800 m radius that are considerably more (sometimes almost double) that in walking distance.
One example: 22 Mattes St, Meadowbrook. About 715 m in a straight line from Loganlea Station, but 1.6 km walking.
Second example: 35 Burlington Tce, Springfield Lakes. 793 m radius, 1.3 km walk.
It probably wouldn’t be that hard to find similar situations across Greater Brisbane. It seems to be something that infects relatively newer suburbs (say 1990s to now), where more effort was put into traffic calming, with lots of curved roads and one-way streets, rather than thinking about walking and cycling.
Surely it can’t be that difficult for a small team of decent coders to develop a system that calculates eligible areas by walking distance, using map data already owned by the state.
The 800m is not a straight line. It is walking distance.