Since we have a housing crisis it’s inevitable that one day we will need to build here. Here’s my solution to public transport for the Warrill Valley area. We could deliver 100,000 - 200,000 new homes in this area and 30,000 - 60,000 jobs potentially.
My proposal includes: upgrading the Centenary Highway to Motorway standards between Yamanto & Springfield, a New Cunningham Motorway, an extension to the Springfield rail line to Ripley and a new Metro BRT (called the Valley line) from Ipswich to Harrisville following the rough alignment of the former Dugandan railway line (albeit diverts via Ripley to connect with the Springfield line extension).
Essentially once developers are done with Ripley, there’s a high chance they’re gonna try develop the Purga - Harrisville area next. This area is perfect for new housing development due to its abundance of flat and largely undeveloped valley land.
Unfortunately too many people just want single family homes. As much as I agree we need to push for greater density, a lot of people still want to have the same opportunities to own a freestanding house like generations before them did. This is partly because of our culture revolving around the detached house on a quarter acre or 600sqm block and our equally unhealthy obsession with homeownership. Theirs a reason why people are pushed to buy a single family house. Because both renting or buying a unit is looked down upon in ‘Australian Culture’.
Edit: so too is not having two 4WDs parked on the driveway.
The lower part between Boonah and Harrisville is avoided. Also you could say the same about Norwell area which will likely also get developed in the next couple of decades eventually.
Our birthrate is dropping and most parties are now committed to lower immigration. I really doubt Brisbane has to grow over the next fifty years nearly as much as people think.
At some point our politicians need to have the guts to tell those people to move to country towns to have that lifestyle for a reasonable price, instead of making Brisbane sprawl forever. And the people need to be willing to vote for those policies. Otherwise we become Los Angeles.
Yeah but we have low supply of housing and also wouldn’t more houses and falling birth rate mean lower property prices or rents long term. As for the falling birth rate and thus population rates slowing down, you might as well say that we don’t need to build anymore infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc, but that would be viewed as a very controversial statement.
The point is, Brisbane ran out of much of its non flood prone land in the 2010s and combined with the Olympics and southerners coming up here during Covid, it has created the perfect storm.
Problem is the regions have been neglected for decades that there isn’t many opportunities. Maybe if we actually got around to building high speed rail or better intercity rail, then we could decentralise and bring more opportunities to some of these regional areas or make it viable to commute into major capital cities like Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne etc from these regional centres.
Brisbane ran out of much of its vacant developable land - the solution is not therefore to go and find more in periurban areas, but to use the land that is closer to where people want to be more efficiently.
We definitely need to keep building things, just not huge tracts of single family homes. More households will increasingly be one or two people rather than husband, wife + 2.3 kids. This means the balance shifting more and more to infill development. I doubt we will ever need another Aura/Ripley/Yarrabilba.
Problem is not everyone wants to live in apartments. Some do, but most don’t. And even people who are fine with it, are only fine with it if an apartment is significantly cheaper than a standalone house and isn’t in the far outskirts. Problem is that unlike in places like Melbourne where compared to house prices, apartments are significantly cheaper, here in south east Queensland, many units are selling for as much as the actual houses themselves.
In general sense though, even standalone houses on the outskirts of Melbourne are selling cheaper than units in Caboolture or Toowoomba. The gap is even more extreme when it comes for renting, especially close to public transport.
Will give Melbourne some credit for unlocking density whilst we did the complete opposite.
And as another fact, it’s clearly not migration because Melbourne takes on nearly double the permanent residents that we do.
Because people can’t afford to raise families these days. But also, what about the rise of multigenerational households. Thats going to be the main buyer/market of detatched family homes moving forward.
It could be very wishful thinking but if they’re not already, I think people will adapt and come to accept living in at least medium density housing in greater SEQ (maybe not the sunny coast just yet).
Melbourne has lived with it for decades now, and the inner-city suburbs of Sydney are well on their way to densification with Sydney Metro these days. If they really hammer TOD into current and new developments in Brisbane, the psyche will change in my opinion.
This is a very outdated view of the housing market. This used to be true in Australia but now apartment living is preferred by many people and there are many owner-occupiers, including families with children.
Regional cities deserve better than to be made into mere commuter towns for Brisbane. People act like HSR is this silver bullet for regional economies, but it just gets people out of there faster. What they need is local investment to create local jobs. Yes, governments can assist with that, but sometimes simply having a larger local population helps create that local economy. That’s what should be promoted.
Not sure how you could raise children in an apartment with little to no backyard. Sure you could probably raise one but thats it. Especially families with larger pets like Great Danes etc. Apartments arent really designed for families but rather are mainly targeted at Childfree couples which are on the rise however.
Look up the concept of third places. That’s how. Over the past 50 odd years Australian society has grown more and more isolated thtough the removal of third places (e.g. local parks, communal areas, etc.). In part this is due to the Australian dream looking like a seperated house with a big yard, however, there’s also changing attitudes towards the safety of children and the rising speed of cars making it unsafe for a child to play on the street.
