Disappointing that the Queensland Government have decided not to action or outright reject all of the Productivity Commission's land use and planning reforms.
This Government has prioritised protecting "neighbourhood character" over proven solutions to the housing crisis.
Big Brisbane news! The Lactalis Pauls milk processing facility in South Brisbane has announced its closure in June this year, hot on the heels of the redevelopment of the Visy Glass and Heidelberg Hanson sites announced last year.
These are the last big brownfield sites in Brisbane's inner city!
We just relaunched our website! We've been around for a few years now and thought we should show off all the work our volunteers have been doing. New and improved with news stories, all our newsletters and every bit of advocacy we've done!
We’re terrible at social media so there’s no fun selfie but you have to believe us that we had a wonderful morning walking around Fortitude Valley reimagining what making the streets work for the people who live work and play here would be
If you live work or play around Alderley Train Station in the inner north, it's your last chance to help envision the new Alderley renewal precinct.
Our local members have been encouraging their neighbours to push for more density close to the train station.
Feedback closes Sunday so hop in quick!
Next Thursday night is our last social event for the year and we’re joined for a holiday special by Brisbane’s errant son @jonobri.com talking about @yimby.melbourne’s and @inflectionpoints.work’s year in review. Spots are limited so get in quick.
Granny flats are small game when it comes to building our way out of the housing crisis but they do have a role to play. There's no good reason to make them harder to build.
We'll be putting in a submission making it clear that this Amendment runs against the tide of planning reform happening across Australia. Anything that even marginally makes it harder or less economical to build more homes is a mistake in the middle of a housing crisis.
They've been a few years coming, but Brisbane City Council has put Amendment L out for consultation. The amendment makes it much harder to build granny flats in Brisbane, especially those big enough to be a genuine option for renters. It limits size, height and site coverage for secondary dwellings.
Not the most exciting post but our AGM is coming up and we're stoked to announce our guest speaker is ABC's own Kenji Sato!
Come along, have a beer and hearwhat it's like being the only journo to ride a bike to pressers.
12:30pm Saturday 25 September at the Burrow in West End.
New parking changes means new apartments in West End don’t have to build parking. It’s likely in a few years it’ll be more like Newstead and the Valley where only a small % of homes have a car
If you'd like to join our impromptu submission drive for more homes where people want to live, put one in here. services.brisbane.qld.gov.au/online-servi...
One of our local volunteers was livid when they saw the poster up.
They made a few changes.
It's all the same complaints.
It's too tall. It's making the area unsafe. It isn't in the neighbourhood character. It's unaffordable. It's taking away street parking. It'll make congestion worse.
Fear of change. Fear of shadows. Fear of the mildest inconvenience.
A few months ago, the local councillor organised a community meeting to discuss the project. Between that and this latest push from neighbouring residents, this project has received nearly TWO HUNDRED submissions against it.
Stockwell's project adaptively reuses the heritage factory facades around the corner, adds greenspace and delivers 132 new homes and 2 storeys of retail and commercial space in one of Brisbane's highest demand areas.
A block away are two parks, sports fields and Boundary Street shops and another block away is West Village Shopping Centre.
Within a fifteen minute walk is South Bank, the Cultural Centre, Brisbane State High and the CBD.
If you don't know West End too well, here's the local area. The site's currently a carpark, gym and warehouse.
Across the road is newly expanded state school and the new police station.
Some West End residents are railing against a medium density development in their inner city suburb, just minutes from the CBD.
It's sad that they're doing it at one of our favourite bars too. 😭
We're going to be advocating to the Commission to end Brisbane’s “townhouse ban”, remove restrictive zoning and character regulations that ration high-amenity land and remove minimum lot sizes, car parking minimums, excessive setbacks, height restrictions and floor area ratios.
And nearly 70% of residential zoned land within a kilometre of train stations or six kilometres of the CBD make it effectively impossible or outright ban building townhouses or even small apartment blocks like Brisbane’s iconic six-packs!
In fact, character restrictions apply to nearly 13% of all of Brisbane’s residential zoned land, and the majority of residential lots in the highly desirable neighbourhoods within 6 kilometres of the CBD.
Council policies on height limits, lot minimums and character protections in residential zoning all severely limit the developable land to a handful of large sites, particularly in the inner city where transport access is barely relevant for access to employment.
This in turn drives up the cost of housing, punishes new residents with hours-long commutes away from their families, and costs taxpayers billions in subsidising the cost of infrastructure to be built that already exists in the inner city.
Brisbane has remarkably restrictive planning regulations for most of our city. This land rationing drives up the cost of housing and pushes it to the fringes of our city.
The Queensland Productivity Commission's monumental 324 page interim report into construction productivity, exhaustively diagnosing the manifold problems with Queensland’s building and construction industry.
This is the kind of ambitious reform we need to reverse Brisbane's housing crisis.
It was great chatting to @ginarush.bsky.social for today’s ABC Long Read. Our little ragtag crew at @greaterbrisbane.org have been trying to spin a new story about how our city could work. More than Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane’s been fixated on a suburban lifestyle that’s not sustainable anymore.
We’re proud to be part of the national team who brought these shovel-ready policies together for our Brick Book.
For a “housing election”, it’s been very light on for policies that would actually boost housing supply.
So here’s six.
Greater Brisbane Urbanists meetup - Isles Lane in Post Office Square 6pm 18/02/25 10a/300 Queen St, Brisbane City QLD 4000
A Greater Brisbane? In this economy?
Join us tonight 6pm, at Isles Lane in Post Office Square for a snack, chat and social, all welcome.
