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Australia’s cities and suburbs have evolved that way and our planning followed along, he said.
In Minneapolis, that meant 70 per cent of the city could not help create more homes because nothing could change in the suburban areas.
Brisbane is similar – a car-centric city, with high-density CBD and inner suburbs, and suburban residential areas, Garred said.
The Minneapolis 2040 plan in 2018 was “change needs to happen across the city”, not just in high-density areas, he said.
“So they removed planning restrictions and allowed people to build up to three dwellings per block everywhere across the city.”
In the past five years 21,000 units, townhouses and duplexes have been built in Minneapolis, and car parking spaces have been reduced in some parts of the city, an issue now being explored in Brisbane.
The lesson for Brisbane is, by encouraging “salt and peppering” across the city, “it means you are not going to see significant change in any one street”, Garred said.
“In a street of maybe 20 houses, you might see one or two duplexes on that street, or maybe one triplex,” he said.
“But it’s not a whole street of triplexes, and it doesn’t necessarily significantly impact on the fabric of the street.”
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He said that also stopped particular sectors of the city doing “all the heavy lifting” to cope with population growth.
“By doing this, it takes away from the idea of supporting the idea only if it is not in our backyard because it is in everyone’s backyard and everyone does a bit of the lifting.”
Garred suggested Brisbane focus on a mix of housing, in all parts of the city, so people could downsize in an area they know.
“Most people in Brisbane live on the northside or the southside, we very rarely cross the river,” he said.
“But as you get older, and your kids move out, you don’t want to leave the suburb you have lived in for 20, 30, or 40 years.”
Minneapolis also provided a lesson on changing the conversation about infill developments, he said.
“It became about welcoming new neighbours to your street, not just about a block of units.”
A third lesson for Brisbane was not strictly about affordability but about housing mix.
Garred now heads Colliers’ urban planning and design team. He won the Planning Institute of Australia’s planning research award for his paper Planning for Housing Diversity.
Source Agencies
