Hot Topic: Housing & Affordable Living

Urban planning has always been a tool to manage growth and housing demand. From the regimented neighbourhood towns of the Roman Empire to the suburban layouts of North American cities, planning has been used both to solve social problems and to advance political objectives. At its core, it has always been about one thing: providing shelter and shaping cities around the need for housing.

Focus Area: Strengthening Neighbourhoods and Third Places

Affordable Housing. This is not primarily a planning problem; it's mostly an economic and market issue. The price of land, cost of infrastructure, and developer risk appetite dominate what gets built and who can afford it.

In building potential solutions, a shift from a narrow focus on housing affordability to creating 'neighbourhood areas' is needed to support a broader economic and community development toolkit. Planning policy approaches can be created to support performance-based planning and urban planning mechanisms.

Neighbourhood areas will depend on their ability to move beyond being land-release mechanisms and instead operate as city-shaping tools. Therefore, these areas must deliver a pipeline of housing that is both affordable and diverse, while also supporting more sustainable patterns of growth.

To achieve a sustainable development pattern, three shifts are essential.

• First, greater densification within neighbourhood areas will be required, not just in dwelling yield, but in the creation of mixed-tenure and mixed-type housing that addresses different household structures and affordability thresholds.

• Second, public transport investment must be embedded from the outset and delivered earlier than current methods. Without high-frequency and reliable transit, neighbourhood areas risk becoming vehicle-dependent suburbs rather than integrated communities.

• Finally, the role of commercial centres within and around neighbourhood areas needs to be reimagined through a human-centric lens, so that they operate as genuine hubs of employment, services, and community life rather than simply retail or commercial clusters.

If these shifts are made, neighbourhood areas can become the key delivery vehicle not just for housing supply, but also for shaping the urban form and economic development in a way that is resilient, equitable, and responsive to long-term growth pressures.

The next step is to translate this ambition into clear and practical policy levers that align planning frameworks, infrastructure investment, and delivery mechanisms.

Kristen