Methodology
Where every number comes from, state by state
The study area, vintage and projection, and the per-state datasets, height rules, low-density and heritage classifications, and per-city special handling.
There is no national zoning dataset in Australia; each state and territory publishes its own scheme, in its own format, with its own quirks.
Across Australia, many controls are not available in machine-readable formats. Often, controls crucial to understanding a given planning scheme can only be viewed as flattened images saved inside PDFs. As such, much of the Australian Zoning Atlas was hand-coded. We have been explicit where that is the case.
Cross-state data source summary
| Jurisdiction | Cadastral / land-use source | Primary planning datasets | Heritage source | Manual coding applied | Est. accuracy; caveats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide (South Australia) | Land Use Generalised 2025 | Planning & Design Code Zones; Technical & Numeric Variations | SA Heritage Places; P&D Code “Historic Area” overlay | Local heritage + representative buildings grouped; railway allotments removed by ID | High |
| Brisbane (Queensland) | Queensland Digital Cadastral Database | Five council schemes (Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, Moreton Bay, Redland) | Per-council local overlays + QLD State Heritage Register | Local schemes guide BCC/Redland/Logan assumptions; Emerging Community handling | Medium-High |
| Canberra (ACT) | ACT Blocks dataset | Territory Plan Land Use Zones | ACTGOV Heritage Register (local only) | Zone default heights applied (no spatial height dataset); Designated Areas mapped | Medium; no access to the lease system. |
| Darwin (Northern Territory) | City of Darwin / City of Palmerston land-titles cadastre | NT Town Planning Zones (NT DLPE); NT Land Use Mapping Project | Zone-coded (heritage carried inside the zoning dataset) | Height limits derived from NT Planning Scheme 2020 text | High |
| Hobart (Tasmania) | LIST Cadastral Parcels | Tasmanian Planning Scheme Zones; Interim Planning Zones | TPS Code Overlay + Tasmanian Heritage Register | Heights from State Planning Provisions (local LPS variations not coded); PPZ overlays drawn | Medium-High |
| Melbourne (Victoria) | VicMap Cadastre (Property & Parcel) | VicPlan PLAN_ZONE statewide zones | VicMap Heritage Overlay + Victorian Heritage Register | NRZ / GRZ / RGZ schedules hand-coded across Melbourne; exclusion overlay; UGZ gate | Medium-High |
| Perth (Western Australia) | Landgate Historical Cadastre (2024) | Local Planning Scheme R-Codes; Perth CPS2 Maximum Building Height | Heritage Areas (DPLH-089); WA State Register (DPLH-006) | R-Code volumes coded by hand for height and site area; special-use + Development overrides | High |
| Sydney (New South Wales) | NSW Land Parcel & Property Theme | NSW Standard Instrument LEP Land Zoning + LEP Height of Building | Local LEP heritage items + Heritage Conservation Areas; NSW State Heritage Register | “Deferred Matter” areas excluded; LMRH reform band overlay | High |
Two contacts noted in the underlying draft, for jurisdictions whose data is supplied on request rather than via a public URL: Northern Territory zoning (datarequests.dipe@nt.gov.au) and Ipswich City Council data (Strategic@ipswich.qld.gov.au).
Study area & boundaries
Capital cities as defined by ABS’s Significant Urban Area measure
The eight capital cities only—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Canberra and Darwin.
Except where noted, each city is clipped to its ABS Significant Urban Area (SUA), 2021 edition. A parcel is kept only if its representative interior point lies inside that metro polygon; land outside the urban area boundary is dropped.
Three jurisdictions are handled differently:
- Brisbane covers only the five inner councils for which zoning data was obtained—Brisbane City, Ipswich, Logan, Moreton Bay and Redland. The outer councils (Scenic Rim, Somerset, Lockyer Valley) are excluded. Throughout this site, “Greater Brisbane” means this five-council catchment, not the full SUA.
- Canberra uses the ACT territory footprint.
- Darwin uses its whole metropolitan footprint (inner Darwin, Palmerston, Litchfield).
The headline figures all use a 20 kilometre radius
To enable comparison between jurisdictions, we measure a 20 km radius from each capital’s city centre. This radius is measured, where possible, from a key transport hub. In the case of Hobart and Darwin, we used the General Post Office (GPO).
| City | CBD centroid |
|---|---|
| Adelaide | Adelaide Station |
| Brisbane | Roma Street Station |
| Canberra | City Interchange |
| Darwin | Darwin GPO |
| Hobart | Hobart GPO |
| Melbourne | Flinders Street Station |
| Perth | Perth Station |
| Sydney | Central Station |
Some data is not up to date
Planning schemes and cadastres change continually, so every figure on this site is a snapshot, not a live feed. All continuously updated datasets (zoning, cadastre, heritage, transit) were pulled during Q1 2026.
However, some data is not updated regularly. These include:
| Input | Vintage |
|---|---|
| ABS Mesh Blocks + dwelling counts (Census) | 2021 |
| ABS SUA / GCCSA / SA2 / suburb (SAL) boundaries | 2021 |
| ABS LGA boundaries | 2025 |
| WA cadastre (Landgate Historical Cadastre) | 2024 |
| NT cadastre(s) | 2021 |
| SA cadastre | 2021 |
Some additional non-planning, non-statistical data was used
- GTFS transit feeds, per city, were used to calculate the rapid-transit proximity measure (weekday 7am–7pm mean headway ≤15 min, 800 m straight-line buffer). The headway rule and its per-mode aggregation are an assumption, documented on the assumptions page; the feeds themselves are per-city and noted in each accordion where they have a quirk (e.g. Brisbane’s pinned pre-strike feed, Darwin’s OSM fallback).
City-by-city data inputs
Sydney (New South Wales)
Datasets
Zoning: the NSW Standard Instrument LEP Land Zoning layer.
Cadastre: the NSW Land Parcel & Property Theme
Heritage: local LEP heritage items + Heritage Conservation Areas, plus the NSW State Heritage Register curtilage. “Deferred Matter” areas are excluded.
Height derivation
Take the taller of two controls: the LEP Height-of-Building (HOB) control, which publishes a maximum building height in metres, and the Low and Mid-Rise Housing (LMRH) reform.
The HOB metres figure converts to storeys with the shared 3.1 m formula; where HOB polygons overlap, the lowest height wins. The LMRH reform applies in 400 m / 800 m bands around roughly 116 centres plus 59 stations, lifting limits to approximately 9.5 m (low-rise) and 17.5–22 m (mid-rise).
Parcels with no HOB hit, and the ~600 HOB polygons that carry no height value, are recorded as unknown height.
“Low-density” classification
- R2 (Low Density Residential)
- RU5 (Village)
- C4 (Environmental Living).
R5 is reclassified into the rural-residential subset.
Heritage
Local: all heritage items labelled local + Heritage Conservation Areas.
State: NSW State Heritage Register curtilage. Where both state and local controls apply, state wins.
Melbourne (Victoria)
Datasets
Zoning: statewide zoning from VicPlan PLAN_ZONE.
Cadastre: VicMap Cadastre (PS-prefix strata lots de-duplicated at load).
Heritage: the VicMap Heritage Overlay (local) plus the Victorian Heritage Register (state).
Height derivation
NRZ, GRZ and RGZ schedules are coded manually across Melbourne (per-LGA NRZ/GRZ height schedules in metres).
Capital City and Docklands zones are treated as effectively uncapped.
C1Z and MUZ are residential but excluded from the height measures, because their height is governed by an overlay or activity centre rather than a single zone default.
Height limits by zone:
| Zone | Building height (storeys) |
|---|---|
| HCTZ1 | 4 |
| HCTZ2 | 3 |
| GWAZ | 2 |
| LDRZ | 2 |
| NRZ | 2 |
| R1Z/GRZ | 3 |
| RGZ | 4 |
“Low-density” classification
- NRZ (Neighbourhood Residential)
- LDRZ (Low Density Residential)
Grouped by zone-code prefix. Rural and farming zones, including the Green Wedge Zone, are excluded.
Heritage
Local: all areas under a heritage overlay (HO codes).
State: Victorian Heritage Register. Where both state and local controls apply, state wins.
Special handling
Manual exclusion overlay (Docklands bay + Flinders Street). A small set of hand-drawn polygons mark non-residential land that would otherwise be counted as residential—chiefly the Docklands waterway (zoned DZ7/DZ6) and the Flinders Street station parcel (CCZ1). Any parcel whose representative point falls inside an exclusion polygon is dropped. Removes ~1 km² of land, concentrated in the inner 1–4 km rings.
Urban Growth Zone (UGZ) and the Future Urban Structure filter. The UGZ is broad greenfield growth-area land, much of it planned for employment, open space, roads or conservation rather than housing—and that detail isn’t easily mappable from existing datasets. The Future Urban Structure dataset is used as an approximate proxy for the residential proportion within UGZ areas.
A UGZ parcel is retained only if at least 10% of its area falls on Future Urban Structure land planned for residential or mixed-use development; UGZ parcels below that threshold are dropped. The gate removes ~184 km² of UGZ land, almost all of it in the outer rings.
Design and Development Overlays / Built Form Overlays are not mapped or measured. DDO and BFO height limits are out of scope; the zone-and-schedule assumptions are assumed correct where mapped.
For transparency, the share of each pure-residential zone covered by DDOs:
| Zone category | 0–5 km | 5–10 km | 10–15 km | 15–20 km |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General residential | 28.4% | 7.4% | 3.3% | 4.6% |
| Neighbourhood residential | 9.9% | 8.3% | 10.5% | 21.2% |
| Residential growth | 32.7% | 4.5% | 16.2% | 26.8% |
Brisbane (Queensland)
Datasets
Zoning: Queensland publishes no statewide planning scheme, so Greater Brisbane is the only multi-source city. Five council schemes processed separately and merged:
- Brisbane City Plan 2014
- Ipswich (OV6 Building Height & Density + Indicative Lot Size)
- Moreton Bay (ZM_Zones + OM_Building_Heights)
- Redland City Plan zoning
- Logan zoning
Ipswich City Council’s data is locked behind a paywall. Unlike other datasets, it has not been updated since 27/11/2025.
Local planning schemes were used to guide assumptions for Brisbane City, Redland and Logan.
Cadastre: the Queensland Digital Cadastral Database (railway corridors and reserves dropped).
Heritage: per-council local overlays. Additional heritage was sourced from State layers and the Queensland State Heritage Register.
Height derivation
Per council: metres → storeys via the shared formula, a direct storey field, or text storeys, depending on what each scheme publishes. Brisbane City Plan reaches 9+ storeys in parts via per-council metre-height tables.
Some zones carry no coded height (“—“) because height is governed by a centre or overlay control rather than a single zone default. “Max 0m / 1m” sentinels and blank storey fields (some Brisbane City and Redland centres) are recorded as unknown, and city-centre zones are treated as effectively unlimited.
Brisbane City Council assumptions
| Zone code and name | Height (m) |
|---|---|
| LDR - Low density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LDR1 - Low density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LDR2 - Low density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LDR3 - Low density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LDR4 - Low density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LDR5 - Low density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LMDR1 - Low–medium density residential zone | 8.5 |
| LMDR2 - Low–medium density residential zone | 8.5 |
| MDR1 - Medium density residential zone | 22 |
| MDR2 - Medium density residential zone | 19 |
| MDR3 - Medium density residential zone | 22 |
| MDR4 - Medium density residential zone | 19 |
| MDR5 - Medium density residential zone | 19 |
| MDR6 - Medium density residential zone | 13 |
| MDR7 - Medium density residential zone | 16 |
| MDR8 - Medium density residential zone | 8.5 |
| MDR9 - Medium density residential zone | 13 |
| MDR - Medium density residential zone | 13 |
| CR - Character residential zone | 8.5 |
| PC - Principal centre zone | — |
| MC - Major centre zone | 17 |
| DC - District centre zone | 17 |
| LC - Local centre zone | 10.5 |
| NC - Neighbourhood centre zone | 10.5 |
| MU - Mixed Use Zone | 15 |
“Low-density” classification
- LDR (Low-Density Residential)
- CR (Character Residential)
RR (Rural Residential) is rural land and is excluded.
Heritage
Local: the per-council local heritage overlays:
- Brisbane City Plan Heritage overlay (Local heritage area)
- Ipswich OV3 Local Places of Interest
- Moreton Bay Heritage Areas
- Redland heritage overlay
- Logan OM-07 Heritage overlay
State: the Queensland State Heritage Register (plus per-council state layers). Where both state and local controls apply, state wins.
Special handling
The Emerging Community zone.
In Brisbane City, Emerging Community is a holding zone with no committed residential form, so plain Emerging Community land is excluded from residential land by default. It is included only where it falls inside a Neighbourhood Plan precinct naming a concrete residential outcome.
Every Emerging Community precinct larger than 5 ha was manually coded:
- Land inside a low-density precinct → treated as Low-density residential (no more than 2 storeys) and carries the low-density restriction.
- Land inside a low–medium-density precinct → treated as Low–medium density residential (3 storeys) and is not low-density.
- Land outside both → stays excluded.
In the other four councils (Ipswich, Logan, Moreton Bay, Redland), Emerging Community land is retained under its own zone, and is not counted as residential land.
Adelaide (South Australia)
Datasets
Zoning: the Planning & Design Code (PDCodeZones) plus Technical & Numeric Variations (TNVs). The base residential layer is the intersection of zones with Land Use Generalised 2025.
Cadastre: Land Use Generalised 2025.
Heritage: SA Heritage Places plus the P&D Code “Historic Area” overlays.
Height derivation
The P&D Code publishes “Maximum Building Height (Levels)” (a storey count) and “(Metres)”. The Levels value is used where present—otherwise metres are converted, and the smallest storey count wins where both are present.
Many zones default to 2 storeys. TNVs give local overrides. Master Planned Renewal = 4 and Urban Renewal = 4. Where neither a P&D Code hit nor a CSV fallback exists, height is recorded as unknown. SA has notably high coverage of local height variations.
Height limits by zone:
| Zone | Max building height |
|---|---|
| Business Neighbourhood | 2 |
| Established Neighbourhood | 2 |
| General Neighbourhood | 2 |
| Golf Course Estate | 2 |
| Hills Neighbourhood | 2 |
| Home Industry | TNVs |
| Housing Diversity Neighbourhood | 2 |
| Local Activity Centre | 2 |
| Master Planned Neighbourhood | 3 |
| Master Planned Renewal | 4 |
| Master Planned Township | 2 |
| Strategic Innovation | 2 |
| Suburban Activity Centre | TNVs |
| Suburban Business | TNVs |
| Suburban Main Street | TNVs |
| Suburban Neighbourhood | 2 |
| Township Activity Centre | TNVs |
| Township Main Street | TNVs |
| Township Neighbourhood | 2 |
| Urban Activity Centre | TNVs |
| Urban Corridor (Boulevard) | TNVs |
| Urban Corridor (Business) | TNVs |
| Urban Corridor (Living) | TNVs |
| Urban Corridor (Main Street) | TNVs |
| Urban Neighbourhood | TNVs |
| Urban Renewal Neighbourhood | 4 |
| Waterfront Neighbourhood | 2 |
“TNVs” = height is set by the site-specific Technical and Numeric Variations rather than a single zone default.
“Low-density” classification
- Established Neighbourhood
- Hills Neighbourhood
- Suburban Neighbourhood
- Waterfront Neighbourhood
The four rural / settlement zones (Rural Living, Rural Neighbourhood, Rural Settlement, Rural Shack Settlement) form the rural-residential subset.
Heritage
Local: “Representative Buildings” + Local Heritage Place Overlay areas. Local heritage and representative buildings are grouped for cross-jurisdiction consistency.
State: SA Heritage Places. Where both state and local controls apply, state wins.
Special handling
Railway-track allotments. Sixteen allotments in the title cadastre are railway-track parcels whose representative point happens to fall inside a residential zone, so the point-in-zone test would otherwise count them as residential. They are identified individually and removed.
SA’s cadastre carries no tenure or land-use attribute (unlike Queensland’s), so the parcels are excluded by cadastre ID rather than by a land-use filter.
Perth (Western Australia)
Datasets
Zoning: the Local Planning Scheme R-Codes, plus the City of Perth CPS2 Maximum Building Height layer.
Cadastre: Landgate’s Historical Cadastre (2024).
Heritage: Heritage Areas (DPLH-089) and the Heritage Council WA State Register (DPLH-006).
Height derivation
R-Codes are coded manually from the R-Code volumes: R2–R25 ≈ 2 storeys, rising to R160 ≈ 5 storeys. R-AC (activity-centre) tiers carry their own heights.
The City of Perth CPS2 central-city heights are in metres and convert via the shared formula. “No prescribed limit” is treated as effectively unlimited, and an LPS zone default acts as a final fallback. Where none of those resolve, height is marked unknown.
Split R-codes (e.g. R20/40) collapse to the highest density.
Height limits by R-Code:
| R-Code | Building height (storeys) |
|---|---|
| R2 to R40 | 2 |
| R50 to R60 | 3 |
| R80 to R100 | 4 |
| R160 | 5 |
| R-AC4 | 3 |
| R-AC3 | 6 |
| R-AC2 | 7 |
| R-AC1 | 9 |
| R-AC0 | — |
| CBD | — |
“Low-density” classification
- R-Codes R2–R25
Rural Residential and Special Rural zones are rural and therefore excluded.
Heritage
Local: LGA Heritage Areas.
State: WA State Register. Where both state and local controls apply, state wins.
Special handling
Special-use zones carrying an R-Code. Admission to residential land is normally decided at the zone level. A “Special use” parcel is ordinarily non-residential (utilities, institutions) and excluded.
Where such a parcel also carries an R-Code density overlay, that R-Code is effectively assigning a residential development density, so the parcel is admitted as residential and takes the height/density/min-lot treatment implied by its R-Code.
Plain special-use land with no R-Code, but a local plan stating residential use, is kept but labelled as having no height data.
Development zone override. The “Development” zone is a broad holding zone, and so is not admitted to residential land wholesale. Instead, a hand-curated subset of Development-zoned polygons—those a manual Local Planning Scheme review found to permit residential development—is admitted.
Admitted parcels are placed in a dedicated “Special Control Area” category, labelled by their Development zone and R-Code (e.g. “Development (R40)”). Because the review could not establish a reliable height, it is recorded as unknown.
Hobart (Tasmania)
Datasets
Zoning: the Tasmanian Planning Scheme Zones plus the legacy Interim Planning Zones.
Cadastre: LIST Cadastral Parcels.
Heritage: the TPS Code Overlay (local) plus the Tasmanian State Heritage Register.
Height derivation
Height limits are pulled from the State Planning Provisions only—most residential zones default to 2 storeys, read as a direct per-zone storey count from the TPS zoning table. Local LPS variations are not coded, so Tasmania uses statewide provisions throughout; a zone with no height value is recorded as unknown.
Storey limits by zones:
| Zone | Height limit (storeys) |
|---|---|
| Inner Residential | 2 |
| Low-Density Residential | 2 |
| Urban Mixed Use | 2 |
| General Business | 3 |
| Central Business | 6 |
| Future Urban | 2 |
“Low-density” classification
- Low-Density Residential
Rural Living, Village and Future Urban form the rural-residential subset.
Heritage
Local: overlays labelled “Local heritage place” (TPS Code Overlay / Local Historic Heritage Code).
State: Tasmanian State Heritage Register. Where both state and local controls apply, state wins.
Special handling
Particular Purpose Zones (PPZs). The Tasmanian scheme’s PPZs are hyper-customised, site-specific zones outside the standard residential-zone list, so PPZ land that permits housing was absent from the residential denominator. Polygons were drawn manually over the major Greater Hobart PPZ areas that permit residential use and added to residential land, tagged Mixed Use with unknown height (counted in neither the 2-storey nor >2-storey measures). To avoid double-counting, the overlay is first clipped against existing residential zones, so only genuinely PPZ-only land is added (~1,100 parcels).
Canberra (Australian Capital Territory)
Datasets
Zoning: the Territory Plan Land Use Zones.
Cadastre: the ACT Blocks dataset (block geometries used as a parcel proxy).
Heritage: the ACTGOV Heritage Register.
Height derivation
Territory Plan zone defaults are applied directly. Residential zones RZ1–RZ5 map to approximately 2, 2, 2, 3 and 6 storeys; Commercial (CZ) codes carry their own defaults. Designated Areas zoned exclusively residential were manually added.
A zone with no default storey value has its height recorded as unknown.
Storey limits by zones:
| Zone code | Height limit (storeys) |
|---|---|
| RZ1 | 2 |
| RZ2 | 3 |
| RZ3 | 4 |
| RZ4 | 3 |
| RZ5 | 6 |
| CZ1 | — |
| CZ2 | — |
| CZ3 | 2 |
| CZ4 | 2 |
| CZ5 | — |
| CZ6 | 2 |
“—“ indicates no storey limit was coded for the zone in the source table.
“Low-density” classification
- RZ1 (Suburban Zone)
RZ1 implies a 2-storey cap. No rural-residential subset is flagged.
Heritage
Any heritage labelled “Historic place or object” (the ACTGOV Heritage Register filtered to historic places).
Special handling
Designated Areas. Where “Designated Areas” apply, the National Capital Plan was referenced and the areas where residential uses apply were mapped out by hand. This was done only for areas within 5 km of the centre point.
Out of scope
Lease variations are not measured. Leases signed with the ACT Government can restrict residentially-zoned lots further than the zoning implies—analogous to restrictive covenants elsewhere. These are not measured.
Darwin (Northern Territory)
Datasets
Zoning: supplied directly by the NT Department of Lands, Planning & Environment (NT Town Planning Zones; no public URL), alongside the NT Land Use Mapping Project.
Cadastre: the City of Darwin / City of Palmerston land-titles cadastre.
Heritage: contained within the zoning dataset rather than a separate overlay.
Transit: Darwin has no rapid transit.
Height derivation
Storey limits are read directly from the NT zoning table, derived from the NT Planning Scheme 2020 text. A zone with no parseable storey value is recorded as unknown.
“Low-density” classification
- LR (Low-density Residential)
RL (Rural Living) and RR (Rural Residential) are rural and therefore excluded.
Heritage
Zone-coded—the Heritage (HT) zone is treated as Local heritage.
Special handling
Strata placeholder geometry. Darwin is built from the NT land-titles cadastre (around 20,588 residential lots). About 16% are dense-zone strata that ship a placeholder geometry; they are kept for area, count and zoning but sit out the geometry-dependent stages (lot-by-lot, frontage, reform-uplift), which run on the ~17,326 lots with reliable geometry.