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Land use reform scenarios

What more permissive zoning might look like, nation-wide

The impact of every reform is calculated against the same parcel data. Each preset gives a lot-by-lot estimate of the net new homes it would legalise, nationally and per-city.

Pick a reform

Which lever, and what does it do?

Figures cover the whole metro and are rounded estimates. Pick Combine reforms to stack multiple levers.

Selected reform

National Townhouse Code

Three storeys legal on any non-heritage residential land currently capped at no more than 2 storeys or locked to low-density-only zoning.

A national Townhouse Code would make three-storey housing legal on every residential parcel in the country. By setting a national minimum density at three storeys, our nation would gain enormous capacity to build gentle density—not just in our cities, but in our regions as well.

National unlock—dwellings

≈9.0M

National unlock—area

≈3,900 km²

Potential capacity unlocked per city

  1. Perth+≈2.1M+≈172%
  2. Brisbane+≈2.1M+≈140%
  3. Melbourne+≈1.5M+≈13%
  4. Sydney+≈1.5M+≈20%
  5. Adelaide+≈751.6K+≈90%
  6. Hobart+≈653.0K+≈417%
  7. Canberra+≈244.2K+≈66%
  8. Darwin+≈60.9K+≈72%

A modest increase in permissions, applied broadly.

The National Townhouse Code would makes three-storey housing legal on residential land currently restricted by a 2-storey height cap, a detached-only mandate, or low-density-only zoning. Heritage controls stay.

What the number means

The headline is the net additional homes the Townhouse Code would legalise over today’s controls—three-storey housing on every non-heritage parcel currently capped at no more than 2 storeys or locked to low-density-only zoning. It’s scored lot-by-lot (a parcel only counts the homes it can physically fit), across the whole metro, from the reform-uplift matrix. It answers “how much could the policy legalise?”, not “how much will actually get built”.

Real-world absorption is slow: Auckland built roughly 0.7%/yr of its newly-permitted capacity after the Unitary Plan. But over the decades to come, that adds up to a lot of housing for Australia.

What it doesn't unlock

Heritage overlays stay. Inner-city parcels already zoned for more than just two-storeys aren’t upzoned, and do not add to capacity.

Further reading

Source: Each preset gives the net new homes it would legalise over today’s rules, scored lot by lot, from the calibrated zoned-capacity model (3-, 8- or 12-storey scenario, against published state-government baselines where they exist). Combine mode reads the pre-computed reform-union matrix—homes are counted once across overlapping levers—and its unlocked area is the union of the active reforms’ land. Methodology →