Publications | SGS Economics & Planning

Planning public toilets: An inconvenient necessity for local governments

Insights Community Infrastructure Health

Australia’s rental crisis reaches new heights: 2024 Rental Affordability Index

Insights For Purpose Housing

The ability for local governments to fund infrastructure and services

Insights Community Infrastructure

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SGS Economics and Planning Australian city deals article image

We need (better) city deals from the Commonwealth

Insights

Australia needs a radically different approach on national urban policy. The Commonwealth needs to avoid areas where it has no, or dubious, competence, such as grant programs for sports sheds or deciding which rail projects the states and territories should build. Rather, it needs to sharply define national targets for the economic, social and environmental sustainability of our cities, then share the tax dividends...

SGS Economics and Planning Marcus Spiller

National urban policy - careful what you wish for

Insights

Come federal election time many in the urban policy community search for signs that an incoming Commonwealth Government will show stronger leadership on cities...

SGS Economics and Planning Tara Emilythumbnail

SGS welcomes two new partners: Tara Callinan and Emily Hobbs

What's New

We are extremely proud to be an employee-owned business and to have an outstanding group of individuals in the SGS partner group. Partners are the major investors in the business and they set out their expectations for returns across community impact, culture and financial returns in the SGS Partner Charter. It's wonderful to see our employee-owned model growing...

SGS Economics and Planning Popgrowth

New data demonstrates how Australia’s population growth is responding to the pandemic

Insights

Employment, Housing

Over the last few decades, Australia has seen population growth largely concentrated in and around a few major capital cities, as people were attracted to increasing economic and service opportunities. This has placed huge pressure on these cities to keep up with growth and provide adequate infrastructure and services for the new residents.

SGS Economics and Planning Marcus Spiller Affordable Housing

Social and affordable housing contributions: Developers must play their part in social housing

Insights

Housing

Social and affordable housing should be seen as essential infrastructure for successful communities and developers have an important role to play. When the now abandoned Social and Affordable Housing Contribution was announced in Victoria, respected property players who in other forums had freely acknowledged that development contributions for social housing had a part to play went to ground. Instead, we heard the party line from the peaks that social housing is a community-wide problem demanding a community-wide response and not an opportunistic tax on those who build the houses we need.

Sydney Morning Herald article featuring Ellen Witte

‘Gut-wrenching’: Hunt for affordable home couldn’t outrun climate change

Media

Out-priced city dwellers have been moving to the regions but, in doing so, these homeowners have exposed themselves to a different problem – the cost of increased climate change risks. Director and partner at SGS Economics and Planning, Ellen Witte, believes it’s a problem politicians need to fix. “There is a big failure in both the climate change area and the housing area,” Ms Witte said. At the moment there are no clear rules on where to build new residential development in a way that plans for and mitigates climate change risks at any government level, she explained. “At a local level...

SGS Economics and Planning acknowledge the First Nations Peoples of Australia and on whose Country we live and work. We acknowledge that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia never ceded their sovereignty, and are one of the oldest continuing living cultures on Earth, have one of the oldest continuing land tenure systems in the world, and have one of the oldest continuing land use planning and management systems in the world.

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