Australian cities will continue to face a growing demand for school places in their established areas; most notably in their inner areas, as urban renewal activities underpin ongoing population growth.

On Census night 2016 there were over one million dwellings unoccupied in Australia - but absentee landholders, sitting on properties and waiting to make a capital gain, aren’t to blame for the unoccupied residences, according to the latest analysis of the census.

Census data shows that Australians are shifting to a more compact and cosmopolitan lifestyle. Explore our interactive dashboard. Australia’s economy is continuing to shift towards a knowledge-based services economy concentrated in the centre of our big cities. At SGS, we often talk about this economic phenomenon that has driven a resurgence in compact living as people trade large houses on big blocks for better access to transport, jobs, services and amenities.

A new Urban Renewal Compact is needed in growth and renewal areas in Melbourne and Sydney says SGS Principal and Partner Patrick Fensham. The Greater Sydney Commission has proposed ‘Growth Infrastructure Compacts’ which will involve state agencies aligning their asset management and investment plans to government-endorsed development sequencing and infrastructure plans in major planned renewal areas. The first is to be developed...

An innovative approach to value capture can fund infrastructure, affordable housing and more sustainable cities. Developers should be charged a licence fee for the ‘development rights’ they receive through planning approvals. This would be similar to the fees charged for access to other government regulated markets, for example, liquor distribution, commercial fisheries and broadcasting bands. Development licence fees would be calculated on the uplift in value generated through more intensive use of land made possible by development consents or rezonings. As price takers, developers would pass the cost of the licence fee back to the sellers of development...

ln the recent flurry of reports on value capture (from Infrastructure Victoria, the Commonwealth Government and Infrastructure Australia [1], amongst others) there has been little attempt to distinguish contributions for infrastructure based on value capture from other types of development contributions.