Unlocking Family-friendly Apartments through Local Government Planning Controls: Motivations, Challenges, and Insight for Future Policy Reform

NSW housing targets reflect a policy focus on new housing supply. Accompanying planning reform to facilitate increased density means most new supply will be apartment housing. Local governments face the challenge of managing long-term, place-based strategic planning, within one-size-fits-all planning reform; a key component of this being how to ensure new housing is suitable for the diversity of existing and anticipated households. Families with children are a key cohort who have been overlooked in apartment design guidelines and planning policy.

While the needs of families in apartments are now widely understood, attempts to reform policy and design in response to these needs have been largely unsuccessful. To date, there has been no research that explores this planning issue from the perspective of local governments seeking to implement change. This research responds to this gap and will provide important insight into the systemic, cultural and policy changes required to deliver more family-friendly apartment housing. 

This project examines local government responses to the need for family-friendly apartment via a policy review and interviews. The policy review will examine planning provisions across the 33 local governments in Greater Sydney, revealing those currently seeking to amend planning controls to facilitate more family-friendly apartment design. Interviews with key local governments (who have previously or are currently seeking to amend planning controls to improve family-friendliness), will explore motivations for trying to implement change and challenges they face in practice.

The research is timely and of significant benefit to public policy. In addition to the efforts of some local governments to amend planning controls, the need for family-friendly apartments has also been recognised at a state level. This includes a recommendation stemming from The 2024 NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Transport Oriented Development ‘that the NSW Government investigate measures to encourage the delivery of family-friendly apartments as part of its housing reforms’; as well a call in the recent NSW Government ‘Sydney Plan’ to investigate ‘requirements for family-friendly apartments in mid and high-rise residential development’. Understanding the challenges faced by councils in making changes to improve family-friendliness of apartments as well as the precise nature and reasoning for the opposition from the development sector and other parts of the state government to these changes, is essential for identifying potential avenues out of this impasse.

If you are a local government representative interested in participating in the research, please contact: sophiemay.kerr@unsw.edu.au