Affordable Housing: A Dilemma for Metropolitan Planning?

摘要

This paper has focused on the range of affordable housing approaches contained within metropolitan plans applying to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. It has considered the central dilemma of whether urban containment, the key objective underlying metropolitan plans in Australia and in many international contexts, is inconsistent with affordable housing objectives. It has argued that urban containment policies do coincide with higher value housing markets, and that it is likely these price impacts reflect the relative value of high accessibility, efficient service provision, economic vitality and the investment certainty associated with clear planning requirements, including containment or compact city goals. There are also inflationary price impacts and often a loss of affordable rental housing when under-utilised or decaying urban areas are subject to planned or market driven urban renewal. In response to the housing affordability impacts of 'good' metropolitan planning, particularly strategies associated with urban containment and renewal, the fledgling affordable housing commitments contained in Australia's current crop of metropolitan strategies need strong policy and legislative support. They must also be situated within a much stronger national housing policy context combining a range of fiscal initiatives and direct government investment in housing assistance (Milligan, 2005). Otherwise, Australia's metropolitan regions may become victims of their own planning success, losing the essential workers and social diversity integral to ongoing economic prosperity.