Rethinking the Implementation of the Compact City: Factors Affecting Compact Activity Centre Policy Conformance in Greater Brisbane, 1996 to 2016

Compact City Reset: Towards Alternatives to Market-driven Density

“…Market-led approaches are not delivering the promised sustainability benefits that justified this approach. This special edition demonstrates the limitations of the land use regulatory system in delivering the compact city, whether that due to misalignment between plan intent and market viability (Limb et al 2020, Pinnegar et al 2020 or the imperfect vagaries of different ideological economic epochs (Filion and Harun 2020).…”

“…In the first article, Limb et al (2020) evaluate the implementation of activity centre policies in greater Brisbane over a 20-year period. They demonstrate how changes to the regulatory land-use system towards a network of dense, sustainable and self-contained centres had little impact on centre development, which was instead most strongly related to property market conditions.…”

Land policy conflict profiles for different densification types: A literature-based approach

“…The main difference between types 1 and 2 stems from prior land use: in type 2 it is mainly residential but can also include commercial and office premises. The strategic areas are often high-rise and/or low-rise suburban areas in growth corridors, transport nodes, activity centers, city centers or such (e.g., Gallagher et al, 2019;Limb et al, 2020;Pinnegar et al, 2020). Examples of implementation include redevelopment, mixed-use development, large-scale renewal, and transit-oriented development.…”

We zoned for density and got higher house prices: Supply and price effects of upzoning over 20 years

“…We add to the evidence on the direct relationship between zoning/planning controls and dwelling prices with long-term site-level data that builds on work of Limb et al (2020b). They developed a database of site-level planning and land use data across 19 activity centres in Greater Brisbane and investigated the raw correlations between the permissiveness of land use regulations in an activity centre, and the conformance with planning outcomes in terms of the intensification of dwellings, greater dwelling mix, and employment.…”

“…We use a modified version of Limb et al's (2020b) data in our analysis that also incorporates residential price estimates at the site-level, and a new metric of site-level zoned capacity that accounts for the gap between current use and allowed uses under the planning controls. This allows us to address limitations of existing studies of the direct effect of zoning on dwelling prices and new supply by extending the time-frame of analysis to a 20 years period, and by incorporating greater variation in planning controls between sites and activity centres and across time.…”