A national approach to affordable housing through net zero tram corridors

The global decline in well located affordable housing has been traced in the book Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson to over-regulated planning on density and over-provided high-capacity roads that together have sprawled Australian and American cities. In comparison, European and Asian cities are less impacted by homelessness and urban sprawl.

The research in this paper has been advocating these alternative approaches for many decades, and the changes have begun, but are not yet solving problems like the rapid growth in homelessness, poor sustainability and low productivity in urban land use.

Abundance suggests that socialist and libertarian approaches are both needed.

This paper shows that planning and transport can be freed up and integrated to accelerate the solving of these problems by focusing on a national approach to affordable housing through net zero tram corridors. These tram corridors or boulevards would go down main roads using the Entrepreneur Rail model to enable well located, dense, affordable, net zero housing in station precincts using public-private-community partnerships.

Local governments and communities across Australia (and elsewhere) have been researching this concept with us and have given strong support for the whole model.  The projects studied with them can form the basis of major demonstrations in a new federal strategy.

A national approach to affordable housing through net zero tram corridors needs federal, state and local partnerships and, most of all, a more robust inclusion of development finance partnerships and deliberative local community engagement from the beginning of this process, similar to alliance contracting.

The approach outlined shows how the goals in Abundance can be achieved and will indeed use socialist and libertarian approaches, but these are not revolutionary or new in Australia. Planning and transport systems can all be adapted to manage this process but need regulation and strategy changes along with training in professional practice for the net zero economic transition.

About Abundance

The best-selling book Abundance: How We Build a Better Future by Klein and Thompson sets out a case to explain why homelessness is a global problem, but is worse in highly sprawling cities that are more common in America and Australia. Post war housing was structured and subsidised to build low density suburbs that were based around the automobile. This enabled the post war baby boomers to have housing, but the planning (regulated zoning) that went with these suburban locations turned into a very strong protection system against low cost, higher densities in any redevelopment process. Thus, real estate values went up for the baby boomer homeowners, but the number of well-located affordable houses declined substantially across the cities. Such inequity led to the 21st century issue of homelessness becoming harder and harder to solve.

The data from Klein and Thompson on these trends is very strong. Their analysis on how to “create better lives” (abundance) suggests how to focus on the building blocks of the future: housing, transportation, energy and health.

The data shows how the big post war housing rates began to fall across the US in the 1970s and have continued to provide less than population growth would suggest was the demand.

By 2020, the US housing production per thousand population dropped to 420, whilst France and Italy were 600. Australia is also, amazingly, 420, which is below the OECD average. The result is that the US has over 30 per cent of adults “house poor” (spending over 30 per cent of their income on housing), and this is 11 per cent in Australia, with over 80 per cent of the adults in the bottom 20 per cent of incomes being house poor. The result is housing-based poverty.

The data shows that clearly there is a need for a greater housing supply, and the federal government plan is “to build 1.2 million well-located homes over 5 years from 2024” but the question is how and where, as this must be based on understanding why the housing supply rate has failed since the 1970s to keep up despite numerous programmes.

The insights of Klein and Thompson in Abundance are all around the fundamental problems with our government-embedded urban planning and transport systems: anti-density regulations and pro-car infrastructure spending that have largely been in place since the second world war. Unless a new approach is taken, these deeply embedded issues that are part of the Australian culture (like in the US) will prevent our cities from building for such obvious demand.

The planning processes that were introduced to prevent affordable and dense housing in the urban areas developed post-war are most obvious in America and Australia, but are far less so in Europe and Asia. The degree to which our cities are car dependent, low density and high in transport fuel per capita.

The need to increase density and to shift transport priorities has been the focus of our research group for many decades and was based on comparing cities across the world in their transport, land use and energy. Australian cities were always somewhere between US and European cities in these issues, as is shown above in the home poverty data.

Recent data shows that changes towards urban regeneration rather than urban sprawl began to happen in automobile dependent cities from the 2010s. This was particularly obvious in Melbourne and Sydney, where redevelopment of dense housing around rail and tram lines has begun to provide more than half the housing.

The transition to denser and less car dependent cities has not been fast enough, especially the provision of well-located, affordable housing in inner and middle suburbs and hence the problem of homelessness and housing poverty has accelerated as set out above.

The urban planning model of low density, car dependent housing, far out of the areas where jobs, education, and services were mostly available, has a range of other major outcomes that need to be addressed at the same time as affordable housing in well-located areas.

There are productivity issues that are related to excessive transport and land requirements and these are built into the system of producing car dependence by heavy subsidies given to sprawling land development as well as high capacity roads built with government funds. Studies in Melbourne show that job density improves productivity due to increases in service jobs.

Urban sprawl has been related to major health issues and sustainability issues associated, especially now in the age of climate change and the need to remove fossil fuels from the economic agenda. My new book, Net Zero Cities with Sustainability: A Practitioner’s Approach, outlines how these issues can be addressed and has adopted a similar approach to Abundance though it was completed before that was published and attracted so much attention.

The fundamental problem is that the planning and transport systems in America and Australia have indeed been based around government structures providing these low density, car dependent options and the protection of these options in planning systems. The wealthy baby-boomer suburbs have built into their political culture a NIMBY approach to density in most attempts at urban regeneration. For example, there is no evidence for urban density having negative health, social and economic impacts and yet the cultural myths associated with this concept have hardly shifted for the past 50 years, and these drive the politics of density.

The need to change these planning and transport systems has been described by Klein and Thompson in Abundance as being a mixture of Socialist and Libertarian approaches to policy.

The suggested approaches in this paper certainly take ideas from both approaches, but their book does not set out how to intervene and enable planning and transport to favour “abundance” as they suggest is the way to the future. The approach suggested here suggests much could be unlocked to deal with these issues through a national approach to affordable housing through net zero tram corridors.

The suggested approach will require governments at all levels to have an integrated approach, but they must also involve new approaches that remove the kind of planning regulations that are preventing more dense housing from being built in well located areas.  But rather than universally unlocking density, it is important to focus on it in ways that enable better transport and net zero outcomes.  This is likely to be much more politically possible as well.

The planning model will be needed at strategic and statutory levels, as discussed in Greening The Greyfields, with a focus on precincts and corridors rather than blanket rezoning.

It will also need to focus on a new transport model that can better accommodate affordable housing to be unlocked; the paper is suggesting The Entrepreneur Rail model that enables land value capture, which is necessary for affordable housing to become commercially viable. The increased value from tram corridors can enable development to happen in partnership with the new urban planning approaches that favour density in urban redevelopment.

These approaches have been discussed and applied with local governments and communities across Australian cities in the past decade through research engagements. They have not yet been delivered, but perhaps their time has come.

The Entrepreneur Rail Approach

The Entrepreneur Rail model, developed by Newman, Evans, Davies-Slate, was created out of the need to truly integrate transit and land use through finance to create the highest value urban outcomes.

However, it is not as though it is entirely new, as historically this is how tram and train lines were developed in all Australian cities. It is also sometimes called ‘joint development’ in a few projects around urban rail since the 1980s, wherever a major TOD was considered as a joint outcome. These joint developments were set up to supplement government money through land development, but they can also be used to go further and create a largely private approach to enable financing partnerships.

Land value capture opportunities created by rail projects have been measured in studies across the world, and a detailed study by McIntosh, Trubka and Newman in Perth showed that rail lines increase land value around stations by 40 to 50 per cent, and that these can be captured through land development if the right approach is taken. The value is lost if the standard approach to using the land mostly for car parking is adopted.

The Entrepreneur Rail model emphasises the important role of involving private sector expertise and approaches to redevelopment in the early stages of any new urban rail or tram project, otherwise, land value capture is not possible. Without private sector involvement, it becomes impossible to generate the private investment or to create the economic value that is sought from developing urban regeneration-based affordable housing.

Thus, the tools for public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements that are designed to implement infrastructure projects through risk-sharing can be assumed, but a large part of the finance for the proposed tram corridors can come from private investment. These PPP arrangements (PPCP that includes community), where the private sector helps pay for the infrastructure and makes money out of the value created, are common in mining, energy, ports and airports, but are not yet very common in many parts of the world like Europe, America and Australia, for transit and transport projects. They are, however, common in Japan, Hong Kong and even India and China.

This land value capture tool is the missing link that must be part of any affordable housing project, or else the NIMBY density and transport reactions will continue to prevent most projects as they have throughout the past 50 years. A land value capture approach is likely to create the most economic value that can enable not just affordable housing but a better set of local urban outcomes and a high quality public transport option that will be very popular with most residents. Thus, the housing crisis may not be avoided due to urban politics in America and Australia, unless an approach is developed, such as a national approach to affordable housing through net zero tram corridors.

The opportunity to use land value capture for affordable housing depends on how much private sector investment can be integrated into transit projects from the start, not after they are built. Below shows how land value increases with the degree of private sector involvement.

The Entrepreneur Rail Model seeks to involve as much of the private sector as possible, and this was demonstrated historically as private entrepreneurs have initiated most public transport in cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The US’s first omnibus started in New York City in the 1820s by private operators who then laid down rails (in the 1860s) to replace horse drawn carriages. The first private rail projects began in the 1840s in the UK, and the earliest in the US dates back to the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, under which the government provided land grants, 400-foot rights of way, plus ten square miles for every mile of track built, for the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

Australian urban history is based around private trams as real-estate projects over the period from the 1890s to the 1940s. In Perth, the tram and rail projects were predominantly partnerships with private development companies as outlined in Newman, Davies-Slate & Jones. These projects are similar to what is now known as ‘unsolicited bids’ from the private sector. The Entrepreneur Rail Model enables partnership proposals that involve the largest private investment proportions, but still require community and government involvement as well. 

Projects can be illustrated that show such Entrepreneur Rail approaches do work now, as well as in history. They use private capital funding in partnership with government capital support (like affordable housing investment) and operational support for the tramway. Case studies where this approach has been used include the Brightline project in Florida, Metro Rail in Hyderabad, India and Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line in Tokyo, as well as the new rail systems in Hong Kong and China.

Florida, USA

Brightline is a privately owned inter-city rail service and time of use (TOU) project linking Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach using a relatively fast train (160 kilometres per hour). The phase 1 of the Brightline project was opened in late 2017. The project utilises an existing freight rail line of 312 kilometres and is constructing an extension to add 64 km to Orlando. Project finance was raised through a mixture of debt, bonds and equity. Private developers have not had to seek public subsidies or grants other than Federal low-interest private activity bonds, which provide a risk guarantee. Such a private sector financing structure has been made feasible through the establishment of transit oriented developments (TOD) at each of the four rail stations, and the local government has built affordable housing around the stations.

Brightline’s economic study notes that in the timeframe from 2014 to 2021 the project resulted in an economic impact of approximately $6.4 billion comprised of $3.4 billion from rail-line construction, $887 million from rail-line operations, $1.8 billion from TOD construction, and $284 million from TOD operations, in the same timeframe the project will add $653 million to federal, state and local tax revenue, $945 million from rail and $235 million from TODs. Therefore, Brightline is showing significant economic value creation through private investment and expertise in land development, as well as developing strong partnerships with the county and local governments to enable urban development and integration with local buses. The new transit option was very popular in this highly congested corridor and tripled expected patronage in its first year. The Brightline was purchased by Virgin Rail USA in 2019 with plans to do the same kind of project in 20 cities.

Hyderabad, India

This Metro project was the first Indian rail project to involve significant land development. It is built on a Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Transfer agreement wherein a private developer was provided about 10 per cent of the capital cost as a grant (equity) from the federal government of India, and the state government granted air-rights for commercial development of about 12.5 million square feet over the three depots and 6 million sq. ft at 25 selected stations. The private developer raised capital through loans and equity. The private developer’s concession period was for 35 years. The project began operations in mid-2017 and by 2020 carried 490,000 people a day on its 67 km with 57 stations. The private developer began renting the spaces before the rail was operational and sold much of the developable land around the stations to help pay for the infrastructure, which cost US$2.6billion (A$3.9 billion). Requirements for a proportion of affordable housing were imposed and delivered.

Tokyo, Japan

The Japanese government has historically used the Entrepreneur Rail Model approach to fund and build urban railways. They amalgamate irregularly formed properties that result in smaller but fully serviced urban neighbourhoods that enable the sale of “extra” land to fund the associated railways. The government, as in-kind support, enables land consolidation and acquisition. This approach is known as land assembly or land adjustment. In the case of Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line in Tokyo, in addition to land adjustment, the private company purchased land before announcing their plan to build the rail line and on some land parcels they co-developed the land with landowners.

A private developer promoted the development process by selling land, constructing housing, and attracting shopping centres and schools. This project was mainly implemented in a greenfield area. The economic downturn in Japan resulted in additional strategies for value capture, such as strategic infill urban development around train stations. Private companies have been able to raise equity from the stock market for rail projects in Japan to avoid interest on loans.

Hong Kong and China

The government owned Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation runs as a private corporation undertaking significant land development with private sector partnership to turn a net loss in the 1980s into a profit worth $US2 billion ($A3.04 billion) in 2015. The key to MTR’s financial success was starting the land development-based finances before the actual rail line operation. Such an entrepreneur approach is required in urban rail projects, which necessitates private involvement. Increasingly, China has based its new metro and high-speed rail projects around partnerships with entrepreneurial development groups that have created dense housing and commercial activities around and over station precincts.

The Entrepreneur Rail development cases show a larger economic value creation potential through such extensive private participation, enabling comprehensive and integrated development, but it is usually seen as not relevant yet to low-density cities with heavy car dependence. But as will be shown below, it is the low-density areas of car-dependent cities in Australia that are now showing the biggest need for these approaches, and they are asking for help. Partnerships are necessary for this, and contracted partnerships ensure they are likely to be taken seriously to deliver the kind of affordable housing outcomes, as well as net zero, as outlined below. They should be PPCPs, and to do this with something more like alliance contracting.

These are generally what have been done when new tram boulevards are created as part of an urban regeneration project, as in Seattle’s South Lake Union Streetcar project, which used a Special Improvement District (SID) fee from 760 land parcels that was estimated to provide 52 per cent of the total project cost. The City of Seattle issued government bonds to raise capital and linked them with the SID fund. The streetcar project became operational in 2007 and has been successful at creating some urban regeneration in the 2km corridor as a technology precinct, though it was meant to be part of a bigger transformation using trams across the whole Seattle inner area, and that has not yet happened. No Federal program for such projects has happened to assist with this.

The Entrepreneur Rail Model is a very good example of how Klein and Thompson were right to say that abundance (“a home for everyone in a place where they can reach opportunities for a good life”) really does need not just socialism but libertarian approaches that enable enough private investments with their creativity and risk-taking, to be part of the solution.

The fundamentals of creating an alliance between three levels of government, developers with finance, and local communities, remain the core of this paper, though there are reasons why the focus should now be on a tram-based approach in Australia.

Tram-based Approaches to Main Road Corridors

Why Trams?

Most Australian cities have been building rail lines in the past two decades, though with very little of the land value being committed to affordable housing projects. They have been dominated in their planning and transport assessment process by traditional benefit cost ratios and some minor consideration of broader urban goals. The dramatic increase in the need for affordable housing that is located within a good public transport corridor now shifts the focus to be more on the role of mid-tier transit, or what I am calling simply “trams”.

The socialist approach to transport funding in America and Australia has been in place for over 80 years. The heavy commitment to providing capital for building and expanding main roads from both federal governments has enabled the kind of cities we now have that are dominated by car dependent suburbs. Private developers have gathered around all the newly built roads to enable such development. This has often been presented as a kind of libertarian freedom, but it is more like a socialist, indeed Stalinist approach, as the alternatives to such roads have rarely been considered.

The reasons for having a focus on tram-based approach down Main Roads is that these are the areas where substantial urban regeneration can be achieved due to the traffic-induced reduction in land value that has happened. A good example is Parramatta Road in Sydney, where the first trackless tram study was done by Bhodi Alliance and suggested that significant urban regeneration was possible to unlock if the road had a tramway added. This approach has been picked up in all our studies since then, and indeed, all state transport agencies are moving this way as they find the best main roads to enable place-rejuvenation in movement and place strategies (see further below on these).

Main roads are also now a focus as much of the major corridor transit systems with heavy rail are now completed in the major Australian cities, and the need is now how to better integrate with these rail lines. In particular, we need to see how to make station precincts increase in land value to enable much more urban regeneration with affordable housing. Tram links to urban rail corridors are a much-needed transport outcome, but it will also increase land value along the route and especially at the rail stations where the tram can deliver an integrated service.

The role of mid-tier transit systems is to enable a fast and higher capacity tram or light rail, or even the Brisbane Metro line, to link across a corridor. These tram systems link major station precincts and other sites like major shopping centres, universities/schools, and sports facilities, with bus feeders and micro-mobility going into each of the station precincts. This creates significant opportunities for land value to be created and captured as part of the urban regeneration along that corridor.

The image below of Perth shows how the long north-south corridors now have Metronet heavy rail. Most new stations have no affordable housing projects, so with a connection to mid-tier transit down main roads, it is possible to develop a series of land developments. The potential routes set out by state planners, based on the local government strategies that are summarised below, involve joining urban activities along main roads that go to Metronet stations.

The extra value can be applied not just along the main roads station precincts chosen to have such upgraded transit, but they would also add extra value to the Metronet Stations that have mostly lost their land value due to building car parks. The opportunity is now there to create affordable housing and net zero precincts as outlined here.

New Technology Trams

The three technologies that are considered mid-tier or mid-capacity transit were listed above – traditional trams, light rail, and tram-buses or Brisbane Metro buses. The latter is one of the new technology electric bus systems that are three-carriage with many light rail features such as big picture windows and many autonomous features that guide it along streets at higher speeds than normal buses.  Hence, they are able to service corridors similar to the way that traditional trams and light rail are doing, with considerably higher value generated in station precincts.

The technology that was examined by most of the Australian local government studies outlined below was a Chinese trackless tram (there are several different models being built by different companies as they are spreading through Chinese cities). This tram was not at the time available for procurement in Australia until recently, due to not being certified for Australian road use. This happened in 2025. The papers covering this technology are listed in the references.  Also, there are multiple videos that demonstrate the value that is being shown by this technology in Chinese cities where it has been introduced to link across corridors to join people to Metro Lines and to High Speed Rail Lines.

Construction costs are presented below in Table 2 for trams, tram buses (Brisbane Metro) and the trackless tram system in an Australian context.

Project Cost ($ million)	Tram	Tram buses	Trackless Tram
Station cost	25.00	25.00	25.00
Vehicles	60.00	20.00	20.00
Guidance system	0	0	1.25
Depots and workshops	10.00	2.00	2.00
Road/track works	125.00	37.50	37.50
Relocation of services	25.00	3.75	3.75
Sub-total	245.00	88.25	89.50
Design and project management	61.25	22.06	22.38
Total	306.25	110.31	111.88
Cost per km	15.31	5.51	5.59

The new tram technology was certified to run on Australian roads by the Australian firm Tiger Spider, working with federal agencies.  It is now available to be procured to enable urban regeneration, not just as a higher capacity road-based transit system.

A trial and symposium were conducted in Perth by the City of Stirling, which provided an opportunity to address these issues through expert presenters as well as community and stakeholder engagement. The research sought feedback to explore the benefits of this technology and its potential application across Australia and cities around the world. The Net Zero Transit Symposium, held alongside the trial, attracted more than 150 transport and planning experts from across Australia and some from other countries, who discussed mid-tier net zero transit options and witnessed the trackless tram in action. Global and national media showed interest, and the videos presented by a speaker, Lisa Chamberlain from the World Economic Forum, were of high quality and have had significant coverage across the world, drawing on content and research from our research project.

The trial garnered significant public interest, with over 1200 attendees at the community open day. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. This groundbreaking Trial provided valuable insights into the potential of the technology to revolutionise Australia’s mid-capacity transit system with a modern, digital and electric tram service.

The City of Stirling was given an award for innovation in infrastructure from the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, at the Australian Council of Local Government national conference in 2024 for their work on the trackless tram. 

The core of this paper is that these new technology tram systems can unlock land around station precincts and create net zero tram corridors featuring affordable housing. The planning mechanisms are suggested next.

Planning net zero tram corridors with affordable housing

Net zero is a new agenda set by the Paris Agreement and is an international treaty that began in 2016, impacting every city in the world. Nations have to report regularly and set up targets and strategies, but increasingly depend on initiatives from cities. Net Zero cities and corridors are an increasing part of this agenda.

Net Zero corridors require strategic urban planning to support comprehensive large-scale urban regeneration, integrating transit with urban regeneration to maximise decarbonisation potential in the built environment. It needs to be a city-wide process and should enable cities like those in Australia with large areas of car dependent suburbs to regenerate such areas as a series of net zero precincts in net zero corridors that enable all buildings and all transport to be net zero. See image below.

This image was first published in 1999 by Newman and Kenworthy and has continued to be relevant to the regenerative process needed in heavily car dependent cities. It shows how net zero precincts along net zero corridors can transform all parts of the city, especially the car-dependent cities built since the 1940s. These are all transit oriented urbanism.

The combination of net zero precincts along net zero corridors is what we are proposing in this paper as the next big urban regeneration agenda. It enables all parts of the city – central, inner, middle and outer suburbs, industrial areas and businesses from all parts of the economy – to become net zero. The opportunity to do this can be taken through creating tram boulevards out of main roads that are losing their functionality and urban qualities. These new boulevards can also link into rail transit stations and give them a second chance to become a source of land value for urban regeneration.

The world of finance in 2024 was suggesting that around $US1 trillion ($A1.52 trillion) was now invested in net zero projects, and $US80 trillion ($A121.8 trillion) was now being planned for net zero projects. Awareness of this may have filtered through to some urban developers. Many other urban planners and practitioners are not yet working through their design and political priorities to shift the focus of all parts of public and private planning to ensure that their cities are not left behind. This is increasingly being driven by the private sector, as their finance depends on being part of such strategies, and they need to report on this. The integration of public and private goals can be seen as part of the agenda for a national approach to affordable housing through net zero tram corridors.

Urban planning for net zero corridors

Decarbonising a transport corridor needs to create more walking and transit urban fabric along Main Roads that have become heavily congested. The central parts of cities can be regenerated with an emphasis on active transport, especially walkability as shown by Smart Growth America and urban designers like Jan Gehl but the most difficult part of urban regeneration is now focused on delivering more transit fabric into suburbs that were built around the car.

Net zero precincts need to be delivered as part of a normal planning and design process, but they will be much better for a net zero corridor strategy, which is part of a transport strategy that minimises car use, such as a movement and place strategy. This applies to cities, whether they already have a net zero power system, like Vancouver, or not. To help create more walking fabric around stations and more transit fabric along corridors, we have created this new concept of a net zero corridor or sometimes a twenty-first-century boulevard. This takes the new urbanism idea of transit-oriented developments (TODs) and aligns a series of them along a main road corridor to activate development around stations. It can become a tram-based boulevard that enables all kinds of characters of TOU’s integrating transit and place.

The net zero corridor concept appears to work best through the provision of twenty-first-century mid-capacity transit systems using electrified bus rapid transit, light rail transit, or trackless trams; these mid-capacity transit systems are known to facilitate urban regeneration in station precincts and can become the catalyst for the new net zero precincts. This will need a new partnership model with private developers as outlined above, otherwise the value uplift will be lost, and with a deliberative process that engages local communities.

The key principle of a net zero corridor is set out below. It consists of a main road corridor with mid-capacity transit priority and a series of station precincts built with urban regeneration that prioritises e-mobility feeders and distributors, such as e-micromobility, as well as walking.

This idea of a tram-based boulevard can also link into the main train corridors where the station precincts have lost the chance to upgrade their place-based urbanism and remain mostly as car parks. This can unlock the land value capture process again, as long as it uses the land value capture assessment, modelling and partnership delivery mechanisms.

Once demonstrated, the net zero corridor concept could then spread into the whole city as the net zero services are adopted in bigger and bigger areas. The corridors can be connected to create a strong transit network, and the net zero precincts can each spread to surrounding suburbs by expanding their microgrids. The result could be a multi-nodal city joined by corridors of electric transport, all feeding off the solar-based precincts built into the urban fabric, as set out in the whole of the city’s net zero model above.

The outcome suggested by the two images above will have significantly more transit and higher density around such urban regeneration, though the process of reaching this will require reduced automobile traffic capacity along the chosen main roads. To resolve the issues of building a new transit system and associated urban regeneration down a main road, it is necessary to develop a movement and place strategy.

A movement and place strategy reduces automobile dependence, and it is increasingly being used to involve increased uptake of electric micromobility, which has become an important agenda in transport and urban policy. The shorter distances associated with this mode will focus on station precincts that should become electric recharge hubs. Denser cities will have less need for mid-capacity transit and more need for electric micromobility, but both are needed, as shown by the application of trackless trams and net zero corridors in emerging cities in Africa and other parts of the developing world. These cities usually have huge traffic issues, with poor public transport as well as the need for net zero urban regeneration of their urban fabric that is usually very dense. Net zero corridors could become the net zero design tool associated with movement and place that can enable a transition to net zero in any city.

The net zero precincts that can form the basis of urban regeneration around stations on a net zero corridor will be different for each part of the city. Table 3 sets out the kind of planning and design approaches that can now be used to create net zero precincts based on the three types of urban fabrics. They will need to include not just net zero buildings but a range of other economic and SDG outcomes, which often overlap, such as place-activation through walkability. Such processes become the basis of how deliberative community engagement can enable support for such processes along these corridors.

Byrne and Wiktorowicz, in their studies on two precincts moving towards net zero in the new urban development called WGV in Fremantle, found large numbers of other SDGs were being drawn into the design and delivery of such urban regeneration, whilst still enabling strong commercial outcomes. 

The importance of this table is that these planning systems are all understood and well demonstrated by professional planners in their practice. They do not need to be discovered and demonstrated, as much of the net zero agenda. And they are well demonstrated in affordable housing like Nightingale in Melbourne, next to Brunswick rail station and on the Sydney Road tram service. Thus, it’s not like we need to get rid of planning as libertarian philosophies would tend to suggest, but we do need to bring more pro-density and pro-transit into planning systems and practice.

Australian case studies of net zero tram corridors

Net zero corridors in Australian cities have been studied using the Australian model, Spatial Network Analysis for Multimodal Urban Transport Systems (SNAMUTS), developed by Jan Scheurer and Carey Curtis. This has been applied, using local government engagement processes, in Brisbane (Sunshine Coast corridor), Townsville (City to Health Campus corridor), Sydney (Parramatta Road corridor; City of Liverpool corridor to new airport), Melbourne (City of Wyndham corridors to key rail stations and Caulfield Corridor to Monash), and Perth (several corridors). Read more here.

The image below shows a good example of the kind of SNAMUTS analysis that sets out how an upgraded tram transit system down a main road corridor can enable urban regeneration that helps the viability of the transit system as a whole. This one enabled around 30 bus routes to be removed and instead fed into the mid-capacity tram system, especially feeding into the station precincts. It also shows the areas that should have clear urban density goals and those that don’t.

The research outlined in these studies was applied by local governments in Perth using the SNAMUTS model to help create the basis of movement and place strategies that integrate transit and land use scenarios. A plan was created showing the main train lines being linked into cross-corridor main roads, which should be converted into tram-boulevards of net zero transit-oriented urbanism. This would unlock new opportunities for affordable housing around the stations presently dominated by car parks, and which need new place-oriented precincts to be created.

The model has been developed to enable land value capture options to be created for urban regeneration with affordable housing that can replace the strict density-based regulations of the past and the heavy car dependence of most main road corridors. This approach seems to be far more acceptable to local communities, based on upgraded public transport and micromobility along the net zero corridor, as well as new housing opportunities, see below.

Extra land value is created by a good mid-capacity transit system that enables real housing options to be built in partnership with governments. The outcome of urban regeneration with good medium-density net zero precincts along a net zero corridor will have multiple benefits and costs that can be modelled and made part of the transit assessment process.

The new model has been incorporated into a generic strategic planning approach called “greening the greyfields”. It is based on how net zero corridors could be created along main roads using the ideas outlined to help create precinct-based net zero developments. Hence, the net zero transition probably needs to start in the greyfields, the areas developed post war with cheap baby boomer housing that are now ready for redevelopment. A core procurement process is to establish partnerships with private developers and landowners from the beginning of the transit and land development process; otherwise, the land value is lost, as outlined above. This also needs a local community engagement process.

Three-Step Delivery Strategy for a Net Zero Tram Corridor with Affordable Housing

The following three steps are set out to illustrate the potential transition process to provide affordable housing with a net zero tram corridor, using urban planning approaches based on a movement and place strategy.

The first step for a net zero tram corridor is to declare a high-quality transit system down a corridor and zone it in strategic and statutory plans as primarily for net zero transit and dense urbanism. This is best done as a movement and place strategy. Such routes could be specified as potential net zero corridors providing a much-increased transit capacity with associated zoning for station precincts along the corridor.

A second step in designing a net zero tram corridor would be to create the extent of the precincts around the stations where an area could become a series of twenty-first-century net zero affordable housing developments. The precinct area could be “greenlined,” as suggested by Newton, and a process could begin with the owners of buildings in the area. This process should involve full community engagement to form partnerships with the residents, businesses, developers, and design professionals. A design charette can be a major exercise in resolving all the relevant agendas, but deliberative processes need to be created for each corridor. This can ensure that multiple benefits are found as the value increases in the land will be assured, and higher quality development can be achieved.

A third step in a net zero tram corridor strategy is having an agency or a cross-agency group that can provide the integrated design skills to help deliver the net zero corridor and its affordable housing in net zero precincts, along with private developers and communities.

Affordable housing should be the main focus whilst designing new net zero technology into all the buildings and local transport that are now significantly cheaper operationally for households and will last well into the future. Key technologies to be integrated include a microgrid based on rooftop solar that enables both sharing of the net zero power and recharge services for all the electric vehicles, micromobility, shuttle buses, cars, and mid-tier transit. This integration step will be different for each urban fabric, as the city centre will be very different from a new medium-density station on the urban fringe. The delivery process will need to incorporate partnerships with transit providers and land developers into the procurement process, along with all the utilities and agencies involved from government, and most of all, strong community engagement through deliberative processes.

Fundamental design tools, as in Table 2, can be used to make station precincts dense and mixed use, to turn them into “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” places as set out in SDG 11 for cities. The outcomes of walkable urban design, solar passive design, water-sensitive design, biophilic design, affordable housing design, and integrated design need to simply fit into such urban up-grading. They need to become the basis of the new urban planning systems across Australia and will require professionals to be planned into such practices so they can be delivered rapidly.

Cities and waves of innovation

The net zero transition is a major global commitment which is well underway with rapidly accelerating adoption of solar, batteries and EVs. However, it is important to see that this transition is not just the next economy but is the next approach to how we build cities based on these innovations that can enable multiple outcomes, including affordable housing.

Cities can be understood as having waves of innovation that emerge from economic downturns that release new financial investment, a process described by Joseph Schumpeter as “creative destruction”. These waves of innovation are set out below.

The fourth wave of innovations created a fossil fuel-oriented car-based urbanism that began to change with the fifth wave based on digital technologies and started enabling urban regeneration. the sixth wave is net zero/sustainability-based innovations and they are beginning to be understood as having very local applications in precincts as well as along corridors as outlined in the main text above and more detail in Newman.

Such innovations rapidly become adopted, like smartphones did in the fifth wave and cars did in the fourth wave. The acceleration in solar, batteries and electric vehicles of all kinds is now dominating the world of finance and will drive the next phase of urban development.

What is now required is a new strategy for planning and transport that can include affordable housing in this energy and transport transition, as suggested by Klein and Thompson in Abundance. The approach suggested in this paper shows a mechanism for doing this, which can be taken up by the planning and transport system without revolutions from the left or right side of politics.

Conclusions

This article sets out how to deliver affordable housing as part of the next transition in our cities to net zero. It shows that the best way to get the density and transit systems to unlock this is by new planning and transport systems that are based on partnerships with government, the private sector and local communities. Without these, the commitments to massively increase the supply of affordable housing will not be able to find the well-located land and enable the land value to be captured for urban regeneration.

A new approach to planning and transport can not only solve the affordable housing issue, but can improve productivity, health, and most of all, meet the required climate change transition outcomes.

The most creative way that urban professionals and practitioners can make affordable housing and net zero tram corridors is by demonstrating how to build net zero with affordable housing into historic urbanism.  This can enable a rapid and politically attractive set of urban regeneration outcomes in precincts and corridors that show how affordable housing and net zero add value to urban development, along with the best of historic urbanism. 

This is the basis of a national approach to affordable housing with net zero tram corridors.

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