Waverley in Sydney’s east already has 83 per cent of residents living in high density housing while enjoying wonderful liveability and a thriving community. With plans by the state government demands to build even more density locals want to be core to the story.
Listening to the speakers at The Better Cities Initiative’s “What next for Waverley” event last Thursday – held at the stunning Bondi Pavilion, filled with soft-dusk light – I realised just how many layers this housing affordability issue has. Especially in a city with so many diverse village needs.
Spinifex is an opinion column. If you would like to contribute, contact us to ask for a detailed brief.
Led by the forever-brave thinker and Sydney commentator, Elizabeth Farrelly, with comedy presenter Wendy Harmer as MC, the event brought together a cross-section of industry experts, council decision-makers and a passionate local community.
Farrelly opened the evening by explaining how our cities are now facing a triple crisis of housing, climate change and democracy. The evening aimed to bring together a local citizen’s assembly in order to take steps towards a citizen’s charter on how to plan for and navigate these challenges – including how to accommodate more housing density in Waverley.
Having spent years living in, writing and speaking about Sydney’s east – Waverley is a fascinating use case in the housing affordability debate because alongside its perceived wealth, it’s also an area of Sydney already doing density exceptionally well. Something that in my opinion, should be held up as a benchmark.
Indeed, the Waverley local government area has the second-highest housing density in NSW. Bondi Junction is one of Sydney’s first, and busiest transport-orientated development (TOD) precincts. Already 83 per cent of residents live in mid-to-high density housing while enjoying wonderful liveability and a thriving community. However, with state government demands to build more density quickly, locals want help to navigate such uncertain change.
This was the backdrop to the event. In a wider debate often spilling over with finger-pointing and sloganeering, there has been a notable absence of policymakers rolling up their sleeves and engaging with communities to understand specific local conditions; to educate the community on how things work and to collaborate with local experts.
And whereas our politicians attempt to capture solutions in a simple polaroid snapshot, easily explained while sitting neatly on the fridge, the event last Thursday only highlighted just how complex this issue is. It must be considered with a wide range of lenses and apertures, from the zoomed-out, bigger picture, to the honed-in, village specifics. The various speakers explored this range.
Two speakers applied a focused local lens.
Shirley Alexander, spokesperson for the well organised Save Bondi Village, said Waverley’s dwelling targets did not match plans for amenities or infrastructure – particularly a much-needed new high school). This posed a risk to the village’s unique liveability brand. Mora Main, from the local council’s conservation working group, discussed recent upgrades to Bronte’s Charing Cross and called for better consultation.
Zooming out a bit, local planner Luke Stewart and well known local architect Philip Graus complemented each other’s talks by educating the audience on how the different planning levers work.
By explaining the interrelationship and hierarchy between development control plans (DCPs), local environment plans (LEPs) and state environment planning policies (SEPP), both speakers empowered the room on how these tools work and the best times to apply political pressure.
Architect and placemaker Sara Stace, who’s worked for the state government and is president of the Better Streets advocacy group said Waverley had the lowest car ownership rates in NSW. It also has one of the highest levels of walkability. New developments with parking increased dwelling prices while worsening local traffic conditions. With the proposed targets for Waverley likely to go up along an already log-jammed Bondi Road, this was particularly pertinent. (Sara Stace and her colleague Marc Lane will soon appear on The Fifth Estate’s podcast How to Build a Better World).
Philip Thalis, the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2024 gold medallist, threw some red meat to the crowd. Scything diplomatically through some of the debate’s rhetoric, Thalis talked about the issue being dominated by targets and economists versus proper strategic city making. We need both. He wondered how the banks remained so profitable, while unaffordability soared. Advocating for more well-designed, mid-rise density in Waverley – he livened up the room by reading out some of the Productivity Commission’s housing recommendations from last year.
Then considering the bigger picture, publishing aficionado and author Richard Walsh – and New Democracy’s Iain Walker – explored Australia’s democratic mechanics at the local level. With the major parties concentrating on their national agendas, local issues often barely got a look in –Walsh said. Walker put forward some innovative ideas, including citizen juries, on how the community could have more say on local issues like rapid increases in density.
Finally, speakers fielded some brilliant questions from the floor. As one of the passionate locals in the room asked: were all of our problems addressed, and did we leave with a clear pathway forward? Well, of course not. Tackling the entirety of this issue in a single balmy summer’s evening would be overly ambitious.
However, in a very short space of time – some brilliant ideas were put forward, much knowledge was shared, and the speakers certainly empowered the community to maintain pressure. Most of all though, the event brought many of the right people into the same room for the first time, in Waverley – before infusing that space with passion and debate, pushing the local conversation forward.
Better Cities Initiative is hosting a similar event with the Northern Beaches community on Wednesday 26th February.
