Sydney’s Inner West Council recently announced it wants to drive more housing in its area. Taking an idea from the NSW government’s Housing Delivery Authority, where three senior bureaucrats will fast track key projects to approval, the council has established a Significant Residential Development Panel with three senior council officials being the general Manager, director of planning and the general counsel. But the council has gone a step further to include a city architect, appointed as a member of the panel.
Like its state government equivalent the council’s panel will serve as a one stop shop for the assessment of significant projects. What the council has understood is that the housing crisis needs faster approvals but it has also understood that local communities want some guarantee that the new housing will be well designed. Hence the move to have a city architect.
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Most states and territories of Australia now have a government architect who helps balance the need for faster planning with the need to ensure there is a quality control.
The NSW Housing Pattern Book for low rise housing which has been managed by the government architect, Abbie Galvin, is a good example. But to date most urban councils around Sydney do not have a council architect as a formal position. There are exceptions at City of Sydney and Blacktown City Council but other councils have not picked up on these roles. City of Parramatta did have one but the position seems to have gone, although there is design expertise in council.
In the United Kingdom a campaign is underway led by urbanist and director of the London Festival of Architecture, Peter Murray, to get more city architects into the UK’s cities. London, like Sydney, needs much more urban housing but local communities are concerned about the need for quality outcomes.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, recently appointed 10 town architects across Greater London. Murray recently held a seminar with two of the town architects from Hackney and Ilford along with the city architect of Bath. He held another seminar with the city architect of Malmo in Finland, Finn Williams. Williams says that over half of all Swedish municipalities have a city architect and that the role is well established in the Netherlands and Belgium.
At the end of 2024 the Business Council of Australia produced a report titled “Regulation Rumble – an Australian Jurisdictional Planning Scorecard” that compared the planning systems of the eight Australian states and territories. Unfortunately, NSW came last in the overall ranking. The assessment, as would be expected from the BCA, was from an applicant’s perspective of planning systems and how they help businesses. The scorecard ranked South Australia in first position overall and then broke the assessment down to areas of efficiency, consistency, certainty and transparency (where NSW came first equal).
It certainly seems that the NSW planning system is seen as being overly complex and confusing and the state government is to be applauded for bypassing the system through the Housing Delivery Authority and by supporting bonus floor space for Transit Oriented Development that includes affordable housing. But local communities will want some assurance that the quality of new housing is reasonable. And this is where Inner West Council’s recent announcement that a city architect will be involved in their fast track planning approach.
As many of Sydney’s cities evolve to a more dense form of housing in response to the current housing crisis it would seem to be a good time to look at introducing a network of city architects to be part of the decision making process. This network could be co-ordinated at a state level to ensure the balance between a faster planning system and advocacy for quality design outcomes was met.
With a growing trend to the appointment of city architects across cities in London, Bath, Malmo and across countries like Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium the time seems ripe for Greater Sydney to follow the leadership of the Inner West Council and its appointment of a city Architect. Cities like Parramatta, Liverpool, Fairfield, Campbelltown, Penrith and many others could give confidence to their local communities that the need for more housing in centres and transit nodes will be balanced by the need for quality design. And quality design includes environmental performance and responses to climate change.
The wheel turns, I was appointed Leichhardt’s Architect/Planner in 1981 and remained there for 25 years. I did the heritage management, strategic planning, urban design, the open space planning etc and did problem solving on DA’s when required, since replaced by a raft of specialists. The Council is now heavily silo-ed – too many officers not enough troops and the troops have little autonomy to develop. I usually went to the front counter for discussion with whoever came along with a soft pencil and butter paper in tow. Now you must make an appointment and often wait weeks, and usually pay a fee, and usually required to have raft of consultants to advise. The Council had a open issue based committees for whoever wished to have their say. It was wonderful, creative, highly productive. Ok I am a grumpy old man, but the wheel needs to turn again. Appointing a Council architect is commended but he/she needs an open brief, and not be locked into the hierarchy.
Bruce Lay
I remember those days Bruce, the era of a council specialist sitting down with an applicant, visiting a visit and moving a project forward. That ended years ago (precise death sometime during COVID). Now all you get is a recommendation to get a specialist report, the 20 report DA and maybe at the end a useful opinion may emerge.