Drive through one of countless new crammed housing estates in Sydney’s west and you might picture the small saplings lining narrow streets one day blossoming into lush trees.
But the reality is that government planning controls have allowed verges so narrow that what’s planted doesn’t have enough space to ever grow big enough to provide adequate shading.
Last week, news.com.au reported on experts’ concerns surrounding an influx of “inefficient and unsuitable” dwellings in Western Sydney, with the Blacktown region at the epicentre of a dangerous trend of plonking massive homes on small blocks.
An image shared to social media of newly built properties crammed like sardines into an emerging subdivision in The Ponds, 45 kilometres from the Sydney CBD, recently went viral.
The Ponds is part of Blacktown City Council, which sits within the New South Wales Government’s North West Growth Area – a designation that has fast-tracked housing to cope with the city’s booming population.
“Relentless rezoning and land releases by previous NSW governments have seen the development of vast new housing estates, with homes-built cheek-by-jowl,” Blacktown Mayor Tony Bleasdale told news.com.au.
The State Government made the North West Growth Area designation back in 2006, sparking mass development that was facilitated by relaxing previous planning regulations.
Department of Planning controls mean a new home built in the region can sit virtually on the side boundaries, almost touching the property next door, and have a small street setback and tiny backyards.
Most block sizes are 300 square metres – about half the size of an average lot in the 1990s, and dwellings can generally consume up to 85 per cent of that space.
Rather than the local council setting its own rules on housing development, the Department of Planning controls land releases and density.
“The street widths mandated by the Department of Planning and Environment’s development controls are not wide enough to allow the planting of substantial trees to shade road pavements, exacerbating the urban heat island effect,” Mr Bleasdale said.
Unsustainable pace of change
The rapid pace of development hasn’t been complemented by a significant infrastructure in amenities, Mr Bleasdale said.
“These new areas are community facilities infrastructure deserts,” he said.
“Our part of Sydney often experiences summer temperatures 10 or more degrees hotter than beachside suburbs with their cool nor’easters and we must find ways to create space for more trees to help cool the environment.”
There are few signs of improvement on the horizon, with Blacktown making up 70 per cent of the total North West Growth Area, he said.
Current levels of development have exceeded what the Department of Planning had once projected by about 20 to 30 per cent, Mr Bleasdale said.
That has placed “significant and additional demands” on transport infrastructure, the available of open green space, and community facilities.
He said Blacktown is “growing under population pressure” as a result.
The 2021 Census showed some 396,000 people lived within the Blacktown local government area, which was a staggering 100,000 more than recorded at the 2011 Census.
Since the last Census was conducted, Sydney has experienced extraordinary population growth and many new arrivals settled in the Blacktown area.
As of June 2023, the Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the total number of people living in the Blacktown LGA at 426,602 – a seven per cent increase, or 30,000 more people, in just two years.
Stinking hot desert
Geography means Western Sydney is already hotter than the city’s east during summer, but how suburbs are built is significantly contributing to even harsher conditions, Professor Sebastian Pfautsch, an urban planning and management expert at Western Sydney University, said.
“My area of research and advocacy is heat – the urban heat island effect of developments like these – and so I know well that the people in these suburbs are at very high risk of adverse health impacts,” Professor Pfautsch said.
“They will either have very high electricity bills from running air cons constantly to keep cool during extreme events or, if they don’t have the financial means to cool their homes, they’ll be at serious risk of illness.”
Heatwaves kill more people than any other extreme weather event, like bushfires and cyclones, he pointed out.
Most homes in new housing estates have dark roofs, which retain more heat and make ambient air temperatures higher, as well as dark brick colours and even dark driveways.
“It’s total madness, but this is the format we’re pushing,” Professor Pfautsch said.
Those design factors, coupled with a scarcity of tree coverage and minimal green spaces, make Western Sydney a tough place to be in warm weather, and especially on extreme heat days.
Climate modelling shows Western Sydney is set to experience significantly more extreme heat days over the coming decades, on top of a broader increase in average temperatures during summer, Professor Pfautsch said.
“We know that this part of Australia will get very, very hot. By about 2060, every day of summer in Western Sydney – every day in December, January and February – will likely be at or above 35C. That will become the standard.
“So, in these kinds of suburbs with black roofs and black driveways, minimal space between dwellings, no tree coverage … it’s going to be worse.”
Ugly, inefficient and unsuitable
Urban planner Samuel Austin, who has built a sizeable social media following for his videos about all things housing, said The Ponds is just one example of crammed housing in Australia’s largest city.
“Drive to virtually anywhere in Western Sydney and you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’re in the same suburb,” Mr Austin said. “They all look identical to each other.
“They’re not just unattractive. There’s a whole host of problems with this type of housing beyond just the design.”
The biggest and most obvious is the lack of backyard or private open space, with very little beyond building, Mr Austin said.
“In many of these areas, you can get away with having just 10 or 15 per cent of the site being landscaped space, which is so tiny. Consider a property built 50 years ago would’ve had 30 to 40 per cent of the block being landscaped space.”
That model is inefficient and unsustainable on multiple fronts, he said, and dramatic planning changes are needed.
However, local residents told news.com.au last week that negative attention on their prized patches is unwelcome.
They hit back at the “over-reaction” on social media, which had users expressing their horror at the “awful” sight and experts condemning the building style as “irresponsible”.
Far from vibrant
The stated intent of the North West Growth Area is to “help create vibrant, attractive and well-connected communities, where people can live and work with good access to public transport, community facilities, parks and open spaces, shops and cafes”.
Mr Bleasdale said the goal has failed, largely because past government policies prevented the council from issuing developers with levies to help fund the creation of new libraries, community meeting places and aquatic facilities.
That left Blacktown with an unfunded liability of more than $631 million, he said.
Existing facilities are beyond capacity and council was stripped of the ability to build new ones, meaning “huge numbers of new residents” were sent to the region without the “basic facilities everyone else in Sydney takes for granted”.
Mr Bleasdale called on the State Government to restore the ability of councils like his to build basic facilities for communities in new housing developments.
“Council continues to campaign over a multimillion-dollar infrastructure backlog. These missing infrastructure projects have been building up over more than a decade in precincts which are absorbing vast amounts of Sydney’s population growth.”
Council analysis has revealed a shortfall of about 300 hectares of open green space than has been planned for thanks to the population density that’s been allowed in Blacktown.
“One of the challenges for Blacktown City Council is not just to ensure that new houses are built in the right places, but to also encourage the right types of houses, to meet the challenges of climate change and the changing economic needs of our growing population.
“Council’s vision is for a planned city of sustainable growth, supported by essential infrastructure, efficient transport, a prosperous economy and equitable access to a vibrant, healthy lifestyle.”