Read SMH article by David Barwell This high-rise housing reform promised 185,000 homes. One suburb is doing the heavy lifting, 23 October 2025, HERE

FOKE Summary:

Since May 2024, when the NSW government’s Transport Oriented Development (TOD) planning reforms came into force in 2023, Department of Planning figures reveal that the 5062 dwellings targetting Sydney’s north shore remnant Blue Gum forest are in the Ku-ring-gai local government area.

NSW Labor Government are determined to transform Ku-ring-gai’s critically endangered ecological urban forest, known as the ‘lungs of Sydney’ into carbon emitting concrete high rise.

The land around Gordon, Killara, Lindfield and Roseville railway stations have been upzoned as transport-oriented development accounting for 93 per cent of the 5062 proposed dwellings across TOD areas in NSW. This is despite the four suburbs having high ecological significance and heritage conservation areas. Nor is there any evidence justifying that the four suburbs have the necessary infrastructure capacity to cope with the up to 50,000 additional population.

Developers are proposing to build:

• 2426 multistorey dwellings in Lindfield (Lindfield has recorded the highest number of homes proposed in Transport Oriented Development zones in NSW)
• 924 multistorey dwellings in Roseville
• 737 multistorey dwellings in Gordon (including a 100-unit apartment complex at 3-9 Park Avenue, Gordon)
• 628 multistorey dwellings in Killara

Yet other TOD zones have only received a handful of planning applications. Banksia, Croydon and Dulwich Hill TODs each recorded fewer than 10 new dwellings.

It appears that developers can make larger profits building in Ku-ring-gai than in the city’s west.

NSW Labor TOD’s reforms are a direct result of the Federal Government’s national housing accord target of 1.2 million new homes across Australia by 2029:

• Tier 1 TOD (Accelerated) allows up to 45 storeys in Bankstown, Crows Nest/St Leonards (a 282-unit development on land partially owned by Telstra on the Pacific Highway near St Leonards station), Homebush/North Strathfield, Hornsby and Macquarie Park
• Tier 2 TOD: including Gordon, Killara, Lindfield and Roseville railway stations
  
  

Despite Planning Minister Paul Scully announcing that “young people, families and key workers can live in the communities they choose”only 429 units have been set aside as “affordable housing” out of 2189 units proposed in Lindfield.

NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully is now pushing to expediate his Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Planning System Reforms) Bill 2025 to accelerate housing supply including the low- and mid-rise housing policy, the Housing Development Authority and the establishment of a new Development Co-ordination Authority that will remove independent government agencies from giving ‘frank and fearless’ advice on development applications.

Read more at:

• This high-rise housing reform promised 185,000 homes. One suburb is doing the heavy lifting
• ‘Focus on the north shore and east’: Developers deserting western suburbs’s approval of our alternative planning scheme.”