ABSTRACT: A form of policy consensus has emerged in Australian planning in recent years which demonstrates all the characteristics of a planning doctrine. The broad thrust of this doctrine is urban densification and is identified as a solution to a wide range of urban ills. This doctrine finds expression in metropolitan and local planning strategies in policies for urban consolidation, activity centres and transit oriented development. Yet, the fine grained implications of such policies remain under researched with the effectiveness of densification remaining open to debate.

The Regional Plan for SEQ makes significant reference to the delivery of higher densities as a means to accommodate growth in a sustainable manner. A number of policy tools are presented which demand new planning and development responses. Principal among these tools are the focus on transit oriented development and activity centres. An additional requirement that some 40%-50% of future residential development across the region will occur on infill sites within the newly identified urban footprint, poses a significant challenge to planning and development action. At present, however, there is a lack of research in the SEQ context to support and endorse the use and application of density tools. This poses a significant problem for both the metroregional planning exercise and for local authorities establishing newly prescribed local growth management strategies (LGMS).

Amongst the greatest challenges are the process of finding suitable localities with sufficient capacity for new, higher housing densities and convincing communities of the need for these higher densities. One principal theme stands out as warranting further research and commentary if a focus on density is to be more than a rhetorical exercise and this is the development of an urban housing capacity template to assess the actual physical capacity, economic viability and urban form implications of increased housing densities in targeted localities.

This paper charts the work in progress of a research project which pilots the use of an urban housing capacity template in SEQ. The template adopts a set of both quantitative and qualitative procedures that allow an assessment of the potential and suitability of urban housing densification in targeted localities.