28 cooperative social housing apartments in Barcelona - would not be allowed in Australia due to so many building & fire regulations; - atrium roof/courtyard enclosure - lift combined with fire stair - exposed timber structure at GF - glazed timber doors & timber cladding to courtyard facades

Canberra’s metro line - Australia’s best light rail project, now being extended, first through city centre to the lake front, & then hopefully to Woden. The remade & beautifully landscaped Northbourne Ave is the model for remaking Adelaide Ave as an urban boulevard - as the Griffins always intended.

I got so annoyed at Betoota posting about brick six packs I made a slide deck.

Kevin Warsh wants the title, but not the actual job. The job will find him soon enough stephenkirchner.substack.com/p/open-mouth...

Open mouth operations: The case for more forward guidance, not less

Warsh wants the title, but not the actual job. The job will find him anyway

stephenkirchner.substack.com

Recent falls in housing prices are welcome. We should take the win. I have an op-ed in the Canberra Times. www.cis.org.au/commentary/o...

Stop panicking and don’t listen to pollies. Falling house prices are a win - The Centre for Independent Studies

PETER TULIP: Fretting about housing prices will be useful if it leads to a discussion about where we want prices to go and how to achieve that.

cis.org.au

Australian cities are upzoning to allow for more apartments and townhouses, with the aim of getting more homes built. But policy makers need better tools to assess how effective these policies can be. It all starts with better understanding commercial feasibility. 🧵

Our urban economics reading group will be discussing More Homes, Better Cities by the Grattan Institute this Wednesday at 6pm at the CIS. DM me for details or to be included on our email list. grattan.edu.au/report/more-... .

More homes, better cities: Letting more people live where they want

Three-storey townhouses and apartments should be permitted on all residential land in all capital cities as part of a concerted policy assault on Australia’s housing crisis.

grattan.edu.au

Want to increase the supply 3+ bedroom homes? Building dense, market-rate apartments with mostly 1-2 bedrooms does just that, resulting in mostly 3+ bedroom vacancies after the second round of moves that were triggered by the new homes. papers.ssrn.com/sol3...

Today’s decision by the Planning Minister to approve the Missing Middle Housing Reforms marks a turning point for Canberra.

Developers do not make money on empty apartments, this is the dumbest theory of housing.

James Hazen@jameshazen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This happened in my town (Concord, NC). 3 brand new mid rises smack in the middle of downtown, something like 250 units total, about 95% are still empty 2 yrs since completion and none of them are dropping rents to get more tenants because they're content to let the properties appreciate in value.

The sniping and misrepresentation from Tim Sneesby is unconstructive. No-one says "planning is the primary constraint on housing supply". And an author clarifying what his book is not about should not be taken as a rebuttal of what the book actually does say. thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spin...

‘Abundance’ and why trickle-down housing economics just admitted what town planners always knew

Trickle-down housing economics just admitted what town planners always knew, argues Tim Sneesby in this article that tackles the truth about housing supply – 95 per cent of applications for developmen...

thefifthestate.com.au

Why can't expert researchers justify my wishful thinking? We see this in discussions over climate change, vaccination, flouridation. Now tax.

Philip Thalis@philipthalis.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Why can’t economists see the wood for the trees when it comes to housing & tax?? Discounted Capital Gains Tax has been critical in distorting our housing, ramping up its cost relative to wages. Their own article makes that plain! Oh but don’t bother trying any reform to this or negative gearing!

This brilliant article describes the link between Canada’s poor economic growth and our restrictive municipal housing policies. “Canada cannot build a 21st-century economy with a 20th-century housing regime”

Why Canada's housing crisis is a productivity crisis, too

Ricardo Hausmann and Eric Protzer: Canada's lack of suitable housing is a social problem, but it can also stymie growth. Read how.

financialpost.com

This @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social video provides a great overview of why rent control alone and public housing alone will not solve the housing shortage. The only way out of a housing shortage is to build more housing, both public and market-rate. We need a multi-faceted approach. #a2council

The Problem With Left-Wing NIMBYism

YouTube video by Oh The Urbanity!

youtube.com

The humble & affordable 3 storey walk up flats, so common in 60’s-80’s, can’t be built today; -no lift -needs sprinklers & pumps -slabs too thin -no thermal or acoustic insulation -parking non-compliant -windows too open List goes on & makes housing all the more expensive, esp what should be easy

Perhaps instead of claiming that student housing is crowding out apartments, Randwick council might consider zoning additional capacity in Kensington and Kingsford? They have the ability to do that www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

'Perverse': Sydney council wants to ban commercial student housing

For every 10 student rooms being built, there is only one residential property in an area of Sydney's east. The mayor says the housing market has been "monopolised".

abc.net.au

Another paper (among many) finding that inclusionary zoning requirements backfire. In contrast, when I ask advocates of affordable housing requirements for evidence they cannot provide any.

Medium vs High Density: Why Do We Have to Choose?

Medium vs High Density: Why Do We Have to Choose?

YouTube video by Oh The Urbanity!

youtu.be

The trickiest thing about arguing for more dense housing? Half the people who object say it’ll just be luxury housing for the rich. And the other half say you’re just building undesirable slums no one wants to live in.

new from me: a story about VACANCY CHAINS, the idea that underlies the argument that more housing is good even if you can't afford it www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

High-End Construction Really Does Help Everyone

A new rung at the top of the housing ladder permits people lower down to climb up.

theatlantic.com

Last night Willoughby council decided to lock up more housing under heritage protection within 800m of a train and metro station. Decisions like that across Sydney and Australia lead directly to the reality outlined in the SMH this morning. www.smh.com.au/property/new...

How much you need to earn to buy a house now

For the average sole wage earner, the dream of buying a median-priced house is “basically dead and buried”, experts warn.

smh.com.au

We have known for decades that so-called “inclusionary zoning” is bad policy. Nonetheless, it is politically durable because it lets elected officials pose as friends of the poor while indulging their NIMBY constituents’ desire to block new housing in their neighborhoods.

Sam Alcorn@samalcorn.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The frustrating thing is that we’ve known about this for so long, and yet it continues, and in some places, is even growing. This paper was published by the Yale Law Journal when I was still in diapers (and I’m a middle-aged man with a half-white beard): openyls.law.yale.edu/server/api/c...

Another new paper on housebuilding and vacancy chains, this time with data on every Swiss resident & housing unit! An interesting context given Switzerland's high immigration, very large rented sector and strong tenancy rent controls... frederickluser.github.io/files/Moving...

It's past time that the state government stepped in and prevented councils from weaponising heritage controls against housing. Not just preventing overreach like here in Willoughby. Across Sydney, but inner city councils ate the worst offenders by far

This is what winning looks like.

Cities are the vital engines of the Australian economy, and how we build them matters. This is a vital evening for those passionate about solving the housing crisis, and building more affordable, liveable, and sustainable Australian cities. events.humanitix.com/order-withou...

Both sides agree we need to cut red tape. cdn.liberal.org.au/pdf/2026-Der... Good. But there is too much emphasis on compliance costs. The costs of prohibitions are typically far greater. The main problem isn't that regulations make things difficult. It's they stop worthwhile things altogether. 1/4

For decades, the loudest voices in planning were saying "No." We started YIMBY Melbourne to say "Yes." The Guardian credits that shift with driving a "planning policy revolution." Proof that when you show up with evidence & optimism, you can change policy!

Melbourne is in the middle of a housing revolution – have the yimbys already won?

Advocates say even they are surprised by Allan government’s embrace of higher density housing, but warn construction costs risk city becoming ‘victim of its success’

theguardian.com

This is a cartoon about housing.

We just relaunched our website! We've been around for a few years now and thought we should show off all the work our volunteers have been doing. New and improved with news stories, all our newsletters and every bit of advocacy we've done!

Greater Brisbane 🏗️🏢 Brisbane's YIMBY network

We're Greater Brisbane Urbanists, grassroots YIMBYs working to build a better, fairer city for everyone. Join us and help build abundant housing, better transport and walkable streets.

greaterbrisbane.org