A coalition of housing advocates, community organisations and urban planners has called on the ACT government to ditch rules that limit suburbs to detached housing and instead allow more townhouses and terraces in Canberra.
The Missing Middle Canberra group - which includes the housing advocacy group Greater Canberra, along with the YWCA, urban planning consulting firm Purdon and the Master Builders ACT - wants all areas currently limited to detached housing to allow townhouses, duplexes, terraces and small blocks of flats.
"For centuries, cities around the world have relied on medium-density housing to enliven urban areas, create stronger communities, and connect people with each other, and with great jobs, transport and services," an open letter from the group said.
The letter also said current planning laws act as a "handbrake" on new social housing developments.
"As it stands, the planning system makes it easy to build sprawling mansions, but near impossible to build modest multi-family social housing of a similar size," the letter said.
The group wants all RZ1 areas "upzoned" to the RZ2 standard, and all RZ2 areas upgraded to the RZ3 standard.
The local centre zoning, CZ4, should be changed to allow flats to be build above local shops, with a height limit of at least three storeys and ground floor space reserved for commercial use, the group has said.
Mandatory car parking requirements should also be cut to one car space for each dwelling across all residential zones in the ACT, the letter said.
The group's letter is endorsed by the ACT Council of Social Service, the Conservation Council, Pedal Power ACT, Lighthouse Architecture and Science, Better Renting and the Public Transport Association of Canberra.
YWCA ACT chief executive Frances Crimmins said the ACT needed to move beyond a business-as-usual approach to housing.
"Increasing the supply of missing middle housing in convenient and central locations must be on the table for planning reform if we are to address the increasing levels of housing crisis and homelessness among a growing cohort of Canberrans," Ms Crimmins said.
Greater Canberra convener Howard Maclean said the capital would need to find homes for an additional 100,000 people over the next decade.
"Universal suburban upzoning is the fairest, cheapest and most effective way to build homes close to jobs and amenities, and has driven a decline real rents in Auckland since 2016. Missing Middle Canberra is the reform package we need to ensure our city has a home for every Canberran," Mr Maclean said.
A 2022 discussion paper published by the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University suggested "upzoning" could stimulate housing supply based on the outcomes from Auckland.
The Master Builders ACT last week called on the government to make changes to planning laws to allow more opportunities for dual occupancies and multi-unit developments.
Master Builders ACT chief executive Michael Hopkins said at the time government needed to consider changes to RZ1 zoning to meet an expected shortfall in the number of homes in the capital.
"We should be thinking much more boldly around how to encourage a whole range of different housing types in RZ1 zones. Everything from granny flats, teenagers retreats, housing above garages, dual occupancies, three units on a site, four units on a site and even small townhouses," Mr Hopkins said.
Pedal Power ACT executive director Simon Copland said: "Most people ride or walk to work or the shops if they are a short distance away. However, that is often impossible in our spread-out city, meaning Canberrans are stuck relying on cars. Increasing density will give more people the option to experience the health and environmental benefits of riding and other forms of active travel."
Planning system changes that would allow more dual occupancies in low-density Canberra suburbs are firmly on the table, more than 20 years after rules were tightened to stop rapid growth in dual occupancies, the Planning Minister, Mick Gentleman, and Chief Planner Ben Ponton have said.
Changes to RZ1 zones will be informed by feedback from the community, the government has said. Consultation on its draft district planning strategies is open until March 3.
Mr Ponton said officials would identify areas that could accommodate growth but would also create rules around dual occupancies for specific areas.
The government has faced stiff opposition from residents groups over plans to build medium-density projects in suburbs zoned for detached housing.
A four-unit manor house, proposed as part of a demonstration housing scheme in Griffith, was opposed by the Griffith/Narrabundah Community Council, while residents used the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal appeals process to successfully block a YWCA proposal for social housing in Ainslie before the government used call-in powers to revive the project.
Mr Gentleman also recently told The Canberra Times he expected the new planning laws - which would move to an outcomes-based system away from strict rules - would allow developers to propose apartment buildings with fewer car parks in areas with strong public transport access to meet market demand from homeowners who would rely less on private car trips.
"Developers will change depending on the want, the expectation of those people purchasing and how they want to live, and we need to make sure the settings are right to allow that to occur," he said.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr has previously described a release of 30,000 extra dwelling sites in Canberra over the next five years as a program of "gentle urbanism".
"The answer is not just more 10-storey apartments in town centres and CBDs, although there's still a little bit more capacity and demand for them, but the bulk of the new housing will be in what I'd call that middle sphere. So lower-density apartments, more like walk-up two- and three-storey and in townhouses, row houses, duplexes, that sort of housing density," Mr Barr said in July 2022.
The "missing middle housing" term originated in the United States, where it has been used to describe housing that was common before the Second World War but disappeared as urban sprawl and the car made detached housing the frequent first preference for family housing.
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