About 960 hectares of Canberra's community land is underutilised, according to new research from the University of Canberra.
Nearly 90 per cent of community facility zoned land in the ACT does not have a building on it.
If only half of that land was developed it would represent the size of suburb O'Connor, lead researcher Chris Wallace says.
Professor Wallace is the academic director of University of Canberra's Centre for a Better Canberra.
Underutilised land and buildings could be used for things like climate change shelters, micro forests, social housing or places of worship, Dr Wallace said.
More than churches
The ACT government leases out community facility zoned land for limited purposes.
Demographics have changed since much of it was initially leased, Dr Wallace said.
She said there was a gap between who was leasing the land and who needed it.
"In the beginning of the ACT's development there was a lot of it, and the government handed it out to the existing community groups, often churches at the time," she said.
"Since then the community has really changed a lot and there's very little land left."
Migrant communities are in need of facilities for cultural and religious reasons, Dr Wallace said.
Need for Bhutanese temple
The report found that Canberra's Bhutanese community was calling out for a Buddhist temple to engage in cultural practices.
"[The] community has struggled to find a home to practice their faith and customs. They hire community halls, churches, school gymnasiums and public parks for community events and prayers. They struggle to get the space they need due to competing bookings and uses," the report said.
"Being able to worship in language, and having a place to permanently store and protect religious instruments, is integral to the community's spirituality.
"Because of this the community has repeatedly had to resort to converting suburban housing rentals into places of worship, leading to noise complaints and issues with parking."
Dr Wallace said many leaseholders were open to partnering with other community groups.
"One of the problems is community groups often don't have a lot of resources or expertise to find the right partner and get more things happening on their blocks," she said.
"There's a real role for government in working out how to bring together the owners of leases ... with not for profits and community groups who are desperate for land."
Housing problem
The government regularly releases community facility zoned blocks of land.
It is expected to issue an expression of interest for six blocks this August.
About two thirds of community facility zoned land is used for education, such as schools.
Dr Wallace said it was important to preserve the land for community purposes, and not to rezone it for housing development.
"It would be not a good idea to solve our housing problem by using up all of the community facilities and land for that," she said.
"As the community looks at these underutilised blocks and thinks about what the local area needs, certainly some community housing or cooperative housing could be included."
Aged, childcare care and more uses
The University of Canberra report used three sites as case studies.
The previous site of Aboriginal health service Winnunga Nimmityjah, at Wakefield Gardens in Ainslie, is boarded up and unused.
"There's a lot of older Canberrans [in Ainslie], but there's also a lot of student share houses," Dr Wallace said.
"Our Master of Architecture Students reimagined a community centre for mixed use that has places for older [people to] exercise, a climbing wall, community meeting spaces."
A Salvation Army site in Braddon used for church outreach could be developed into co-housing with shared lived facilities and a social enterprise cafe.
And adjacent blocks in Kambah owned by ACT Playground Association could become a dementia-care village with community outreach facilities.
This underused land could help address the need for aged care and childcare facilities by offering not-for-profit organisations cheap leases, Dr Wallace said.
"A not-for-profit aged care provider said to us, 'Look, we could fulfill all of Canberra's aged care needs, except for one thing: we can't compete with commercial purchases for land','' she said.
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