Urban
Villages
Overlooking the CBD, Wilsons River, and green parklands, the newly expanded urban villages are beautiful spaces to make a home. New, in-demand types of housing have been built off the floodplain but still close to the services and neighbours who complete our community.
It’s clear we need different types of housing and a lot more of it than is currently available.
Expanding the strategy
We support the work done by Lismore City Council in the Affordable and Diverse Housing Strategy. This document encourages more affordable and medium-density housing in parts of urban Lismore close to employment, infrastructure, and services. We also support some targeted zoning changes that have been implemented to allow more dense housing options in these areas.
Our proposal goes a step further to recommend we target some key areas around Lismore Base Hospital, St Vincent’s Hospital, SCU, and parts of the North Lismore plateau (in consultation with traditional owners) for immediate housing delivery. These ‘urban villages’ provide affordable housing, which is complimented by supporting commercial development and various public transport. In time, the existing golf course and parts of Goonellabah may also form part of this strategy.
In keeping with our strategy to focus on what we can do now, we have not proposed any new housing on the floodplain at this time. Depending on future flood mitigation projects and state planning decisions, the CBD may become a focus of increased housing density in the near future.
Community hubs
When these areas have been developed as urban villages, housing choices will include one and two-bedroom apartments, co-housing with shared infrastructure, granny flats out the back of existing heritage homes, attached townhouses with modest front and rear outdoor spaces, and more.
As more people move into these areas, they will support small commercial centres where cafes, bakeries, small grocery stores, and other businesses will serve the needs of the immediate residential and commercial communities.
The greenway transport network will allow residents to get to the CBD in as little as five minutes using the new shuttle service or the network of bike paths. These parts of Lismore will support people of all ages and enhance the urban feel of Lismore as a thriving regional centre.
How do we implement this?
Lismore City Council has already done a lot of the preparation. The zoning is mostly updated and the opportunities for developers are there to bring these new types of housing and mixed-use developments to the community.
Now, we need action from all sectors of the real estate development industry – including banking and finance – to deliver this new housing to our community.
Examples of potential activation
Small and affordable apartments — strata titled with private ownership of interior and exterior spaces and shared common property. Gen Y Demonstration Housing by David Barr Architects. Photography by Robert Frith
Block Party NZ is a cohousing model designed for a group of six friends who together purchased a typical suburban lot in Wellington. Photo by David Straight.
Anne Street Garden Villas in the Gold Coast provide a new model for social housing. Photo by Christopher Fredrick Jones.
Greenways can create safe routes for cyclist and pedestrians. Wilson Street Greenway, Redfern, Sydney Photo by Ben Williams.