Designing inclusive cities

Across Australia, the challenge of delivering affordable, resilient and equitable housing has never been more urgent. As our cities keep growing, so does the responsibility to design places that enable people of all ages and backgrounds to live well, connected to the services and communities they rely on.

South Australia’s Young Professional Committee Co-Chairs, James Gillett and Mykaela Dearinger (pictured with the panellists) selected the topic and hosted the event, Designing Inclusive Cities, The Pathway to Equitable Housing, in Adelaide. The event provided a platform for open dialogue to encourage collaborative action, bringing together clients, industry leaders and emerging professionals to address the generational housing crisis.

Our expert panel featured Jane Cassidy, APAC Service Line Leader for Architecture & Design at GHD Design, Dr Julie Douglas from the SA Department for Housing and Urban Development and Peter Seltsikas from SA Water. Together, we shared valuable perspectives on the big question, how do we create communities that are truly equitable?

The panel began by unpacking what equitable housing really means. For Jane, it’s about having just enough to live well, where older people can downsize close to the places they know, young people can afford to stay near family and friends and newcomers are welcomed into thriving neighbourhoods. Yet, as she highlighted, too much affordable housing in Australia sits on the edges of our cities, disconnected from public transport, services and jobs, creating disadvantage for generations.

Sharing insights from GHD’s recent CROSSROADS intergenerational research, Jane noted that every generation in Australia ranks affordable housing, climate resilience and good public transport as top priorities. Encouragingly, Australians are open to more diverse and mixed communities but getting there means rethinking how and where we build.

Julie brought a clear focus to the role of social infrastructure, the essential services like schools, healthcare and community centres that make neighbourhoods liveable and help communities thrive. She spoke about the need to plan these alongside housing developments, especially in new growth areas, to avoid designing disadvantage in from the start. Julie pointed out that while other states use benchmarks to guide the delivery of social infrastructure, South Australia is working to strengthen its own planning tools so that new suburbs grow with the right mix of services.

Peter added a crucial perspective on how enabling infrastructure, such as water, energy and waste management, forms the foundation for delivering equitable housing. He shared how SA Water is investing in new supply and wastewater services for fast-growing areas and highlighted how infrastructure needs to be planned with an eye on future generations, not just today’s needs. Importantly, he raised how policies like statewide pricing help so that the cost of living isn’t unfairly driven up for communities further from city centres.

The conversation also turned to how we build. Jane emphasised that Australia’s average home size has doubled over the last century, even as our households have shrunk, driving up construction costs, energy bills and maintenance. She and Peter discussed the promise of modern modular construction, through high quality, flexible ‘kit of parts’ housing that can provide housing choice, adapt to different community needs, reduce waste and deliver homes faster. Done well, using the right professional expertise like architects, modularity can bring cost certainty and high-quality sustainable housing for builders and buyers alike.

Julie and Jane both underlined that smart density could unlock better value for everyone by supporting vibrant local economies and efficient investment in infrastructure. This includes green spaces and natural water systems (green infrastructure), water ways and stormwater management (blue infrastructure) and essential built assets like roads and utilities (grey infrastructure). However, for density to succeed, especially in cities like Adelaide, where both infill and sprawl present unique challenges, it must be supported by strong transport links and thoughtful urban design.

Bringing this all together, the event made it clear that achieving more equitable housing won’t come from one solution alone. We need to rethink the old idea of the Australian dream, oversized houses on the fringe and shift towards more diverse, compact and connected communities. We need housing that’s designed for a long life, durable, resilient and affordable not just to buy but to live in for generations. We need to plan social and enabling infrastructure together with new homes, not as an afterthought. We also need to make the most of good design and modern construction to deliver quality at scale.

The key takeaway is that the solutions already exist, but they demand collaboration and courage. As Jane said, when density is done well, we create places where everyone can live well and we spread that ‘jam on the toast’ further, so that the infrastructure spend is optimised across a sustainable compact city model and where prosperity and opportunity are shared equitably across generations.