Northshore Hamilton has the rare opportunity to become something Brisbane has not yet fully achieved: a dense, employment-connected urban precinct that functions as a place in its own right.
The area next to Portside has been gazetted as a priority development area since 2008, but the current scheme was amended in November 2025, providing authority to allow the project to proceed with a comprehensive plan for the whole PDA precinct that includes a commercial centre, mixed uses and more high-rise residences. MacArthur Avenue will be positioned as a central spine, a proper main street with shops, restaurants and everyday services lining both sides.
I was sceptical at first, but I can now see the development is acknowledging a shift in the way Brisbane is developing. I hope it succeeds.
Brisbane’s rapid expansion is conflicted. It has evolved from what you may call an octopus model where the CBD is the core with roads and transport radiating from it. The Brisbane CBD accommodates mostly service workers; however, there is now significant employment growth to the north and the south of the city.
That original octopus form is being slowly transformed into a lineal city comprised of a chain of urban nodes – smaller CBDs – stretching from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast including Logan and Coomera; Caboolture and North Lakes; but it is largely a car-dependent model as the public transport, heavy rail infrastructure, hasn’t managed to keep up it.
Greater Brisbane’s population growth is largely contained in single family housing in low-density suburbs requiring more and more rural land and dependent on private car transport.
Northshore Hamilton offers a different proposition as it appears to be an attempt to create a high-density precinct with services close to residences and part of a Brisbane industrial hub.
On 304ha – essentially a greenfield site – it proposes housing for around 24,500 residents (effectively a new electorate) but crucially, it is not conceived as a dormitory suburb. It sits adjacent to major and developing employment generators – the port, the airport, plus the new distribution centres now being built on both sides of the river. The benefits are clearly there – proximity to employment opportunities and near or on the river – albeit with the disadvantage of being under the flight path.
The large distribution centres are in Murarrie: Amazon, Kmart, Bunnings; plus a new 78,000sm Australia Post distribution centre (the largest in Australia) has just opened at Brisbane Airport. In a portent of the future of retailing, Australia Post’s letter business has diminished while their parcels business is booming. Amazon leads the revolution in shopping (products now come to you), having a profound effect on the way our retail economy operates. Distribution has replaced the department store and shopping centre: Toombul anyone?
In this context, Northshore Hamilton begins to make sense. It aligns living with employment, and density with proximity. It has the ingredients of a genuinely localised urban system.
However, if you live there and want to commute into the CBD (here are two CityCat terminals shown on the plans) you would be wise to take a CityCat rather than taking your chances with Kingsford Smith Drive. It is entirely possible there will be a metro-style bus line running in Kingsford Smith. Removing a lane each way from Kingsford Smith Drive would be a brave political move as it is already congested at peak hours, not to mention the pinch points as you get closer to the city centre.
There has been no word on a rail connection, although rail infrastructure does exist. There are the remains of a rail corridor that once connected the Doomben station to the storage tanks on the edge of Northshore Hamilton, and a single line is still in place from Doomben to Pinkenba.
Perhaps one day…
Northshore Hamilton is a rare opportunity to become something Brisbane has not yet fully achieved: a dense, employment-connected urban precinct that functions as a place in its own right.
Whether it becomes that – or simply just another high-density extension of the city – will depend less on its buildings and more on how it is connected and inhabited. The stakes are high: if it fails, the problems of traffic congestion, poor connectivity and isolation will remain.
The plan is promising but the outcome is not yet guaranteed.
