A recent Courier Mail headline claimed Brisbane is about to be transformed by high-rise living.
“Brisbane is about to see a huge transformation where apartments overtake detached homes and the way we live would change dramatically, according to a new report.”
That report is the next installment of RSM Australia’s Leading Cities Report series, building on last year’s analysis. The earlier report was explicit: growth would be additive, not a replacement of suburban Brisbane.
This year’s report – released only a few months later – recommends moving away from detached housing toward density (the code word for high rises). It tells us that detached housing will reduce from 60 per cent → 46 per cent by 2046, while high rises will increase from eight per cent to 14 per cent, citing the rise of childless and ageing couples (who they assume want to live in high rises) as causes.
The report treats these shifts as both inevitable and benign, while they are neither.
We are told Brisbane is becoming an “Asian-style metro city”. This is not a description: it is an agenda.
Densification on this scale cannot be just a planning slogan; it is a delivery problem. It demands a high level of design quality, infrastructure coordination, and clarity of governance; a clarity we have not seen consistently demonstrated in the past. If not done well there may be a reduction in living standards rather than an enhancement of them.
By also emphasising Brisbane’s “civic personality” – its informality, openness, and subtropical character – the report reveals the inherent tension between growth and identity.
Some scary numbers are mentioned, particularly Queensland Government projections of a population of six million people by 2046. These projections are treated as inevitable. They are not, as they depend on migration policy, economic conditions, and political choices.
This latest report is also full of boosterism. It is essentially an ad campaign for investors using phrases such as “big Brisbane bunch-up” to capture the idea of the concentration of people into inner-city areas. It reads less like analysis and more like a prospectus.
There is little detail on how this will be managed beyond general references to precinct planning and transport improvements. The difficult question is avoided – is Brisbane’s present policy framework capable of delivering the vision of a city the report so confidently describes?
More slogans are in the report: “precinct-based planning” is presented as the solution to transport congestion and urban fragmentation, with “local neighbourhoods evolving into self-contained hubs”. Precinct planning only works when it produces real mixed-use economies.
Apartment towers around train stations will not do it.
It is interesting to see the shift between the earlier and present reports – in the earlier report several business leaders promoted an experience-based city identity over iconic buildings saying that Brisbane should “play to its strengths” (nature, culture, lifestyle). Anthony Ryan advocated more collaborative governance while Jen Williams said that Brisbane should be defining its own identity through river-based urbanism and outdoor culture rather than copying global cities. This is not present in the latest version.
While the previous report predicted we are on the cusp of greatness and that we are in a transitional period (along with a repeated claim about us being a fast-growing city) the new report states Brisbane is transforming — and it must actively manage the consequences of success.
Brisbane is compared to Asia, specifically Singapore, held up as a model not only here but also among other South East Asian countries and cities. What appeals to city authorities in Australia is that Singapore is very ordered. However, it is a highly centralised, tightly controlled system.
That is not Brisbane.
While these places appear to be models, they contain aspirational cultures highly motivated to succeed and have fundamentally different societies and history to Australia.
The challenge is not growth, it is managing growth without losing the very qualities that make Brisbane worth growing in the first place.
