Tallawong Station development has created a diverse new community: Chris Johnson

The proposed development of the Tallawong Station Precinct by Landcom and the Sydney Metro demonstrates how a new diverse community can be planned.

The concept plan for 1,100 new apartments with 5 percent as rental affordable housing along with a park and retail uses has the ingredients for a quality outcome.

It is good to see that Landom’s approach to providing affordable housing is based on NSW Government’s Affordable Rental Housing SEPP of 2009 that provides the affordable housing for a 10 year period.

The Urban Taskforce has promoted the use of the Affordable Rental Housing SEPP approach with reasonable uplift to fund the affordable component.

In the Landcom proposal there is no uplift as the cost will be reflected in the value of the land and the normal SEPP requirement of 20 percent affordable units has been reduced to 5 percent.

This is a reasonable economic approach to the delivery of affordable housing and signals government support for a 10 year rental approach.

The Urban Taskforce supports this flexible, sensible and pragmatic approach to the provision of affordable housing which takes into account the sensitivity of the property market.

The overall scale of development at Tallawong appears to be reasonable for the location at the end of the North West Metro line (pictured above).

The Urban Taskforce is supportive of large scale developments with a number of buildings, mixed uses and the provision of a park as this gives a sense of community and balances shared amenities with 1,100 apartments in this case.

When the concept plan has been approved we assume Landcom will call for expressions of interest from the private sector to undertake the project.

Urban Taskforce members will be interested in becoming involved.

Chris Johnson is the CEO of Urban Taskforce