New Sydney towers should be built around train stations: Urban Taskforce

Apartment towers around transport nodes are needed to cope with Sydney's growing population, according to property development industry group Urban Taskforce, who advocate 5,000 new towers for Sydney.

Urban Taskforce chief executive Chris Johnson claims that Sydney needs to double the number of currently existing homes over the next 50 years, and has proposed clustering apartment towers around railway stations and transport hubs.

The industry group estimates that about one third of Sydney's projected growth could live in towers around transport hubs, which Johnson claims could protect many low rise suburbs.

"The other two thirds of the future growth would occur in fringe development, lower rise medium density near centres and large redevelopment sites," he proposes, noting poor public sentiment around apartment towers.

“Currently many community groups, political representatives and planners in councils have developed a negative attitude to towers preferring to favour town houses or detached houses. We must swing the discussion around to support for towers when they are close to transport," Johnson says.

"A 12 storey tower uses far less land than the equivalent number of houses spread across the landscape. To house the same number of households in detached houses would require 30 times as much land as placing the homes in a 12 storey building."

According to Johnson, Sydney is approaching its spacial limits, a locating "thousands of apartment towers" along the city's main rail lines would help make a metro rail system feasible.

He cites apartment towers developed by Urban Taskforce members Winten Property Group, Deicorp and Meriton as "excellent examples of towers related to transport".