Parts of Brisbane are ‘up-zoning’. How crowded is your suburb already?

More people are squeezing into Fortitude Valley than ever before. And no, we’re not talking about nightclub patrons.

In the past two years, an extra 855 people have moved into each square kilometre of Fortitude Valley, making it Brisbane’s most densely populated suburb. It now houses a total of 9328 people per square kilometre.

However, it might be considered sparse when compared to the northern part of Melbourne’s CBD – the most densely populated place in Australia – where at least 35,943 people are crammed in per square kilometre.

Central London has a population density of about 11,144 people per square kilometre, and Manhattan 28,872.

Sydney’s most densely populated area, Haymarket, has about 21,000 people per square kilometre.

Urban economist Terry Rawnsley from KPMG said Brisbane’s most densely populated suburbs, including West End, Highgate Hill, South Brisbane and New Farm, have one key thing in common – they were first built before the advent of the family car.

“It’s no surprise these places continue to take a lot of the population growth ... they’re walkable communities,” Rawnsley said.

“The question now is, how do we extend that density … out into the next band of suburbs which we know were built in the 60s and 70s on car-based travel? How do we get ‘gentle density’ happening?”

Not one Brisbane suburb had a population density of more than 9000 people per square kilometre in 2023.

Today, there are three: Fortitude Valley, West End and Kangaroo Point.

Garima Bharti moved from Mumbai, one of the world’s most crowded cities, to Brisbane more than a decade ago.

“I’ve always lived around Brisbane city because I was used to that. I wanted to see more people,” the 45-year-old physiotherapist said.

She and her family now live in an apartment in West End, where her daughter can walk to school and she has “found her village”.

Key to that has been the balance of high-density living with open green space and easy access to restaurants, cafes, essential services and public transport.

“A West End local is not going to look for services too far away from them. We just look for something that’s quite close to us because we are spoilt for choice … and we can walk there.”

West End and Newstead have accommodated thousands more residents in apartment towers built on former industrial and commercial land next to the Brisbane River.

But not all inner and middle-ring suburbs have industrial land ripe for redevelopment, and critics say successive state and local governments have given developers free rein to build what they want.

Brisbane City Council has argued the city must grow upwards and not outwards to accommodate the extra 500,000 people projected to move into the local government area alone by 2046.

Greater Brisbane’s population increased by more than 58,223 people last financial year, with the majority of new residents (33,000) overseas migrants.

The council recently adopted a “tall over sprawl” mantra as it works to increase height and density limits across 14 suburban renewal precincts in the city, including Alderley, Cannon Hill, Chermside, Mount Gravatt, Upper Mount Gravatt, Stones Corner, Wynnum and Sandgate.

In the bayside suburb of Wynnum, apartment towers up to 15 storeys may be allowed along some streets, while in parts of Mount Gravatt building height limits will be increased to 10 storeys.

In addition, selected streets will be rezoned from low-density to medium-density to allow duplexes, townhouses and unit complexes up to three storeys high.

Apartment towers up to 30 storeys high will be encouraged around Brisbane’s major shopping centres, including Westfield Carindale and Indooroopilly, although these zoning changes are yet to be formally adopted.

Stafford, Moorooka and Salisbury have also been considered as possible renewal precincts.

University of Queensland urban sociologist Peter Walters said Brisbaneites should not fear increased density in their suburb, so long as it is done properly.

“All the world’s great cities are really dense,” he said.

“You’ve got to create communities, you’ve got to create sort of a sense of a local neighbourhood, and to do that well there’s a kind of architecture called ‘human scale’.”

Walters pointed to highly populated European cities such as Paris where buildings are often no higher than the highest trees, and people can hold a conversation with someone on a top-floor balcony from the street below.

“At the moment [in Brisbane] we’re building 30- and 40-storey buildings. They’re almost like their own little gated communities – they have no relationship with the street,” he said.

Walters said state and local governments needed to put more guardrails in place around new developments.

“When they rezone an area, the government’s got to say ‘we’re going to build some more pocket parks, we’re going to make some more walkable shops, we’re going to make some more affordable retail’ … and plan to actually build a neighbourhood rather than just solve a housing problem, which is what’s happening at the moment,” he said.

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