Sydney Density Deliberations · AMPLIFY × RadicalxChange
Beyond YIMBYvsNIMBY
The fight looks bigger than it is. Beneath the headlines, the people who fight hardest over Sydney's density agree on a surprisingly long list of specifics—and so does everyone else.
In AMPLIFY's national survey of 2,535 Australians
73%
sit in a conditional middle. Neither fixed supporters nor fixed opponents: their views on density depend on how, where, and under what conditions new housing gets built.
The methodology
Plural technologies: a new way to find common ground where the headlines show only deadlock.
Most consultations ask what people accept or oppose. We built a process that asks a different question: once we understand each other's positions, what might we move forward on together? Read our full report here.
The engaged public
Highly informed, actively involved residents — both opponents and supporters of density, drawn from eight Sydney LGAs. The people who show up to fight over developments. They helped us map the arguments first.
The representative public
Recruited to reflect the same neighbourhoods. They tested whether the engaged public's bridging conditions held with everyday Sydneysiders. 58 returned for a fourth session.
Pol.is
Mapping the landscape
An open-source platform that clusters opinion, and then surfaces the statements that cross the divide it finds. Popularity and bridging are different measures, and it reports the second one.
Quadratic voting
Pricing intensity
Participants spend a limited budget of voice credits across priorities; each extra vote on one item costs quadratically more. Forces genuine trade-offs, revealing what people actually value most.
Stanford Online Deliberation
Testing against lived experience
Structured small-group video conversations with an automated moderator. Turns aggregate signals into human specifics — clarifying ambiguity, surfacing local context, letting quieter voices speak.
Baseline → endline
Measuring movement
Matched surveys before and after each cohort's process, to see whether structured deliberation shifts positions, perceptions of the other side, or both.
Three findings
What we learned when we actually asked.
Two publics. Four sessions. 392 statements, 24,913 votes. Here's what emerged.
The loudest objections turned out to be negotiable.
75% of height sceptics back a halt to massive high-rise; 81% of the same cluster supports high-rise in certain areas with affordability attached. Nine in ten engaged opposers would accept a development they dislike if their community had real power over what gets built—a trade the representative public ratified across its own divide. The pattern repeated across both publics: objections that look absolute turn out to have terms.
The people who fight hardest agree on a long list of specifics.
Public transport, protected open space, homes essential workers can afford, a mix of housing types, design quality, schools and clinics attended to early, consultation moved to the strategic planning stage, affordability defined at 30% of income and lasting permanently, an expanded role for public housing. What divides them is much shorter: how high to build, whether supply delivers affordability, and whether infrastructure comes first or alongside.
The representative public arrived at the same priorities, and then some.
A demographically representative group of 150 Sydneysiders put transport first and green space second on their own ballot, matching the engaged top three sight unseen. The agreements ran further: developers answerable for building standards drew 99% agreement, the program's highest, and housing aimed at essential workers, young people and first-home buyers carried both sides of this public's own divide. Their small groups then gave the demands specificity: green space held as a requirement, since once it's lost it can't be added back; and with public transport, more than new lines, what they want is frequency and reliability on the existing network—its current performance read as the primary test of the density promise.
Six conditions
Density done well, in Sydneysiders' own words.
01 · Transport
Transport that actually turns up.
Better public transport and local amenities carried both camps almost equally. It took first place on the quadratic vote in both publics, and in the small groups the primary demand turned out to be frequency and reliability on the network already there, rather than new lines.
“It just needs to be continually flowing so that the moment I step out, I have a choice.”
02 · Green space
Green space as a condition, not an amenity.
Guaranteeing parks and open space as density rises carried both camps. Green space came second on the representative ballot and third on the engaged — but in both, it drew more high-intensity votes than transport, the option ranked above it.
Once green space is lost to development, participants argued independently in different rooms, it cannot be recovered.
03 · Accountability
Accountability for what developers build.
Holding developers accountable for dodgy building standards drew the highest agreement of any statement in the program, and it was near-unanimous on both sides. Developers were never on the agenda for our small group discussions, but participants had a lot to say about it, anyway.
Developers who “claim bankruptcy and just disappear” once settlement completes. The builder's mistake becomes the owner's bill.
04 · Affordability
Affordability aimed at the people being priced out.
Participants across publics agree on who affordability is for: essential workers, young people, first-home buyers. In their small group discussions, the engaged public refined what affordability means: 30% of household income, set against the discount-off-market definition current incentive schemes use; lasting permanently; and delivered in part through an expanded role for public housing.
In the engaged cohort, participants across the divide agreed: affordability solutions that rest on private goodwill tend not to last.
05 · Built form
Built form that steps down.
High-rises on main roads with low-rise on backstreets was one of three statements to cross the deepest divide in the program, alongside high density near existing stations and high-rise in certain areas with affordable housing attached. Height sceptics rejected massive high-rise outright.
Asked where density already works, the rooms named places well served by public transport. The failures they named were judged by the same measure—places where homes went up and the transport never came.
06 · Consultation
Consultation settled early, settled once.
Both camps want consultation moved to the strategic stage, for opposite reasons: supporters so individual developments need not be fought one at a time, sceptics so residents can still shape what gets built. Participants in the engaged camp also converged on processes with randomly selected, demographically representative groups.
“A tick box exercise.” Consultation, as it stands, arrives after the decisions.
I think in general people aren't opposed to development itself, they are opposed to development that is done without appropriate planning and infrastructure to go alongside it.Representative public participant · endline survey
The one real divide
Height splits the room. Until you give it a reason.
Asked to reject high-rise outright, 75% of the sceptic cluster agreed. Every statement below runs the other way — agreeing means accepting high-rise. Watch how far the sceptics travel as the condition attached to it gets more concrete.
↓ The statement being voted on · agreeing means accepting high-rise
NIMBYs/Boomers who complain about high rises need to accept we are in a growing city.
↓ Attach a condition and watch the sceptic bar climb
Sceptics reject high-rise when it comes unconditional. They backed no to massive high-rise buildings, and halting it because Sydney is becoming a concrete jungle. Tied to a place, a station, or a promise about affordability, most of them accept it.
Before → after
Did deliberation move people?
Positions themselves barely shifted. What moved most was how each side saw the other.
93%
of the representative public found more common ground than they expected.
The same share felt able to genuinely express their views, and 89% agreed a process like this would be a good way to shape housing policy.
Every item
of perception rose in the engaged public.
Feeling understood started as the survey's lowest item and was the only one to move up for some and down for none. Understanding of others rose alongside it, as did the sense that the other side is open to compromise.
Exploratory analysis
Uncommon ground: where the camp stops predicting the vote.
Common ground is where the camps agree. Uncommon ground is where each camp disagrees with itself, in similar measure, and a voter's camp stops predicting their vote. This is a ground where alliances can cut across the divide in surprising ways, and a new majority could plausibly form, drawn from both sides at once. Eight of the engaged conversation's 138 statements qualify, and fifteen of the representative's 254 — six per cent of each.
The engaged public asks how a promise is made to hold
Sceptics / supporters
Six of the eight qualifying statements ask for a commitment that does not rest on trust. They want permanence, guarantees, transparency, certification. While the engaged divide runs on whether supply delivers affordability and on how high to build, these step around it entirely, asking for promises that hold.
- 44/50
I’d accept more density if government tracked and published whether schools, GPs and traffic are keeping up before approving more developmentE-s11
- 40/42
I’d accept new development if I could see exactly where developer contributions went — a public dashboard of what was funded, where and whenE-s7
- 50/36
Benefit afforded to the community directly, rather than a fund to Council to deliberate over, and reliance on lobbyingE-s51
- 40/42
I would accept more housing on my street if appropriate provision of schools, GP clinics and transport were guaranteedE-s27
- 60/58
I would accept more development if there were permanently affordable homes for locals and better local shops and amenitiesE-s26
- 57/45
Quality homes, no private certifiers, system changeE-s113
The representative public argues about how far affordability can reach
High-rise sceptics / supporters
Eleven of the fifteen sit on affordability, probing both how far it can be taken and the arguments its own advocates will have to have among themselves.
- 59/59
Everyone has somewhere to liveR-s27
- 54/64
Unhoused people should be prioritised, particularly in Parramatta and Sydney CBDR-s66
- 47/38
Not just in Parramatta and CBD, but all areasR-s108
- 48/56
Everybody should be able to buy one house before anybody else can buy their secondR-s101
- 63/55
Affordable housing makes housing affordable for everyoneR-s31
- 61/61
Housing should only count as affordable if it costs no more than 30% of a household’s incomeR-s3
- 65/57
The government should give developers incentives if housing is sold to citizens who plan to live in the houseR-s142
- 59/52
Builders need incentives to build, or they won’t. Taxing mum and dad investors won’t workR-s211
- 47/41
Builders and developers face so many approvals, fees and delays that many affordable projects never get startedR-s9
- 57/58
Developers can build a variety of apartments for the various price brackets. How will this help the next group of buyersR-s200
- 53/58
The main opponents to new affordable housing are boomers who already own homesR-s79