Housing should be assessed as infrastructure, say researchers

In a speech to the Australian Smart Cities and Infrastructure Conference in April, the Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation, Hon Angus Taylor MP, proposed the Australian Government act more like an investor when funding state and territory infrastructure projects, focusing on projects that deliver a commercial return.

Recent AHURI research has reflected that the delivery of housing policy would benefit by being measured along similar lines to infrastructure, with researchers challenging that as 'the productivity arguments for infrastructure have to be made at metropolitan scales, then it makes little sense not to ask equivalent questions about the housing system, indeed to assess both sectors together. Housing can make a strong case to be seen as essential economic infrastructure, aside from its other social and environmental features.'

Housing can make a strong case to be seen as essential economic infrastructure

As a consequence, it is important to isolate and measure housing's impact on productivity. For example, there are very real but subtle geographical differences in housing within a city that may affect productivity, as 'growth processes in sparse rural markets within an Australian state are unlikely to function in the same ways as in inner capital city cores, or indeed outer suburbs'.

In addition there are different individual aspects of housing that can affect its impact on the productivity of a regional or metropolitan economy, including housing processes (design, sales, production); quality characteristics (size, type, location, neighbourhood attributes); and market outcomes (prices, rents, turnover, vacancies).

The researchers conclude that 'a better understanding of the relationships between economic growth and housing remains a major priority given our poor understanding of the relationships.'