Governing the Compact City: The Challenges of Apartment Living in Sydney

Abstract

This paper addresses the governance of strata title developments, in the context of current Australian metropolitan planning strategies promoting increased urban consolidation. It argues that the current focus on higher density development is vulnerable to challenges relating to regulation, representation and termination in strata developments. The governance of strata schemes is found to take the form of ‗nodal‘ governance based on market principles, where stakeholders do not have equal rights to participate, and the market is not free, but is regulated by a legislative structure that has inevitably lagged behind developments driven by the market. Principal among these is the increase in the size and complexity of strata schemes, which has put pressure on legislative arrangements originally designed for small developments. These problems are likely to escalate as an increasing proportion of the population move into strata.