For much of the twentieth century, the terrace house was something Sydney wanted to be rid of. Crowded, poorly lit, and associated in the popular imagination with inner-city poverty, rows of Victorian terraces were regularly pencilled in for demolition as the city chased a suburban dream of quarter-acre blocks and detached homes. What saved many of them was not sentiment but the famous green bans of the early 1970s, when the Builders Labourers Federation under Jack Mundey refused to work on demolition sites across inner Sydney.
Now, in a reversal that would have surprised those picket lines, the terrace is being actively promoted by the NSW government as part of the solution to the city's housing crisis.
The Pattern Book and the Push for Quiet Density
The terrace is one of four low-rise designs released in the NSW government's Housing Pattern Book, a planning tool intended to streamline approvals and speed up delivery of medium-density homes. The other types are semis, row homes, and manor homes. All are framed around the concept of "gentle density": more dwellings per block, without the scale or visual disruption of apartment towers.
Architect Shaun Carter, whose firm CarterWilliamson designed the Terrace 01 model for the pattern book, says the form has always had a quiet logic to it. "It's repeatable, rowable, will go up and down slopes and will provide reasonable amenity," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. The key innovation in the modern version is flipping the traditional floor plan, placing services in the centre and connecting the kitchen and dining areas to the rear garden, rather than relegating them to a cold back annex.
Paulo Macchia, director of design governance at Government Architect NSW, argues that the terrace's old reputation as poor housing was largely a product of neighbourhood decline over time, not a flaw in the form itself. "We can maintain the character of the existing neighbourhoods while some sites get developed," he said. "If we develop five per cent of the street, it's still the place people know and love."
The Economic Case Is Getting Harder to Dismiss
The planning conversation has gained fresh momentum from a recent Grattan Institute report, co-authored by economist Brendan Coates, which found that three-storey townhouses represent the most commercially feasible density option in Sydney's established suburbs. Coates described gentle density as "the missing piece in the puzzle", while also finding that NSW planning reforms had not yet permitted enough of this housing type to make a meaningful dent in supply.
The numbers on construction costs add weight to that argument. Terraces are not subject to the same regulations as high-rise buildings, making them substantially cheaper to build than apartments. For developers, that lower cost base can make projects viable on sites where a tower would not stack up financially.
Analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics building approvals data also shows NSW has been trailing Victoria in approvals for semi-detached dwellings, a gap that points to a planning environment that has historically favoured either freestanding houses or large apartment blocks, with relatively little in between.
Light, Orientation, and the Limits of Revival
Paddington-based architect Madeleine Blanchfield is enthusiastic about terrace living but clear-eyed about its constraints. Her practice sits in what she calls "terrace central", and she values the human scale and street engagement the form creates. "Everyone is living on the street. You have the ability to have trees on the street and eyes on the street," she said. The challenge, she adds, is orientation. "Terraces work when they are on a north-facing flat block but it is not going to work on a south-facing steep block."
Studio Johnston director Conrad Johnston, whose firm contributed the Manor House design to the pattern book, says modern design has largely solved the light problem. Central courtyards and skylights now draw daylight into spaces that were once perpetually dim. Architect Eva-Marie Prineas from Studio Prineas, who renovated and lived in a Victorian terrace with her family before recently moving out, makes a different but equally persuasive point about liveability. "When we moved into our terrace after living in an apartment, we loved having a garden. We had grass, we had chickens, we had fruit trees," she said. "Having a grounded garden is a completely different experience from apartment living."
A Reasonable Middle Ground, With Caveats
The enthusiasm for terraces as a density solution deserves a measured response. From a fiscal standpoint, any planning reform that reduces reliance on expensive planning processes, lowers construction costs, and adds housing supply without requiring large infrastructure upgrades is worth taking seriously. The ABS building approvals data suggests NSW has room to catch up to Victoria, and the pattern book is a practical, market-informed tool for doing so.
Critics from the progressive side of the debate make a legitimate point, though: gentle density, however well-designed, is not a substitute for bold supply reform in high-demand areas. Terraces and townhouses built in low-pressure suburbs will not solve affordability in places like the Eastern Suburbs or the Lower North Shore. The NSW Department of Planning faces pressure from multiple directions, and no single housing typology is a silver bullet.
What the terrace revival does offer is a pragmatic, incremental path forward, one that respects existing neighbourhood character while creating more homes than the detached model can deliver. Whether governments have the political will to approve enough of them at sufficient scale is the question that matters most. The design problems have largely been solved. The policy ones are another matter.