What if family-friendly apartments were both feasible and desirable in the ACT?
By Hannah Neville
As a mother of two young children who has been living in Canberra for the past five years (despite initially expecting to stay for one or two - I hear that’s fairly common), this question feels both personal and current. We live in a three‑bedroom dual occupancy in West Belconnen, a home that has given us so much but which was intended to be a much shorter‑term solution and increasingly falls short of our needs.
I’ve often found myself wondering what the next step in Canberra could look like for us. Could we consider an apartment and make the most of inner‑urban life with much on our doorstep and an active, walkable lifestyle? Would my daughter miss our healthy backyard skink population too greatly? What if the building had a pool - perhaps that could make for a better fit for children who can now more aptly be described as children than toddlers? Or would more space and a move toward the outer edge of the city be the better option, trading daily convenience for more time in nature (and more time in the car)?
I’ve trawled realestate.com looking for child and dog-friendly apartments with room for our visiting families to stay, thoughtful and generous storage, a child-proof work/study environment, family‑friendly facilities and great locations, but for the most part I’ve been left wanting. Conversations on the ground through my work in community engagement at Purdon and with friends at a similar life stage have reinforced my growing belief that the kind of apartment a family like mine might actively choose simply isn’t widely available here. At least, not yet.
From a feasibility perspective, the challenge is well understood. Traditional apartment models often rely on minimising footprints and communal areas to maximise yield. While this is necessary to support viability in Canberra’s current planning and feasibility context, it also tends to work against the qualities families value most - generous internal space, storage, acoustic separation, privacy and amenity that supports daily life with children. Over time, the resulting lack of family-friendly apartments has reinforced a tightly held paradigm: apartments are not suitable for family life, they are a place to live before raising a family or after children have left home. In turn, this perception reinforces the view that there is limited market demand for family‑oriented apartment living and that detached housing remains the end goal for families. That assumption, however, is increasingly being tested.
Housing affordability pressures coupled with evolving lifestyle aspirations are shifting what many households value. Walkability, proximity to schools and services, access to transport and convenience are now central to how families assess liveability. In that context, the idea of family apartment living in the ACT feels less radical and increasingly ripe for exploration, particularly if you weigh this option against the uphill battle of relying on empty nesters to downsize from their much-loved detached home to an apartment to unlock housing supply.
Nationally, more families are already making apartments work - some as a compromise born of affordability challenges but others by choice. Their lived experience offers a valuable evidence base: what works, what doesn’t and how design can better support family life in higher-density settings. There is a strong case for learning from these families before adjusting planning policy settings, ensuring that any future concessions, incentives or controls are grounded in lived experience of what works and what doesn't.
There is no shortage of complexity here. Designing for families in apartments brings genuine challenges, from acoustics and privacy to storage, making room for a family pet and access to the outdoors, which most parents know can absolutely save our often-depleted sanity. But these are not reasons to step back, they are reasons to lean in and get creative. For Canberra in particular, the opportunity is compelling. Encouraging families to consider apartment living supports a more compact urban form, reduces pressure to expand further outwards and helps deliver housing across a broader range of budgets. It can also offer social benefits that are often overlooked, especially in a relatively transient city, where many parents (me included) raise children without extended family nearby. Well-designed apartment living can support stronger local connections, shared facilities and access to locations and amenities that would otherwise be out of reach.
We know the ACT needs to look carefully at how many homes we can deliver and how we improve feasibility arguments but how we enable more families to see apartments as homes worth choosing might just be an important part of the puzzle.
