Planning Minister Mick Gentleman sees fewer car parks for Canberra's flats of the future

Mick Gentleman said improvements to public transport will allow the planning authority to approve plans for buildings with vastly reduced car parks.

"But you need to have to have the opportunity for the transport corridor to be there," Mr Gentleman said.

"You need to provide the transport so that people take the opportunity."

Chief Planner Ben Ponton said a reduced demand for car parking would also help developers deliver more affordable housing, avoiding the need to build expensive basements.

"You start to see now, on the Northbourne Avenue corridor, where you might get a car parking space but it's optional to buy the other if you want it," Mr Ponton said.

"So developers and residents are already starting to think about this in terms of what's important to them."

Mr Gentleman was confident developers would adapt to market interest in a car-free lifestyle, enabled by forthcoming outcomes-based changes to the planning system.

"Developers will change depending on the want, the expectation of those people purchasing and how they want to live, and we need to make sure the settings are right to allow that to occur," he said.

The Legislative Assembly is currently considering the government's contentious planning bill, which followed a three-year review and would replace the current system based on strict planning rules.

Mr Ponton agreed the planning authority would be able, under the new system, to consider and approve an application to build a hotel without car parking, because its proponent could demonstrate most guests would not arrive by car.

The same plans would presently fail to meet the rules requiring car parking, meaning the proponent could face the steep cost of an additional basement space.

The system would also allow the planning authority to consider and approve plans for a block of flats on an identified transport corridor with a reduced number of car parks.

Technical guidelines remain in the proposed planning system, which include parking minimums in line with current rules.

Proponents would need to justify to the planning authority why they have not met those minimums in the outcomes-based system.

Mr Gentleman said these changes would allow the government to approach estate development plans different in the future.

"Will we need things like garages and hardstand parking? I think if you can get really good transport options out of this, then we can allow much more freedom of movement in the city and provide the opportunities for those people to get around in a different way," he said.

Light rail would likely remain an important high-volume transport service for travel between town centres, linking in with bus, carshare and rideshare networks, the Planning Minister said.

Mr Gentleman said value uplift helped pay for light rail, which meant it was harder to build in greenfield areas, even when corridors were set aside for rail in the future.

A 2021 paper in the Journal of the American Planning Association found almost half of new developments in Buffalo, New York, delivered fewer car parks after minimums were removed, which the authors said suggested the previous requirements were excessive.

"Mixed-use developments introduced 53 [per cent] fewer parking spaces than would have been required by earlier minimum requirements as developers readily took advantage of the newfound possibility to include less off-street parking," the paper said.

A 2020 article in the journal Land Use Policy found 70 per cent of developments in Seattle, Washington, with no parking requirements provided some parking since 2012 planning reforms that ditched car park minimums in central and transit-oriented areas.

The advocacy group Greater Canberra, which has called for changes to planning laws to encourage more housing development within Canberra's footprint, believes the tribunal review process in the ACT planning system will prevent developers delivering fewer car parks in practice.

Greater Canberra's convenor Howard Maclean said community members could take planning decisions to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal if they disagreed with fewer car parks over fears of more street congestion.

"The problem is that people can take that to ACAT and the ACAT member reviewing can say, 'Policies exist for a reason and we're not meant to depart from them'," Mr Maclean said.

"What this means is that even though it's not rules based, there are rules, and they include parking minimums. And parking minimums that we're quite unhappy with."

Mr Gentleman, in an interview with The Canberra Times, said the often-dominant public view of Canberra planning - which put the most emphasis on the importance of detached housing on large blocks in low-density suburbs - was not an accurate representation.

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The Planning Minister said workshops to inform the government's changes to the planning system had revealed important generational differences.

"In all the other workshops, people were basically identifying the box that they wanted to live in," Mr Gentleman said.

"[A workshop] group of young people said this is how we want to live: we want to live close to really good public transport, good transport corridors, close to good amenity, good urban space. And we don't mind the density. We're quite happy about living in a denser area, as long as all these other things are incorporated in that.

"So it was quite an eye-opener for us to see a change in culture of how people want to live in the city."

Mr Gentleman agreed that people looking for detached housing on larger blocks would need to accept this will be built further out from town centres.

Consultation on the government's draft district planning strategies remains open for public comment had been open until February 14, but the deadline has now been extended to March 3.

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