{"id":33741,"date":"2025-07-17T21:12:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T11:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=33741"},"modified":"2025-07-17T21:12:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T11:12:45","slug":"urban-design-experts-balance-supply-and-demand-for-city-of-newcastle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2025\/07\/17\/urban-design-experts-balance-supply-and-demand-for-city-of-newcastle\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban design experts balance supply and demand for City of Newcastle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p id=\"isPasted\">Tackling the housing shortage while ensuring quality of life for residents guided the Urban Design Review Panel&#8217;s (UDRP) decision making as they assessed $1.45 billion in developments in Newcastle during the past 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The UDRP completed a total of 67 individual design review sessions in 2024, offering guidance to City of Newcastle staff and applicants on 49 different development proposals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/newcastle.nsw.gov.au\/getmedia\/95c81639-83de-4e03-a45d-2bd9eb17ae36\/The-Store-01-WEB.jpg\" alt=\"The Store development\">The Store development&nbsp;The projects are included in UDRP\u2019s 2024 Annual Report, which will be tabled at next week\u2019s Council meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Report highlights several significant developments, as well as smaller projects that benefited from design advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Proposals reviewed include the DOMA Group&#8217;s $130 million twin-tower luxury apartment complex known as The Store, as well as developments such as a $19.4 million educational establishment on University Drive at Callaghan, a $6.1 million residential building in Hamilton and co-living housing on Denison Street in Newcastle West worth almost $12 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>City of Newcastle&#8217;s Executive Director Planning and Environment Michelle Bisson said the UDRP plays a vital role in improving the design quality of new developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The panel provides independent, impartial, and expert advice to City of Newcastle and applicants about the quality of the urban design and amenity of development proposals and strategic design projects,&#8221; Ms Bisson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The increase in demand for their services has seen the panel increase to seven members, plus the Chairperson, which has helped to cover the large number of applications.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The collective experience of the UDRP members consistently grounds the advice in real-world experience, while balancing the practicalities and challenges of property development and construction.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/newcastle.nsw.gov.au\/getmedia\/478e55f2-fdb0-4586-8f55-6daba6dbaea5\/East-End-WEB.jpg\" alt=\"East End development\">East End developmentChairperson Dr Philip Pollard said the panel enjoys providing input into smaller projects as much as high-profile applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We continue to see the face of Newcastle change and develop in an exciting manner, but we&#8217;re mindful of the wonderful Indigenous and colonial heritage we&#8217;ve inherited,&#8221; Dr Pollard said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re delighted to see an increase of instances where applicants are presenting designs prior to the Development Application stage, proving applicants value of our advice.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The UDRP also acts as the Design Integrity Panel for some developments in Newcastle to ensure their quality and original detail is maintained or improved through to construction completion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2024, the UDRP oversaw progress on 17 projects such as the Dairy Farmers Towers in Newcastle West, a 16-dwelling project on Church Street in Mayfield and Stages 3 and 4 of the Hunter Street development, part of the East End project by Iris Capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tackling the housing shortage while ensuring quality of life for residents guided the Urban Design Review Panel&#8217;s (UDRP) decision making as they assessed $1.45 billion in developments in Newcastle during the past 12 months. The UDRP completed a total of 67 individual design review sessions in 2024, offering guidance to City of Newcastle staff and &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2025\/07\/17\/urban-design-experts-balance-supply-and-demand-for-city-of-newcastle\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Urban design experts balance supply and demand for City of Newcastle&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33742,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33741\/revisions\/33742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}