‘Where have all our front gardens gone?’: Sydney’s super-sized driveways eat into yards | Sydney

Sydney’s increasingly super-sized driveways are shrinking suburban front yards as residential redevelopment accelerates, a research paper has found.

The research, which details the loss of private tree space due to knock down-rebuilds, lays bare the gaps in the planning system for minimum private green space standards.

The paper, due to be published in the Cities journal in the coming months, took a sample of 375 homes in Sydney’s suburban ring and found that in areas where older low-density homes have been replaced by modern, larger houses, the average front garden declined by 46% between 2018/19 and after 2023.

Tree canopy coverage was reduced by 62% as older houses were demolished and rebuilt.

In contrast, the footprint of driveways and other artificial surfaces increased by 57% to 46 square metres.

Dr Peter Davies, the lead author and a professor of sustainability at Macquarie University, said the research examined the impact of incremental development on the suburban character that was often “below the political radar”.

“What it starts to represent is in 30 years time we’ll suddenly wake up and go ‘where have all our front gardens gone?’,” he said.

“We’re also starting to see the impact in backyards because the houses move further back”.

Davies said he was surprised by the research findings.

““I sort of knew they [driveways] were getting bigger. I didn’t realise how much bigger,” he said.

The study examined 370 properties across northern and greater western Sydney to quantify the changes in front yard size. It used aerial imagery analysis across 13 suburbs in two local government areas – Ryde city council and Parramatta city council – to quantify the changes in garden area and driveway expansion.

Davies said successive governments had been reluctant to “over-regulate the mum and dad developer” who were knocking down properties and rebuilding.

“There’s a soft approach to this sort of landscaping canopy…. there is no prescription through state instruments that says you need to have a minimum area of garden or area of canopy trees because it’s really important for the community,” he said.

Davies said greater car ownership and households increasingly having multiple vehicles had also contributed to the loss of private green space.

“There is a need to put these cars somewhere. Councils don’t like people parking on the street so they then require bigger driveways,” he said.

The loss of private green space contributes to higher urban heat, reduced biodiversity, and fewer connections with nature, the paper said.

NSW needs to build 377,000 new homes by 2029 under the national housing accord.

The state’s environmental planning policy has no mandate on private tree canopy, the paper said.

“You end up with this hard infrastructure – houses and driveways – that have this incremental dominance of the landscape,” Davies said.

NSW has a target of 40% canopy coverage across greater Sydney by 2035. But Davies said a solution was needed to ensure the target could be met.

“What we know is if you just leave it to existing planning instruments that are discretionary… you’re just going to go backwards,” he said.

“It doesn’t take many years to suddenly wake up and go half of these houses are now new… and the character of my neighbourhood has changed.”