‘‘So Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s - as is often claimed in the storybook idea - is a place of low working hours, easy-going with an outdoor life, very casual, with backyard barbies and that sort of thing,’’ he said. ‘‘By the end of the nineties - and in the outer suburbs certainly - Australia is an indoor, air-conditioned, with workaholics [type of place]." Eight years ago, Professor Hall was a local councillor, town planning professor and an author in England. In 2010, he wrote The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard and captured the imagination of planners Australia-wide, winning a Planning Institute of Australia award. He said the problem for Brisbane was not so much the shift towards having smaller blocks of land, but instead covering a large part of blocks - regardless of their size - with very large houses.

‘‘So what you see in the outer suburbs - it is not just inner-suburb infill type of thing - if you go to the outer suburbs - anywhere called ‘Lakes’, you get these massive houses, McMansions.’’ Mr Hall said the problem was very obvious from the air. ‘‘If you look at any new Australian suburb. It is dramatic. It jumps out at you. Up until the 1980s it is all one thing - it is all trees,’’ he said. ‘‘By the end of the 1990s, it is all roof to roof.’’ He said any city needed backyards and Brisbane was no different.

‘‘Firstly, green space around buildings and housing is very important, it has a definite function,’’ Professor Hall said. He said backyards absorbed stormwater, cooled homes and increased biodiversity. ‘‘So it has a very important role for the community as a whole and that is all in addition to all the recreational advantages and also the outlook from houses.’’ The solution was residents must ask local councils to demand that small blocks of land were not ‘‘covered’’ by large homes, he argued. Professor Hall said only 50 per cent of a block should be covered by a house and the people of Brisbane should be debating the issue.

Brisbane City Council’s Neighbourhood Planning and Development Assessment committee chairwoman Cr Amanda Cooper said Brisbane City Council was aware of the changing face of Brisbane’s homes. She said Brisbane’s town planning controls would restrict the size of homes on small lots and developers of smaller lots would be required to show that the new house would occupy no more than 60 per cent of the block. On the smaller blocks (300 to 400 square metres) proposed in the draft City Plan, 100 square metres must be open space. ‘‘So if a new lot was 7.5 metres wide and over 25 metres deep, the backyard would be at least 45 square metres,’’ Cr Cooper said. The rest of the open space would include a 1.5 metre strip down both sides of the block, with the front yard making up 100 sqm.

Cr Cooper said she believed Brisbane City Council had got the mix of building and green space right. “This is about providing housing choice including encouraging first home buyers into the market as well as offering certainty to residents so they know what can go where,’’ she said. ‘‘That choice also includes backyards and it is up to the community as to what type of backyard suits them.’’ Cr Cooper said Brisbane City Council’s research showed growing demand for housing for singles and couples. “The recent Census showed that single person and couple households account for a growing proportion of our community, with household members trending towards being older," she said.

‘‘Rather than ignore these issues, Brisbane’s draft new City Plan addresses them by encouraging greater housing options, many of which build upon successful housing types already occurring across the city - like on lots less than 450 square metres and in single unit dwellings.” This week, a national banking finance report, the Bankwest Financial Indicator Series, revealed that two in five Australian home approvals over the past 12 months were for medium density homes. It said two-thirds of local councils had seen an increase in medium-density housing in the past 12 months. That is a seven per cent jump from five years ago, when 31 per cent of home approvals were for medium density housing, which includes units, townhouses and semi-detached houses. Bankwest Retail Chief Executive, Vittoria Shortt said Australians were turning away from the traditional suburban home.

"Australia’s high property prices have made the Australian dream of a stand-alone house in the suburbs harder to achieve,’’ she said. ‘‘People are increasingly choosing medium density housing as a more affordable alternative.” The case in Queensland is slightly different to other states, according to this Bankwest study. Queensland is slower to take up the national trend, except in inner-city Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, where medium density home make up the largest proportion of new housing approvals. In Brisbane overall, at the time of the 2011 census, 22 per cent of the city’s homes were in medium density zones, which is below the average for other capital cities (28 per cent).