For those who live outside of Sydney and aren't familiar with this, the TLDR is that the NSW government is changing state planning laws to generally allow up to six storey apartment developments within 400 a metre radius of train stations, overriding current local government restrictions, such as heritage protections.

Another plank of its planning reforms is designed to encourage the construction of low and mid-rise housing.

Land located less than an 800-metre walk from "town centres", as well as heavy, metro and light rail stations, is set to be rezoned for increased density.

The changes announced in December have pitted NIMBYs (not in my backyard) against YIMBYs (yes in my backyard).

From my experience of this issue on social media, there's been an awful lot of polarised debate about the merits or otherwise of increased density for housing supply, costs and increased urban amenity.

However, there seems to have been far less discussion around what types of medium to high density development should take place — quality of construction (there is a beefed up Building Commissioner in NSW meant to address some of these concerns), design/aesthetics, pedestrian/road amenity, etc…