More Homes, Less Money? Exploring Land as Subsidy for Non-Speculative Housing in Melbourne
Researcher
Dr Jacqui Alexander & Dr Cameron Murray
Published
6 October 2026
Funding
Design Strategy Grant
Preface
This paper emerges from an ongoing program of research led by Dr Jacqui Alexander investigating the relationship between housing inequality, land ownership and the spatial production of cities. Building on her doctoral research into the financialisation of housing through digital platforms, the work began as a research-led Masters of Architecture design studio at Monash University entitled Stronger Together: Housing as a Common Good. Rather than treating housing design as an isolated architectural problem, the studio expanded the role of the architect to include the redesign of the institutional, economic and governance frameworks through which housing is produced. Students developed and tested a methodology for identifying, mapping and categorising land insulated from speculative market logics within the City of Yarra, before investigating how alternative tenure and ownership models might operate across distributed categories of sites. This approach established a framework for understanding the reciprocal relationship between economic systems and the spatial forms they produce.
The methodology was subsequently expanded through a second iteration of the studio at Monash Architecture in collaboration with Professor Dana Cuff (CityLAB) and Pia Socias (2024), and later developed through an Alastair Swayn Foundation Design Strategy Grant in collaboration with housing economist Dr Cameron Murray. The research presented in this paper extends that investigation through metropolitan-scale spatial and economic analysis, asking how institutional land portfolios might support a parallel, non-speculative housing sector across Melbourne at a critical time when the city’s 44 public housing towers are earmarked for demolition.
Published alongside the exhibition Who Owns the City? (3553 Gallery, Melbourne, 2026) curated by Alexander in collaboration with Monash Architecture students, this paper combines architectural and economic methods tested across teaching, research and practice. It maps the diverse institutional land portfolios that already exist outside conventional market logics and examines the governance, financial and delivery arrangements required to transform these latent urban resources into permanently affordable housing.
Abstract
Can land that is partially insulated from speculative market dynamics be used to increase the supply of subsidised housing in areas of advantage? This paper argues that it can, if landowners, development partners, and appropriate tenure models are effectively coordinated.
Combining geospatial mapping of institutional, surplus and risk-discounted landholdings across inner Melbourne with economic analysis, the research identifies recurring land conditions that may support housing at reduced or non-market cost. It reframes these land conditions as forms of spatial subsidy that can lower one of the barriers to affordable housing delivery, while demonstrating that land alone is insufficient without appropriate institutional arrangements for governance, finance and delivery.
Through comparative case study analysis, the paper examines how these land conditions are translated into housing outcomes through different forms of coordination, stewardship and risk distribution. It suggests that non-speculative housing is best conceptualised not as a singular model, but as a variety of land arrangements that reduce overall development costs. Together, the mapping and case studies point to the potential for a distributed, portfolio-based system of non-speculative housing operating alongside the private market, but only where appropriate coordination, financing and planning mechanisms are in place.
