When the neighbour is 28 storeys: Gordon’s new height, and the Edgecliff–Woollahra rezoning

Two State housing projects are redrawing the sky next to family houses DC already works on.

In Ku-ring-gai, the November 2025 station-precinct SEPP replaced the first Transport Oriented Development controls around Gordon, Killara, Lindfield and Roseville. In the Gordon town centre, a nominated key site can now go to 109 metres — if the site is large enough and the scheme delivers non-residential floor space and either community floor area or affordable housing. The public description of the package is buildings of 6–24 storeys in the centres, and up to 28 storeys on that Gordon key site. Twenty-eight storeys is the figure people convert as “about 83 metres” of habitable building. The legal ceiling on the mapped key site is higher.

In Woollahra, the State is preparing a rezoning for up to 10,000 homes within about 400 m of Edgecliff station and 800 m of a new Woollahra station. Construction of the station is talked about from 2027 to 2029. The masterplan is expected on exhibition in late 2026. Council’s own alternative, released in August 2026, models closer to 3,600 dwellings and argues that 10,000 homes would mean in the order of eighty mid-to-high towers. Neither number is law until the instrument is made. Both are live for anyone with a courtyard in Double Bay, Rose Bay, Woollahra or Vaucluse.

This post is about the house that does not get taller — and the garden that now sits in a different shadow.

Gordon: the garden suburb meets a town-centre height

Gordon station was always a centre. The change is the height of what can sit on the Pacific Highway sites and how fast that height steps down into the streets behind.

The November 2025 SEPP:

• drops some of the old KLEP height and FSR caps on mapped “Area 2” and “Area 6” land

• writes a special clause for Gordon Town Centre (Area 3 on the Key Sites Map): height up to 109 m, FSR up to 7.5:1, but only on a site of at least 7,700 m², with non-residential floor space at 1:1 FSR, plus either 3,000 m² of community / public-administration floor space or a set share of affordable housing

• adjusts heights on other Gordon parcels (Carlotta Avenue, Dumaresq Street, 810 and 924 Pacific Highway, rail corridor land)

The State’s summary of the whole four-station package is capacity for about 24,700 homes, roughly 3,300 more than the first TOD controls, with Gordon and Lindfield taking the bulk. Heritage conservation areas were part of the political deal. Heritage items and the low-rise streets behind the highway still exist. The interface is the problem.

A house on a Gordon or West Pymble street that backed onto sky now backs onto a wall. Winter sun on a north-facing courtyard can disappear behind a podium. A first-floor living room that looked at trees now looks at bedrooms. Wind at the base of a 20-storey form is a landscape problem as much as an urban-design one — screens die, umbrellas lift, people stop using the courtyard.

Council’s dual-occupancy and landscaped-area rules still apply on the lots that stay R2. They do not make the new neighbour shorter.

Edgecliff and the proposed Woollahra station: the other harbour edge

Woollahra station was started in the 1970s and never finished. Transport for NSW is designing a station at Edgecliff Road. The housing sits on the back of that project: State-led rezoning, not a Council LEP amendment. The Planning Portal lists the precinct as pre-exhibition, with an expected late-2026 show. About 19% of the Woollahra LGA sits inside the study area. Council says a large share of that land is already in heritage conservation areas.

Until the maps are exhibited, no one can say which Vaucluse, Rose Bay, Darling Point or Woollahra courtyard is in the 400 m or the 800 m. What can be said:

• Edgecliff already has height. The change is how far that height walks up the hill and along New South Head Road.

• A new station at Woollahra puts mid-rise and high-rise logic onto streets of terrace gardens and sandstone walls.

• Affordable housing is promised as a slice (figures around 10% have been used in public material). The rest will be priced as this market prices apartments.

• Council’s August 2026 counter-model is the document to read against the State masterplan when both are on the table.

For DC’s lighting and courtyard work the issue is not the station entrance. It is the lot that stays a house when the lot behind it does not.

What a mid-rise or high-rise neighbour does to a single-house courtyard

Winter sun.A 9.5 m dual occ to the north is one problem. A 24-storey form is another. Solar diagrams in the DA will show living-room glass. They often underplay the courtyard floor at 9 am in July. If you cannot sit in the garden until October, the garden has failed even if the house still gets its ADG sun.

Overlooking.Podium apartments look down. Screening at 1.8 m on your fence does not hide a fourth-floor balcony. Landscape answers that with canopy, not with a higher fence Council will refuse on the street.

Wind and use.Towers pull air down the face. A courtyard that was still now needs a planted windbreak and a heavier table. Species choice changes.

Street trees and deep soil on the new site.Every extra basement under the neighbour is a street tree that cannot grow to the size the verge needs. The Tree Canopy Guide and local deep-soil clauses still apply to the apartment DA. They are the only leverage the single house has on the other side of the fence.

Construction years.A station plus a precinct is not a six-month build. Hours, sediment, tree fencing and out-of-hours concrete are the last blog. Multiply them by a decade of staged towers.

Value and pressure on the remaining house.Once the map is made, the family lot is either a hold-out garden or the next amalgamation. Landscape work on a hold-out has to assume the neighbour is permanent.

How landscape design answers it — the DC drawing

We cannot lower the SEPP height. We can make the courtyard still work.

Keep the tree that makes the ceiling.A retained canopy in the front or rear setback is the only thing that sits in the same plane as a fourth-storey balcony. Protection fencing goes up before their demolition, not after. If the tree is on the boundary, both owners are in the arborist report.

Put deep soil on the sunny side.If the new building is north, the planting that has to live is on the north edge of your courtyard — the last strip that still gets winter light. Do not spend the deep-soil budget on the permanently shaded side and then wonder why the screen dies.

Screen in layers, not one hedge.A single Photinia against a 20-storey face looks like a hedge against a cliff. Stagger heights: a small tree, a tall shrub, a climber on the fence. Accept that the upper floors will still see the courtyard. Design so they see garden, not a table.

Light the courtyard for night use when the day is gone.If winter sun is lost, evening use matters more. Warm path light, one uplight in the retained tree, no flood toward the new glass. Separate circuits so the everyday layer can run without lighting their bedrooms.

Do not raise the fence first.An 1800 mm masonry wall is still the right privacy move at ground level. It does nothing about the balcony. Get owner’s consent, keep the footing out of their structural roots, and spend the rest of the budget on canopy.

On the apartment side of the fence — if DC is asked to landscape the new building — the job is the opposite: deep soil at the street, trees that will actually reach the storey that overlooks the house next door, and lighting that does not turn the surviving cottage into a stage.

What to do this year

Gordon / West PymbleLook up the lot on the Height of Buildings map and the Key Sites map as amended in November 2025. 109 m is not every Gordon street. It is a nominated centre site with conditions. The streets behind still need the dual-occ and tree posts on this site. If a DA is notified, read the solar diagrams at courtyard level and the landscape plan for the podium.

Edgecliff / Woollahra / Vaucluse / Rose BayWatch the Planning Portal precinct page. Exhibition is expected late 2026. Council’s 3,600-dwelling alternative is the comparison document. Submissions on solar access, heritage gardens, street trees and wind will only count if they are tied to a drawing, not to a general objection to height.

Either placeIf you are rebuilding a courtyard now, design it for the neighbour that the map allows, not the neighbour who is there today. A garden that only works while the sky is empty will not survive the first occupation certificate on the other side of the fence.

A courtyard on the edge of a new height map?DC works in Gordon and West Pymble, and in the harbour suburbs around Vaucluse, Rose Bay and Woollahra. Bring the height map and the survey to the first meeting. The planting has to work after the neighbour is built, not only in the photos taken this spring.