Planning data

Australian planning data, read by suburb

We read each state's own published planning data to build 1,264 suburb pages. These pages answer the questions that need more than one suburb to answer.

Every suburb page on this site reports what is mapped over that one suburb: its council and planning instrument, its residential zones, its overlays, its hazard mapping, and the date that data was read. Useful if you know where you are buying. Useless for the questions that compare — which suburbs need a second consent authority before anyone can build, which are governed by two rulebooks at once, which states publish a height limit as map data at all.

Those answers are in the same records, so they are published here. Each page below is computed from the suburb records when the site is built, which means no figure on it is typed and none of them can drift from the data underneath. Each one also states its own scope: these pages describe the 1,264 suburbs published on this site across 7 states and territories, not every suburb in Australia.

What this is not: advice about a particular property. Mapped data describes a suburb. The instrument, the zone and every control are confirmed at an address before anything is designed or priced, and the suburb pages say so individually.

Mine subsidence districts by suburb

Which Australian suburbs sit inside a declared mine subsidence district, where building work can need Subsidence Advisory NSW consent as well as the council's.

Suburbs with two planning instruments

Australian suburbs where more than one planning instrument applies, so which rulebook governs a block has to be established before any control is read from it.

Where height and FSR are mapped

How often a minimum lot size, maximum height and floor space ratio are published as map data, state by state — and what an empty search result actually means.

Suburbs with no residential zone

Australian suburbs where the mapped zoning is environmental, rural or infrastructure rather than residential, and what that changes for building a house.

Acid sulfate soils by suburb

Which Australian suburbs have acid sulfate soils mapped over them, why excavation depth is the trigger, and where the cost of managing them actually sits.

Heritage conservation areas by suburb

Which Australian suburbs carry a heritage conservation area, how an area control differs from a listed item, and what it usually changes about a new house.

Archaeological heritage items by suburb

Which Australian suburbs carry an archaeological heritage item, what that category protects, and why it is found by excavation rather than by looking.

Bushfire-prone land by suburb

How much bushfire-prone land is mapped in each Australian state, the different class names each state uses, and what the mapping actually requires of a build.

Minimum lot size bands by suburb

Mapped minimum lot size bands across Australian suburbs, what the control actually governs, and why half the suburbs that have one have more than one band.

Growth areas and precinct plans

Australian suburbs where a state-led growth instrument applies: Queensland PDAs, the Victorian GAIC, WA structure plans and NSW precinct policies.

Planning instruments by council

Which planning instrument governs each Australian council area, and why searching under the council name often finds the wrong document.

Land reserved for public acquisition

Which Australian suburbs contain land reserved for future public acquisition, what each reservation is for, and why the zone code in the label matters.

Landslip hazard bands by suburb

Which Australian suburbs have a landslip hazard band mapped, what the bands mean, and why a geotechnical report comes before the design rather than after it.

Flood and inundation overlays by suburb

Which Australian suburbs carry a flood or inundation overlay, the many different names states give the same hazard, and how coastal differs from riverine.

Suburbs with a named watercourse

Which Australian suburbs record a named watercourse, why the count is a floor rather than a total, and why a creek name is a poor way to search.

Environmental Audit Overlay by suburb

Which Australian suburbs carry an Environmental Audit Overlay, what it means for potentially contaminated land, and why it is checked before contracts.

Erosion hazard mapping by suburb

Which Australian suburbs carry erosion hazard mapping, the different names three states give it, and why it decides where a house may sit.

Computed from this site's published suburb records when the page was built, as at 2 October 2026. Source: the ACT — ACTmapi (ACT Government) (CC BY 4.0); New South Wales — NSW ePlanning Spatial Viewer (CC BY 4.0); Queensland — Queensland Government open spatial data + individual councils (CC BY 4.0); South Australia — Planning and Design Code via SAPPA (PlanSA) (CC BY 4.0); Tasmania — theLIST (Land Information System Tasmania) (CC BY 3.0 AU); Victoria — Vicmap Planning (DTP Victoria) (CC BY 4.0); Western Australia — Landgate SLIP (CC BY 4.0). Facts are suburb-level: they describe what is mapped in a suburb, not what applies to an individual property.

The dataset itself

Everything above is computed from one table. It is published here as a file, because a figure you cannot open is a figure you have to take on trust.

Download the dataset (CSV, 1,264 suburbs)

One row per published suburb, twenty columns: council, planning instrument, zone, overlay families, bushfire mapping and its categories, heritage feature count, area, ABS SAL code, and the date the data was read — plus the source and licence for that row's state.

What is in it, and what is deliberately not

It covers the 1,264 suburbs published on this site, not every suburb in Australia. Records that do not pass our publishing test — no sourced zone, no verified council or planning instrument — are withheld from the file for the same reason their pages are withheld. An empty cell means we did not read that field; a 0 or a no means we read it and found nothing. Those are different claims and the file keeps them apart.

Licence and how to cite it

The underlying data is published by each state under Creative Commons Attribution — CC BY 4.0 in every jurisdiction except Tasmania, which is CC BY 3.0 AU. This compilation is offered on the same terms. Use it, republish it, recompute it; keep the attribution.

Cite as: Better Builds, Australian residential planning constraints by suburb, 2026. Derived from state planning data published under CC BY; see the source column.

If you are writing about this and want a cut we have not published — a single state, a single overlay family, the withheld records and why they were withheld — ask us. The records exist; the pages are only the questions we thought to ask of them.

Browse suburbs by state