We should be planning eventually to put much larger residential buildings in beautiful spots near the coast and the lake shore.

Greater Newcastle's population will rise. We don't have a say in that. Our urban area doesn't have a controlled border and we don't issue visas. As the national population increases, more people will move here.

So the choice isn't between a bigger Newcastle and one that's just like what we have now. Rather, we just need to decide how to distribute a larger population.

The state government is already preparing for a huge urban extension between Maitland, Cessnock and Branxton. Stretching as far as 50 kilometres from the coast, it will presumably include a lot of low-density housing. I doubt many people are pleased by the idea.

The other way is to put more people onto land we're already using, which is what Lake Macquarie council is working on, in part to relieve the immediate housing shortage. Its efforts should result mainly in stepping up from low density (detached houses) to medium (townhouses) or something in between.

But can we think for the long term, too, please? Can we plan now for the large apartment buildings that eventually will be what the market demands?

The guiding principle for where to put them is obvious: the greatest density of people should be in the nicest locations. And we do have an amazing number of amazingly pleasant places.

The city centre, with its convenience and water views, is obviously the first place for high rises, and they're already going up. We should indeed be reserving land for much higher buildings there.

Reservation is in fact the crucial issue. We should work out where our successors will want big residential buildings. Then we should prevent the sites being used now for undersized structures which, once strata-titled, will be difficult for future developers to buy and demolish. We should do that even if we must wait until the second half of the century for full-scale development to proceed.

The map accompanying this article, an improvement on one I suggested in 2021, shows our best spots for high rises. The tram network proposed in this column four weeks ago would serve most of them.

Substantial high-density construction has already begun in three places in the Lake Macquarie council area: Charlestown, Belmont and Warners Bay. So it's easy to see they will be focal points of future demand and are therefore prime candidates for land reservation.

Towers on the ridge at Charlestown offer splendid outlooks and some of Newcastle's best retail access. The locality is blighted by the Pacific Highway, but to the east there is a path for a motorway bypass (if only the state were interested in improving our roads).

Warners Bay is perhaps our most underestimated locality, one in which the shops are busy, real estate values strong and development potential stronger. The council and state government should work out a configuration for placement of high-rises there, with the tallest ones on Martin Street, about 600 metres from the bay. The aim should be to preserve view corridors and ensure that as many people as possible can see our lovely lake.

Teralba may be a quiet place now, but think of its potential. Tall buildings there would not only overlook Cockle Bay; they'd be within walking distance of a railway station. Being at the north end of the lake, Teralba also offers reasonable proximity to most of our population and workplaces.

Remarkably, our coast from Merewether to Blacksmiths is mostly locked up by parks. But what parks they are! I'm talking about Glenrock, Awabakal Nature Reserve and the Belmont Wetlands.

Because of our habit of low-rise development, almost no one sees those magnificent reserves. I suppose most Novocastrians rarely stop even to think about them.

So our task is to work out how a large chunk of our bigger future population, at least tens of thousands of people, can enjoy looking out over the parks and the ocean beyond. Doing that will mean fully exploiting the land at Merewether Heights, eastern Whitebridge, Dudley, Redhead, Belmont and Blacksmiths.

The Merewether and Whitebridge towers would be in single lines along the Scenic Drive and Burwood Road ridges. For the other suburbs, there would be clumps of buildings arranged to preserve view corridors for the towers at the back, which would be the tallest. The lower buildings, near the trees and water, would probably be built first, some perhaps in the next decade or so. The big ones would come later, as demand grew. We can imagine the current locals complaining about this idea, but they could complain all the way to the bank: land values would rocket.

Back in inner Newcastle, there's no way Merewether should be left underdeveloped. Avoiding Gold Coast mistakes, we should not overshadow the beach, so planning should designate Mitchell and Patrick streets, about 500 metres from the water, for the greatest heights. Again, view corridors would be designed in.

Stockton's potential has been imagined by everyone in Newcastle. It can be realised when and if a cross-harbour tunnel is built, probably from Hereford Street to Elizabeth Street, as would be quite practicable. The state could take some of the resulting lift in Stockton land values to pay for it.

There's another principle for placement of higher densities, one that we're already following: more people should live near transport hubs, especially railway stations. In fact, we're not trying hard enough to implement that idea. But that's a discussion for another day.