From Trinity Tower to a true student district: Adelaide must choose its future
A planned student accommodation tower on North Tce exemplifies what Adelaide is becoming under the Malinauskas government: a property developer state, writes Stewart Sweeney.
This week’s approval of a 33-storey student tower behind Trinity Church on North Terrace was treated as a civic milestone.
A $400 million investment. Over a thousand student beds. A cinema, gym, yoga studio, communal kitchens. The university backed it. The church blessed it. The Malinauskas Government applauded it. And the planning panel waved it through.
But behind the fanfare, a much deeper question remains unanswered: Is this the kind of city we want Adelaide to become?
Because the Trinity Tower is not just a building. It’s a signal – a vertical symbol of what happens when the future of a city is outsourced to developers and dressed up as educational progress.
It exemplifies what Adelaide is becoming under the Malinauskas Government: a property developer state, where public interest is repackaged as private opportunity, where scale replaces soul, and where real planning is buried beneath glossy renders and deal-making.
Let’s be clear: international students bring enormous value to Adelaide. They enliven our campuses, enrich our cultural life, and contribute billions to our economy. But student housing – like all housing – should serve the people who live in it, not just those who profit from building it.
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The Trinity Tower is being promoted as “purpose-built student accommodation.” But that purpose, in truth, is speculative. It’s a yield-maximising asset, designed for a university sector that has become addicted to international enrolments and a government that equates high-rises with progress. Students deserve more than that. They deserve homes, not vertical warehouses. Neighbourhoods, not dormitories in the sky.
This is not a one-off. It’s part of a pattern. From Walker Tower 2 behind Parliament House to the slow encroachment on the parklands to the growing number of 20–30 storey towers wrapping around the university precinct, Adelaide is being reshaped – rapidly, radically, and without public conversation. We are building an ugly skyline, not a connected city. A destination for capital, not a community.
What’s lost in all this is a more human, more sustainable, more democratic vision of student life. A vision drawn not from investor spreadsheets, but from the world’s best university cities.
Oxford. Cambridge. Leuven. Bologna. Uppsala. Kyoto. These are cities where students live in low-rise terraces, scattered courtyard apartments, and integrated neighbourhoods. Streets are walkable. Laneways are active. Buildings are scaled for people, not property funds. What unites these places is not uniformity of form, but a shared belief that students thrive best in community, not isolation; in scale, not spectacle.
There is a much better alternative, a publicly led, low-rise Adelaide student district.
This district would reject the tower model in favour of 2–6 storey terrace and courtyard housing, connected by shaded laneways, slow streets, and green public squares. It would be interwoven with cafes, co-ops, student galleries, music rooms, community kitchens, and a performance and cultural centre. It would be climate-ready, energy-efficient, and deeply affordable – using public or community-led tenure models, not extractive rental platforms. It would house not only international students, but local and regional students, those in need of key-worker housing, and young people emerging from homelessness.
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In short, it would be a real place. A student neighbourhood, not a student silo. A district shaped by care, not cranes.
There are places in Adelaide where this could happen: west of Light Square, on underused carparks, dead blocks, and poorly performing buildings. But to make it real, we need imagination and courage. Courage to say no to the next tower. Courage to reclaim planning from the panels. Courage to ask our universities to be educators and neighbours, not landlords and speculators.
We also need a government that sees students as more than a market segment. A government that invests in public housing as seriously as it invests in private developments. A government that values green space, civic heritage, and city culture, not just vibrancy metrics and “iconic” facades.
We don’t have that government yet. Under Premier Peter Malinauskas, South Australia is sliding deeper into the logic of the property developer state: land sold, heights raised, objections dismissed, and public language co-opted for private gain. The approval of the Trinity Tower is just the latest chapter in that story.
But it doesn’t have to end this way. The August 2025 Adelaide City Council election and the March 2026 state election offer moments of interruption – opportunities to elect people who understand that planning is a public act, not a transactional one. That students are citizens, not just consumers. That the shape of a city shapes its soul.
We can’t keep building vertically and pretending it’s progress. We can’t keep approving deals that work for a few while locking out the many. We need to stop and ask: what kind of city are we leaving for the next generation?
Towers like Trinity’s will rise fast. But real communities take time to grow. If we want to build a student city that lasts – not just a skyline that provides profits – we have to start now.
Let’s build a student district worthy of Adelaide. Low-rise. High connection. Human-scale. Public-good.
Stewart Sweeney is a writer and public policy advocate with a longstanding interest in the evolution and future of capitalism. He migrated from Scotland to Adelaide in 1975 to work with Premier Don Dunstan on industrial democracy. A former academic and trade unionist, he continues to contribute to public debate on economic justice, democratic reform, and sustainable development. His work reflects a deep commitment to the common good and the role of public purpose in shaping Australia’s future.
