New Zealand has adopted a radical rezoning plan to cut house prices ? could it work in Australia?

New Zealand's cities could be reshaped for decades to come, forcing the long-entrenched dream of the quarter-acre block to the margins, after the government joined forces with the opposition to pass sweeping legislation in favour of housing densification.

In a rare display of cross-party collaboration, Labour and National passed the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) bill - a policy that aims to counter urban sprawl and boost supply by up to 105,000 new homes in the next eight years by forcing councils to loosen restrictions on building in urban areas.

The country has been in the midst of a housing crisis for more than a decade, driven by multiple factors including restrictive planning law, a lack of housing supply, an unchecked property investor market, and a widening gulf between income and housing costs.

Its large cities of Wellington and Auckland have some of the least affordable property markets in the world; home ownership rates in New Zealand have been falling since the early 1990s across all age brackets, but the drop is especially pronounced for people in their 20s and 30s.

Last year, the United Nations' special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, visited New Zealand and called the housing situation "a human rights crisis" and "a dark shadow that hangs over the country".

The OECD has ranked New Zealand top for unaffordable housing for its poorest families.

Planning law has long been criticised for being restrictive, unwieldy and slow. It is blamed in part for slowing down housing development, entrenching single-house dwellings, and creating urban sprawl, which has implications for transport, infrastructure and climate change.