This type of housing includes townhouses, terrace houses, semi-detached houses, duplexes, villa, units and small apartment blocks.

A planning proposal to amend the Wagga Local Environment Plan 2010 has copped intense scrutiny by Central residents.

They have argued that increasing the building height to 35 metres to allow a building up to 11 storeys is not needed nor can infrastructure support it.

"Visitors don't come here to see Wollongong, they come here to see a proper rural country town and they don't want every block having a Wagga Base Hospital on it," said Central resident Lex Camerer.

"The highest buildings in Mildura are four-storeys ... there's no car congestion, there's enough parking but you come to Wagga where it looks like a little suburb street because there's nowhere to park.

"[Mildura] is a beautiful and vibrant city; everybody goes there for the houseboats, so you can imagine the traffic - but they can cope with it and they still don't go over four storeys."

Development applications that have been lodged with Wagga City Council for the month of September show that 10 single dwellings were submitted compared to just one multi-residential and one dual occupancy.

Those approved last month had similar results, with 26 stand-alone dwelling applications to only three dual-occupancies and a two-unit property being approved.

Wagga builder and developer Matt Jenkins is behind the recently built Day Street townhouses and said land will soon run out in a land-locked city.

"There's only a certain amount of land to develop ... extra dwellings are needed," Mr Jenkins said.

"I've seen the demand for it - I'm currently building medium-density in Plumpton Road, opposite the Country Club.

"Increasing density levels closer to services, parks and gardens creates extra foot traffic and rejuvenates the city."

Mr Jenkins said as urban sprawl occurs there is a greater need for shopping precincts to be established away from the main street.

"It creates more shopping areas outside of the CBD and therefore it takes foot traffic away from shops," he said.

"The development of available land around Central needs to be dealt with now, not in 10 years, as all surplus land down town will end up getting developed but not at a high-enough density.

"The biggest benefit of having medium-density housing is that it creates extra foot traffic for shops already operating, it takes more advantage of council assets, like the pool, parkland, riverside."