During ACT Legislative Assembly Estimates hearings on Tuesday, City Renewal Authority staff detailed the work underway to redevelop the city, including trying to recreate Melbourne's famous laneways across Canberra.

The government has come under fire in recent months for not allocating any new sites or provision for new affordable housing across the entire urban renewal precinct for 2017-18, an approach that has not changed under new affordable housing targets for 2018-19.

Authority chief executive Malcolm Snow said contracts for the last two urban renewal sites, large former public housing blocks in Braddon and Turner, would include a condition that prospective bidders would be "encouraged" to include some sort of affordable housing.

But when Greens MLA Caroline Le Couteur why he had used the term "encourage", rather than a stronger word, to help create more affordable housing nearer the city, Mr Snow referred the question to a colleague.

Authority development director Nicholas Holt told Estimates that the authority could only directly "influence" renewal outcomes on sites it was selling, and it was the planning directorate that "set the policies around the affordable housing targets".

While several inner north suburbs still have remaining public housing sites, many of those living in the old blocks have been pushed to newer housing in outer suburbs to make way for the new apartment developments.

Mr Holt said the authority also had an opportunity to "influence renewal outcomes" in the future, particularly from the controversial City to the Lake proposal, which will see a vast tract of Lake Burley-Griffin resumed to allow water front apartments and a new public boardwalk.

He said the authority was about to review the planning principles for that project, would would take about six months to complete and "one of the aspects" of the review would consider affordable housing, though the authority's influence was limited to "the sites we actually control".

Mr Holt said there was the Australian National University Exchange sites, which the government plans to sell to the university, and the Parkes Section 3 planned for a University of New South Wales development, though he was not sure if those developments had any affordable housing conditions.

But Mr Snow said the authority was considering incentives including different building practices and long-term ownership or tenure arrangements that could create cheaper housing in the renewal precinct.

He also said the authority was also closely looking at carparking for the precinct, including potentially allowing more central, structured carparks for each 'quarter' of the city, which could replace the current requirements for carparking on each site.

Mr Snow said he wanted to consider the options now, so that in future years the government was not looking back at having sold all the existing carparks with no replacement in mind, as well as how best to host events with 30,000 people in the city.

The authority has also been working with the disparate owners of the historic Sydney and Melbourne buildings, in an effort to set up the internal laneways as more vibrant entertaining areas, a move Mr Snow wants to replicate across the city's lanes.

He said those lanes could become a model for similar moves around the precinct, and that if the Melbourne central business district could do it, Canberra should be able to as well.

Mr Snow also said the authority was examining the potential for events like Floriade or Enlighten to have elements or connections to the city, as if such events happened in any other city, they would be held at the centre.

As the authority and Suburban Land Agency were set up to replace the Land Development Agency after a series of scandals, Opposition Leader Alistair Coe also asked a series of questions about the authority's board and its powers.

But Mr Snow's responses indicated that while the new seven0-member board was highly experienced, decisions such as on government land acquisitions and the like would be taken by the planning authority on the minister's instructions.

He could also not cite any specific business cases for such decisions that had been taken to the board since it was set up in July last year.