The nature of housing is critical and many of the interviewees stressed how our current exurban sprawl of oversized and inefficient houses needs to change. Only two stark choices were presented. On the one hand we have the emotional claim that the Australian lifestyle is dependent on the single-family home on a suburban quarter-acre block. But the suburban dream has largely disappeared into legend for most people buying new homes, replaced with the current outsized houses on small blocks, little yardspace and hard up against neighbours.
On the other hand we have an archetypal developer, Harry Triguboff, whose vision is of endless high-rise apartments. Painting a similar vision of Soviet-style enforced accommodation in 30-storey buildings, former NSW premier Bob Carr had a contrary motivation — to scare us into shutting off immigration. In one thing he is right: the past 10 years of high rise development is mediocre. In all likelihood even the so-called luxury towers will age poorly.
The Brisbane CBD has been infested with very high (50-70 floors) blocks that have a risk of turning into vertical slums, despite their price tags. Melbourne Docklands arguably may have “magnificent buildings” but the whole site is “windswept and forbidding” as described by Lord Mayor Robert Doyle. Perhaps it may fulfil the planners dream when it achieves the full complement of 17,000 residents and 40,000 workers and the street level becomes more human and accessible. Both examples show that Australia still has not mastered the art of city or community planning.
Accompanying the editorial was a blog on Docklands under the rubric “Seinfeld vs Neighbours” that drew hundreds of passionate contributions though, again, it seemed like the options being debated were misunderstood, particularly the idea of “New York living” implied by the Seinfeld reference. When one thinks of the myriad TV sitcoms set in Manhattan (Seinfeld, Friends, Will & Grace, Dharma and Gregg, etc.) none are set in high-rise*, but in six-to-eight storey low-rises, mostly in the Upper West Side (Seinfeld) or Greenwich Village (Friends) and other quarters such as low-rise wharehouse districts like Chelsea and Tribeca — mostly from the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries — because they are more human in scale and generate lively street life around them.
The same is true for all the desirable world cities. Think especially Haussmanian Paris but also Barcelona, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Prague, San Francisco, Buenos Aires etc. The kind of soulless high-rise the developers build in Australia augurs poorly for the future of our cities. The notion that Bob Carr’s 30-storey high-rises are needed to achieve adequate density is belied by these examples, especially one of the most visited and desired cities in the world, Paris, which also happens to be the most densely populated in the Western world.
The other often misunderstood eco-characteristic of these big dense cities really should not be surprising. New York City is the greenest city in the US because of its density, efficient power use and extensive public transport. Another highly desirable American city, San Francisco, is also one of the densest though counter-intuitively Los Angeles has a higher median density than either city. But which of these cities do Australians prefer as a model? NYC with its gracious mid-century low-rise apartments, San Francisco with its dense Old Victorians and townhouses or LA with its dominant housing type: individual houses on tiny blocks cheek by jowl. Which of these scenarios are our current development policies heading towards?
It is peculiar that our political and commercial philosophies are driving us towards a style diametrically opposite to those we admire and enjoy in world cities that we go out of our way to visit. Is this apparent cognitive disjunction real or perhaps a result of social pressure to conform mixed with denial and legends of the Australian myth? And limited choice.
David Brooks, a conservative writer on The New York Times who has championed exurban development, wrote a piece called I dream of Denver defending this car-dependent urban sprawl. He said that while Amsterdam was a wonderful city he was sure Americans did not want to live in such a city. This provoked a strong response from hundreds of his readers, many of whom had lived in the European city, reinforcing the view — even by Americans — that it is one of the most gracious and civilised cities with healthy communities where you can mostly walk to do everything or if needed, cycle safely or catch a tram or metro.
Even if NY Times readers are unrepresentative, this surely shows the power of exposure to alternatives to the false choices presented to us, whether by self-interested developers, politicians or the plain muddle-headed or ignorant. The common argument against low-rise (up to eight floors) that they are uneconomic is a typically self-serving one by developers and local authorities. Property values adjust instantly to zoning by-laws.
In fact, the choice of housing types is much greater than generally offered in Australia. As long as building codes are adequate, even British semi-detached or terrace-style town-houses give higher density but provide better privacy, more flexible living space and more rear-garden space (partly by avoiding the ridiculous waste of unused space at the front of homes as in Australia). Low-rise (three to five storeys) Andalusian courtyard apartments, once very popular in Los Angeles (often featured in film noir), are also suited to Australia’s climate. Our version is ugly six-packs.
The inevitable increase in our population in the coming decades provides a great opportunity to get a much better housing mix. As the ageing boomers choose to move into the city/seachange/treechange, their large stock of suburban houses will become available for many of the next generation and immigrants raising young families. There is no need to panic a la Bob Carr but there is the opportunity to rebalance the mix. Re-engineering of even exurban housing in the US is being planned to turn them into more traditional communities with local shops, amenities and schools all within walkable distances. It is not impossible.
As Jago Dodson (Urban Research Program, Griffith University) pointed out on The 7.30 Report, social cohesion and even individual health (mental and general fitness) are strongly influenced by the urban milieu. The perspective from the current choices does not bode well. We need to have a much more wide-ranging conversation than the narrow one the likes of Triguboff, Carr or the builders of exurban social deserts would have us believe.
* In fact the only TV sitcom high-rise I can think of is the rather sterile Frasier of Seattle, with its notable faked city backdrop; fake because it would actually be looking out on the water of Puget Sound, which would be boring so they sexed it up a bit.
Michael R. James is an Australian research scientist, journalist, former Parisian, and lives in the woolstore district of Teneriffe, Brisbane.
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