Well-designed higher-density cities are not only sustainable but can help generate a higher quality of life says Principal at Rothelowman Chris Hayton.
“When you’re building apartments in shopping centres it presents a considerable opportunity to evolve the city in a more mature way than what we have seen in Australian cities over the last 30 years,” Chris says.
“It’s good to see our sensibilities towards cities are moving from a quite compartmentalised approach to land use to one that’s more holistic and understanding of how density works and how people can live better in higher density cities,” he adds.
Rothelowman is known for such designs including the highly-acclaimed 229 apartments they designed across two buildings at the award-winning Burwood Brickworks just east of Melbourne’s CBD.
“The evidence is there through the outcome of Burwood and other places that people want to live in these precincts. I think all the buildings in Burwood have been very well designed”.
He comments that well-designed high-density cities are not as reliant on transport because fewer people need to get in a car to get to the shops and people are living closer to where they work.
Chris says while things are evolving in this style of design there is still a level of resistance against mixed-use developments in Australia.
“People will wax lyrical about a European city where they could walk downstairs from their Air Bnb for breakfast and everything they needed was on hand yet in planning discussions they’ll argue for the exact opposite”.
“We are not quite as mature yet in Australia in understanding the importance of the civic give of buildings. The way our codes are written and planning systems are written is very strong on the individual apartment or townhouse and is not quite as strong at understanding the collective power of a building”.
He reiterates that there are no cookie-cutter solutions because every development should generate a sense of place with specific qualities people identify with and feel a sense of belonging to.
Chris says there also needs to be a reframe in the way we tend to talk about shopping centres as the town centre.
“It’s important as we provide higher density cities that we recognise the amenities people would like are less focused around shopping centres and more focused around leisure and parks”.
“There are some examples in Europe where shopping centres are becoming 50 % park 50% other land uses”.
He says another benefit of mixed-use developments is they may have a big role to play in addressing the housing crisis.
“We need to plan for more truly mixed-used precincts in our cities and change planning schemes to accommodate them and be braver or we won't properly address the housing crisis we’ve run into in Australia at the moment”.
“The inertia we need is to establish is to braver with our cities and understand density isn’t a road to poorer cities it's the opposite if you get it right”.
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