Can the Greens pull it off?

High density, high rise, high population. Words like these used to be foreign to our little suburbs, with our quaint brick houses and spacious backyards. But as Sydney overfl ows with new residents, we’re faced with only two options – build outwards, or upwards. By Claire Albrecht

By now it must come as no surprise to the Australian public that we’ve got a population issue – we’ve been hearing pollies bang on about it for months, and the only practical message that seems to have come out of it all is that, if we are to have any hope of being sustainable, we need to be smarter about the ways we manage our spaces – and it’s more important here, on the city’s fringes, than anywhere else.

“Big Australia is not a strategy, it is a reality,” says Professor Rob Adams, Melbourne’s Director of City Design. He’s been working in Melbourne to establish a sustainable method of inner and fringe city living based on the idea that high-density living thrives and is required on urban transport corridors – thoroughfares such as Parramatta and Victoria roads.

“To deny the fact that Australia’s population will double over the next forty to fi fty years is to fail to plan for change,” the professor continues. “I’d rather plan for that eventuality, and if it didn’t happen we would have least have accommodated the densities that do come, than to have denied it and to not have planned.

“My feeling about high-density living, particularly in the context of Australian cities, is that we can accommodate a doubling of our cities’ populations into the existing fabric of the city. We need to get high density around our existing transport infrastructure. All of this can be done without exceeding fi ve to six stories in height.”

Listening to Adams, both during our conversation and at his riveting presentation earlier this year at TEDx Sydney, made me consider our own transport corridors, and what we’re currently doing to maximise their potential. Looking at Parramatta Rd all I see are pubs, more pubs, empty shop fronts that smell oddly of fi shin the afternoons, and quirky blocks of shop types – bridal wear, furniture, vintage guitar. We’ve all grown so accustomed to the view out the 440 bus’s window that it seems sacrilege to imagine anything else.

But the potential is huge. We’ve got all the right measurements – we’re close to the city, we’ve got an existing transport network (albeit unreliable) and everyone seems to agree that our urban corridors need a makeover. The question is: how do we go about it? Professor Adams doesn’t believe there is any good preexisting example to follow. “We’re a suburban culture and there are not too many examples of where this has been successful in other countries. I think Australia can be a leader in this.”

There are, however, some rules to follow. “We need to be hard and fast on the urban growth boundaries and prohibit the subdivision of any further agricultural land on the fringes of the city,” insists Professor Adams. “Good design is essential if you are going to go to high density. People living in close proximity need to have not only high quality dwellings to live in but they need to be surrounded by a high quality public realm, the space outside the buildings. Most of that space in our cities is made up by the streets, so if you design a good street, you design a good city.”

We’re still lacking in the good street department, but some developers seem to be working towards this style of living in new projects across the Inner West. The Trio apartment buildings in Camperdown are considered the showpiece of fringe high-density living – stylish, architect-designed residences close to bus networks and thriving local communities, and they’re not the intrusive blights on the landscape that have done so much to takeaway from Sydney’s natural beauty elsewhere.

Architects Fender Katsalidis have, in conjunction with Frasers Property, managed to create an apartment complex I’d actually want to live in. Even the smaller apartments are stylish and well laid-out to give the impression of space and comfort, and the vertical gardens of Patrick Blanc, using native plants growing off the sides of the structures, add a welcome greenness.

I’m certainly not the only one who fi nds the prospect of Trio living appealing – most of the apartments have already sold, and to the types of people you’d expect on the North Shore, or in Melbourne, for that matter. It’s no coincidence. Given the opportunity, many people would love to enjoy the Inner West lifestyle, as long as it doesn’t mean having to sacrifi ce on living standards.

 

Designer Fiona Lyda, of Spence and Lyda, recently bought one of the dual-key apartments in Trio – a system which allows the owner to keep one of the apartments within the dual-key and rent the other out, or even rent both. Fiona decorated the apartments herself, adding to the already stylish ambience of the building and giving and demonstrating just what can be achieved in a small space in terms of truly desirable and comfortable living.

“Coming from the interior design business, finding something that worked for me was diffi cult,” says Fiona. “I chose Trio because the design is inspired. Frasers is one of the rare development companies that understand the value of good design both for the inhabitants and the cityscape. We need buildings to enrich our environments, not detract from them.”

 

The secure aspect of apartment living has been an added bonus. “We have a country property that we go to as often as possible. The advantage of an apartment is that we can lock up and leave at any time without fear.”

 

Further out of the city, we fi nd the refurbished wasteland of Rhodes – now a hotspot for developers with adream. It’s no longer contaminated from the days of the paint and chemical plants but there’s a lingering vibe of industry and neglect that the movers and shakers behind this project, Canada Bay City Council, are determinedly trying to get rid of.

For mayor Angelo Tsirekas, the development of Rhodes, which includes buildings as high as 25 stories, is needed to match the population target handed down by the state government in 2008 which requires 30,000 dwellings to be built in the area by 2031.

“We know Rhodes can sustain more population growth because of the large railway station, and the commercial centre can provide jobs that don’t require people jumping in their cars,” he said.The developers will be forced to limit car ownership and provide access to car-share schemes for all residents in the planned high-rise towers.

‘’This is fairly avant garde for Canada Bay,’’ the mayor admits. But the ‘’very heavy car-use ethos in the area had to change and people would have to cycle, or use trains and buses if they wanted to live there.They will need to understand the opportunity to travel by their own vehicle will be limited.’’

Local residents of Rhodes and the adjoining suburbs have had all sorts of qualms about the developments – increased traffi c on roads that are unable to support it, pollution and contamination in Homebush Bay and the age-old desire to keep building heights to a minimum. These are all legitimate concerns, but knowing what can be achieved with higher-density living, it seems possible that these could all be solved with good planning (remember, the professor said his plan to double population could be achieved with a maximum of fi ve stories), better public transport networks (the Rhodes railway station is simply not enough) and good design.

 

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing more action in these areas, with strong architecture and design playing a key role in the restructuring of our Inner West housing systems. If this happens, our new residents will at least have somewhere comfortable to call home and more infrastructure to support them – though that’s been a long time coming – as well as offering more support and growth of local businesses through the community atmosphere that high-density living encourages. And who knows – one day we ourselves might leave our frumpy four-bedroomers for something smaller, more appropriate for the inner city lifestyle and certainly more sustainable.