Published 16 March 2007
The Good solutions guide for apartments, launched by North Shore City Council yesterday, has a feature which should appeal to a wider building & planning audience: It is, as the deputy chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment, Lindsay Gow (right), put it, “not written in code”.
It doesn’t spend time giving examples of what’s bad, except for a couple of mildly adverse comments in the section on case studies. The focus is on the positive – how to improve, with objectives, better design practice, rules of thumb and, importantly, places to go for further information.
The guide will be available at councils’ offices (other councils & organisations have contributed to the guide) and is available online at the North Shore City Council’s website.
The launch of the 135-page guide was the occasion for a statement of strong support from the Property Council and an exhortation on better design for a compact city from North Shore’s political urban design champion, Cllr Chris Darby.
Turnaround for property industry
Property Council chief executive Connal Townsend wondered how many were going to read a prescriptive guide, then found when he picked it up it was highly readable, well illustrated: “It’s a corker.”
Mr Townsend said a few short years ago he’d have lost his job at the Property Council for supporting this kind of idea, but now the council – the organisation for developers, property professionals & institutional investors – was strongly behind new building solutions.
“They’re over their laissez-faire approach of the 80s.” Now, he said, “too many of my members are saying there are too many bad developments. Many of them have studied urban design principles. There’s only one reason for that: It’s a good thing.
“The attitude of the big investors is, if average New Zealanders have a super policy, it’s highly probable some of this investment is going to be in commercial property. You want to get the best return for your investment. It follows, cities must be sustainable.
“If cities start to fall away, they become a poor place to invest and you’re not going to get a good return. That’s why we’re so passionate about this document & urban design principles.”
Mr Townsend said “there are still some ratbag developers out there – they don’t belong to the Property Council. Maybe they think we‘ve become namby-pamby about this urban design stuff but they’re wrong, they’re very wrong.”
Darby: It’s not about jamming people into tight spaces
Mr Darby said: “If you look around the North Shore, around Auckland, we are in need of tools to assist us. The guide is a design educator. It’s going to take us a long way to avoiding mistakes of the past. It’s not about jamming people into tight spaces.”
He said the compact-city approach challenged the quarter-acre mindset, there was still a place for outlying suburbs but not for unthinking sprawl, and not for ill-thought intensification.
“Concern about apartments has not been helped by the delivery of many poor design outcomes which litter the Auckland region. What needs to be acknowledged is that the development community provides for a market with an insatiable appetite for residential space but with little understanding or regard for the shortcomings of lifestyle offered in that living space…..
“The compact-city model of intensification around transport nodes & town centres is essential, but the design paradigm needs to change if we are to deliver distinctive environments for a range of users. The attraction of less car dependency, a vibrant public realm, home security, no lawns to mow, low maintenance costs and a bus at the nearest corner needs to be reinforced by enduring design. Design becomes even more important for apartments because we are sharing it with active streets busy with people.
“Smart design within a compact model has the potential to save people costs of living of more than 20%. Living adjacent to one’s place of work, learning & socialising frees up incomes to allow spending on quality of life rather than on the 60-minute commute. As motorists begin to feel the true cost of commuting through tolls, cordon charging, parking charges, spiralling fuel prices, impending fuel taxes & lost time, apartment living will become more desirable & more affordable.
“Apartment living minimises our ecological footprint and is one solution to addressing climate change. Land-use efficiency through consolidation around urban villages has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases and meet our climate-change targets more significantly than converting to blended biofuels.
“Inefficient land use by allowing splatter & sprawl at the edge of the region is an outdated development pattern. Cities which persevere with sprawl today will become administrators of automobile slums tomorrow, where residents are destined to spending a litre of fuel to buy a litre of milk. The suburban model is not necessarily redundant but the sprawl model should be immediately put out to pasture.
“The future is not about wider roads, but we can be smarter about unblocking our arterials and alleviating choking vehicle emissions. Connecting communities remote from their place of work can simultaneously disconnect communities through which widened arterials pass. Road widening could go on a diet and accessible street design, integrated public transport, walking & cycling merit fattened budgets.
“Neither is the future about parking. The region’s district plans require review of obsolete town-centre parking provisions. Where residents & businesses are located near to the rapid-transit network, demand for car use & parking is less. Therefore parking maximums rather than minimums should apply. In some cases it will be entirely appropriate for the maximum to be zero, for example in the case of a studio apartment. It is not an efficient use of a scarce land resource to demand the equivalent of half of the apartment’s floor area be set aside for parking & car courts. Ignoring the need for change in parking provisions only reinforces our well embedded car addiction and every parked car waits for an already congested road.
“It’s time for a dramatic shift in thinking when projects are scoped & briefed. The ‘quick buck’ approach of constructing low-quality apartments thin on amenity needs to be supplanted by one of establishing a sense of place, laying the foundation stones for a real community and leaving a legacy for future generations. Total costs need to be considered and profits can be shared. Monetary profits for the developer and social profits for the communities they leave behind.
“We all have a duty to play our part in ensuring quality apartments with memorable living spaces are designed & built. The development community is our partner in ensuring there is a shift in the design paradigm, planning & actions.
It’s time too for politicians & key decision-makers to step up to the plate. We’re the people we’ve been waiting for, we need to be courageous, we need to inspire minds and win hearts by ensuring apartment living & quality of life can be synonymous. The Good solutions guide for apartments helps provide that impetus.”
Website: North Shore City Council, Good solutions guide for apartments
Earlier stories:
6 March 2007: Good solutions guide for apartments launched next week
18 September 2005: Darby gets role of Shore urban design champion
5 June 2003: North Shore snapshot, week to 8 June 2003
Want to comment? Click on The new BD Central Forum or email [email protected].
Attribution: Book launch, story written by Bob Dey for this website.
)
)
