KEY POINTS:
Auckland councils are offering guidance to stop the design of apartment developments turning people away from high-rise living.
The councils are keen to promote apartment living as a way to avoid costly and inefficient urban sprawl.
"Concern about apartments has not been helped by the delivery of many poor design outcomes which litter the region," said North Shore city councillor and urban design champion Chris Darby.
"The quick-buck approach of constructing low-quality apartments thin on amenity needs to be supplanted by one of a sense of place, laying the foundation stones for a real community and leaving a legacy for future generations."
His council has launched a Good Solutions Guide for Apartments, in conjunction with Auckland, Waitakere and Manukau City Councils, the Auckland Regional Council and the Ministry for the Environment.
The councils say the 133-page guide will let developers and designers know what a council expects and warn that ignorance could lead to delays in getting building consent approval.
"The guide is not mandatory but we hope it will have an effect on people before they put in their consent application," said North Shore urban design policy adviser SarahLindsay.
"It will be useful for council planners, too, and we will develop a checklist for developers, designers and planning staff assessing applications."
The guide is supported by the Property Council. National director Connal Townsend said developer members were receptive because there was profit in good urban design.
"People will pay a premium to be there and take pride in living in a well-designed built environment."
Mr Townsend said the big firms and trusts with a large number of investors were interested in sustainability. If an environment degraded rapidly because of poor design, it would be a poor investment vehicle.
"Better investment comes from longer-term, better-quality building," he said.
The guide offers case studies of existing apartment developments in Auckland.
It says Q City, built by Kitchener Investments in Queen St, is an example of development aimed at a narrow sector of the market - renting students and young working people.
The guide says the same typical apartment plan is repeated for each of the 90 apartments. Minimal common areas, tightly planned apartments with no storage, and a lack of character for the development as whole are unlikely to attract long-term residents or satisfy those whose needs change over time.
The stage three apartments of the Beaumont Quarter, built to the west of Victoria Park by Melview Developments, are a mix of single-level and duplex types. The guide authors say that at 2.4ha and 250 units, this is a large development but the design uses a variety of building types to match the site and development goals, creating a pleasing diversity.
Apartments are well planned with good amenities, all habitable rooms are on exterior walls and all have private open space.
A further case study is of the 16-storey Scene One Apartments, built by Redwood Group near the Britomart Transport Centre.
Guide authors conclude that Scene One works well for residents with a good mix of well-planned apartment types. However, there is a relatively large proportion of south-facing, single-aspect apartments.
"The development does not work as well in the public domain, with a poor pedestrian environment around the perimeter of the building and poor through-site pedestrian connections."
Redwood spokesman Nick Sharp said yesterday that through-site walkways had to be a compromise between residents' security and public access. Thirty per cent of apartments were south-facing, which allowed a mix of prices. South-facing ones were less expensive that north-facing ones.
He said Scene One reflected the council zoning guidelines at the time.
"Tall and skinnier apartments would have been better, I think. It would have provided view corridors in between the buildings, but we were not permitted to do that because of the floor area ratios for the site."
