Dialogue: Better design, layout vital for high-density housing

The reality, if not the theory, of higher-density housing concerns many Aucklanders. Is it time, asks DAVID TURNER*, for a moratorium on new developments until we know what we're doing?

Much comment on the issue of higher-density housing in Auckland suggests that a crisis is looming, that the future of the city is threatened by a mass of new housing, most of it likely to become quickly substandard.

Continuing intensification of Auckland's built-up area through infill housing is approved under the regional planning policy framework, but that has not stopped controversy.

Within this framework 70 per cent of housing land for population growth and demographic change will be provided on redeveloped brownfield sites within the four cities' boundaries, rather than at the expense of green fields on the perimeter, as in the past.

Many are recoiling as a tidal wave of unfamiliar, super-compact housing developments springs forth in our arcadian suburban landscape.

In principle, the infilling is aligned with public opinion, which is broadly against suburban sprawl. But that same public opinion also appears to be against higher-density housing, and from this conundrum the crisis emerges.

With many people now living in the new medium-density housing, it is timely to consider some questions. For example: what is the matter with this housing (if anything)? Have we reached a point where critical opinion can be summarised? With the physical reality of medium-density housing in front of us, is it now possible to identify the good and the bad, the successes and failures, and redirect the process?

One answer is that it's not the housing that's wrong, but the critics and ourselves for being persuaded.

This answer asks us to think of these developments as new kinds of buildings; to accept that they create an unfamiliar city landscape but that they are actually fine; that they will do everything necessary to increase density, achieve some level of sustainability, and so on. But, of course, it all takes some getting used to.

For a small minority of our new developments this is an argument that can be defended. But it falls well short of satisfying all the criticism.

Part of the problem is that design skills for this kind of housing are in severely short supply. Design experience is growing, but must still be described as slight. Also, the building industry itself is poorly structured to adapt to the site planning strategies, marketing methods and the longer-term thinking required.

We can readily identify some of the problems. Among them are grievously poor parking and turning areas, inadequately planned open space and lack of privacy often caused by excessively low budgets and questionable planning of the house units themselves.

These are issues relating to basic design rules, beginning in the detail of site layout for medium-density housing. Transport choices and the relationship of car-to-house are also high design priorities.

Design for medium-density housing needs to provide communal open space (that, in effect, replaces the lost acres of our traditional suburbs, the backyards, the front gardens) with destination parks, pocket parks and places where children can grow up.

The houses themselves include the likes of three-bedroomed units with insufficient floor space on the living floor level for a family dining table. And the design of the front-door aspect - which is made complex by habit and custom, security, orientation and parking arrangements, as well as construction detail - is often primitively inadequate.

These, and many other details, suggest that some new developments will become the worst housing in the city - worse by far than the scrappiest of our suburbs.

In the meantime, we should not try to classify these developments as sustainable. The design criteria for sustainable medium-density housing are hugely complex and are not being addressed.

The problem is also partly a social and cultural one. We like, and are used to, living at extraordinarily low densities, even in cities. Density is an issue that relates closely to the sustainability of urban life, so it is useful to place this in context. We tolerate, or enjoy, densities seldom seen anywhere else.

Sydney and Melbourne have four times the density of Auckland, while Los Angeles has a population of 14 million, at about five times our density. Nonetheless, urban planning problems in both Australia and North America are similar to ours.

North American urban planning experience - of pressure from environmentalists, of a need (greater than ours) to regenerate city centres for economic and social reasons, of traffic, transport, and pollution problems, and a market in housing with much greater extremes of cost - offers some interesting models.

A developer from Arizona, speaking at a 1999 Smart Growth conference in San Diego, said the problem with sprawl was not that it took land, it was that people were disconnected and the community was not sustainable. The comment was easy to identify with in Auckland.

Sprawl is ecologically and socially damaging, and in the environmental audit, catastrophic. Like the Americans, we have to look for another way.

Auckland's medium-density housing is part of that alternative, and a good one - if we can find better ways to design it.

Alternative solutions have also been reviewed and recommended. In January, a Herald contributor enthused about the high-rise option for ordinary people, too, not just yuppies. Others prescribe self-sufficiency based on the quarter-acre grid.

It is normal for a community to change its rules to respond to changes in the conditions of its existence. It is time to say that we need a new design protocol for this kind of housing. One that responds to the cultural and demographic shifts of the past 20 years in Auckland, that responds to the regional climate, recognises difference within New Zealand in these terms, and that constructs and embraces a full green agenda, in line with the best practices in Australia and elsewhere.

If some notion of urban sustainability is seen as significant, we have to recognise that it cannot be guaranteed by density alone.

Real energy efficiency comes from site layout design; real durability of the building comes from good detailing and good materials.

We must start to develop mandatory design requirements at certain density levels, rather than negotiate design criteria around capital contributions to the city. We need research to form the basis of new legislation.

And, perhaps, we need a moratorium on new developments of more than 30 dwellings a hectare until we can agree the rules for building them.

* David Turner is a senior lecturer in sustainable architecture and design methodology at Unitec.