Social resilience is key to better housing outcomes – what does the post-occupancy research say?

Many new developments promise to be sustainable and resilient, but where is the evidence that they deliver on that promise? Research from the University of Melbourne aims to fill that knowledge gap.

As part of his doctoral research, Life Between Apartments: designing community resilience in new multi-residential projects, PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne Merrick Morley studied four apartment developments in Melbourne that were completed and occupied between 2021 and 2022.

All four positioned themselves as “positive deviant”, his term for a model that goes beyond conventional market-driven build to sell. All four also won architecture awards and were marketed as “resilient communities”.

Morley examined whether the experience of residents lived up to the promise of resilience with surveys and focus groups concentrating on shared territory through three key outcomes around shared territory, a sense of community and governance.

Four different community models

The four projects each had a different model: rent-to-own, all-renting co-housing and mixed-tenure owner-occupiers and tenanted investment.

The common areas include circulation spaces such as lobbies, stairways and corridors; “destination spaces” such as gyms, gardens, common dining areas and recreation zones; and utility spaces such as laundries, drying areas and waste management facilities. All four buildings had shared common herb gardens, although none have green space that incorporates trees or grassed areas.

He found that while there is a “provisional state of community resilience” at each of the four developments, there are good reasons to question whether this resilience will last. Interestingly, there was no major difference between the four different community models in terms of the level of overall level of provisional resilience.

Resilience is impacted by management

Morley says that management plays a large part in determining whether residents feel they have agency and whether they feel the common areas are being well-managed and well-maintained.

In three of the four buildings, the developer appointed the community manager, resulting in a lack of clarity giving some residents over roles, responsibilities and rights. The fourth building, a co-housing development, is managed collectively by a committee of residents.

Management was a problem

Residents in two of the four buildings told Morley that building management was a “real problem”, along with maintenance of shared and common spaces.

Some residents found it challenging to navigate asking for small changes to common areas, such as erecting a pergola or asking for defects rectification

Children… maybe a yeah nah

Shared spaces, including circulation spaces, destination spaces such as gardens or social zones and amenities such as shared laundry drying areas, can be a source of both bonding and friction, Morley found.

In two out of the four buildings, the children and the noise associated with children was a point of dissatisfaction for some residents. For some of the occupants with children, the size of the apartments was proving inadequate for growing families.

Overall, Morley says the number of households with children across all four buildings was noticeably lower than the average in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

“This is not just about design- it’s about culture and expectations. It is also about how the building is managed,” he says.

“In the marketing for three out of four of the buildings, children were promoted as desired, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be issues.”

Common areas and lifestyle conflicts

Other causes of complaints included dogs, smoking and placement of objects outside such as statues and plants.

“You can get people moving into the building who don’t share the same values as others, and that can lead to conflicts around communal area use,” he explains.

These “small, mundane issues can add up,” and the result is less community cohesion.

How true was the hype?

Initially, the first residents into all the buildings were people who had “bought into” the ethos of sustainable urban living and the benefits of the apartment lifestyle, he says.  While most residents told him they felt connected to each other by the building, it was “otherwise hard to form neighbourly bonds” for many of them.

Aside from the co-housing development, which has a community dinner twice a week, in the other buildings, the amenity around community activities and services promised by the developer has not always been delivered.

Morley says that while follow through was needed with promises, many reported how good it was to live in their apartments in terms of thermal comfort, acoustics and energy efficiency.  He says this is evidence that the Victorian apartment design guidelines can deliver what they set out to do.

He stresses that more research needs to be done, not least because resilience needs to be measured over time.

“This is just the beginning for these buildings, things may improve or get worse.”

Based on his findings, Morley developed several recommendations for designing community resilience in new apartment projects:

• organise suitable events and processes with intended occupants ahead of the development completion to foster community resilience
• remove “information asymmetries” between residents, building managers, developers, and related actors to minimise vulnerabilities and foster community resilience
• include communication channels that are accessible and commonly used by the majority of residents to foster community resilience
• include building management processes and agency that suits residents’ lifestyles and desires fosters community resilience
• continue innovation and evaluation of apartment building designs and management to discover and build the places that suit more Australians, namely families.

Watch Merrick Morley’s seminar on this topic here.