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This second in a two part series focuses on how to build cities for people, not cars focused on density, this time through infrastructure. Higher-rise or mid-rise buildings combined with excellent public transport, walkable streets, trees, daylight, mixed uses and social infrastructure, communities tend to produce higher value results. Where we drop a tower into a car-dominated void with minimal thought for the ground plane, or jam apartments along arterials that function as mini-freeways, we invite backlash and entrench myths that “high-rise never works”.
How do we prioritise the best locations for redevelopment and decide what infrastructure will be needed? The theory of urban fabrics describes three distinct areas within cities: car-based suburban fabric, transit city fabric and walking city fabric. Each has a very different energy, emissions and cost profile and very different infrastructure. We need to find where the best locations for these different density and infrastructure solutions should be as we face a future where sprawl must stop.
Walking fabric
The obvious places for walking fabric are in areas that were first built – in the era before the 1880s when living locally, but supported by trams and trains, first allowed the spread of our cities. These high-density walkable areas are now spreading into sub centres – in Sydney’s case, seriously separate cities such as Parramatta; and in Melbourne, Box Hill in the east. But all planned new sub centres need at least mid-rise even high-rise density and they need to be facilitated as major opportunities as centres that will be critical for the future economy.
Transit fabric
Most Australian cities had transit-based fabric built between 1880 and 1940 and these areas are now the most popular areas to live as they are generally accessible and have a range of services such as health and education. They often have both density and infrastructure but some don’t have enough density or enough local walkability and place-enhancing design. That is why the New Urbanism concept of transit oriented development, or TODs, is needed in all these station areas.
In Melbourne, the link precincts such as around Victoria Market demonstrate high-rise that is walkable to multiple urban destinations such as the University of Melbourne. Nearby the well known Brunswick West Nightingale link development provides affordable mid-rise private and social housing based and innovative community sharing facilities.
In Sydney, the Metro Northwest corridor and the Central to Eveleigh precinct show both the promise and the pitfalls. Around Rouse Hill and Bella Vista stations for instance, in the former, higher density has finally been paired with high-capacity rail, yet much of the built form remains internally focused and car-oriented, leaving unrealised potential for truly walkable, mixed-use centres.
Around the inner-city Eveleigh rail yards proposals for substantial mid- and high-rise have been slowed by long negotiations over height, overshadowing and “character” considerations, even as housing shortages intensify.
In Perth there are now 85 train stations that all need TODs! The dense, mixed-use, walkable precincts built around high-quality public transport have already helped shape some of Australia’s better urban projects, but we need to make this the normal kind of development across our cities as long as they have the infrastructure.
The reality is that these station precincts do not have the value-capture potential to enable mid-rise and high-rise to be commercially viable, unless a new link to transit is provided.
In recent news a $1.5 billion development of 1400 social and affordable homes has been announced by WA Planning Minister John Carey as part of an ambitious 2030 affordable housing target.
This is why we have worked with local governments across Australia to create tram boulevards along main roads that lead to heavy rail sites. TODs can be built with mid-rise projects along such boulevards and high rise at the rail stations.
In Victoria the plans of Infrastructure Victoria do not include new tram boulevards to outer suburbs but perhaps it is time to change this orientation. The best examples of these potential sites mixing public transport, slower local streets and more social housing in Melbourne are the proposed Caulfield-Rowville Link through Monash University and a series of boulevards in the western suburbs we called The West Side Story.
The best examples of mid-rise development in Sydney are along the light rail “greenway” to Dulwich Hill that now also has a cycleway/walkway along a large part of the route, featuring high biodiversity parkland and adjacent mid-rise buildings. They are the best example of how a tramway can raise land value for developers to create commercially successful densities whilst achieving great sustainability outcomes.
Adelaide has done some of the most elegant mid-rise main-street intensifications in the country along corridors such as Prospect Road and The Parade – effectively station-oriented and sustainability-oriented development yet there are still political flashpoints whenever height pushes beyond the comfort zone of existing residents.
Brisbane’s “inner-ring boom” has created riverside skylines and rail-adjacent precincts that are far denser than the city of 20 years ago. Yet even there, the bulk of population growth has been accommodated in greenfield corridors stretching west and south, and community distrust of infill remains strong.
Automobile fabric
All Australian cities have large automobile fabric areas that need the transformation of density. Perth and Brisbane are the most obvious as they have grown fast in recent decades and mostly on the fringes. There is a need to push into suburbs with new transit infrastructure and associated densities, but even with major programs it’s unlikely that there will be much impact on these areas’ highly deficient services and opportunities. This needs to change.
The centres in Sydney are often mid rise or high rise around train and tram stations and are working well because of their density.
Some have been the focus of controversial mid and high-density housing projects, but these reactions are often followed by an embrace of the value created by walkable opportunities for many more people. Such density enhances the value of local services. But it’s hard to work these projects into the approval processes unless they can be shown to be “good density” as it’s increasingly called.
Doing good density – what is it? First, good density is very clearly place-specific, but it is not mysterious. Where we combine higher-rise or mid-rise buildings with excellent public transport, walkable streets, trees, daylight, mixed uses and social infrastructure, communities tend to value the result. Where we drop a tower into a car-dominated void with minimal thought for the ground plane, or jam apartments along arterials that function as mini-freeways, we invite backlash and entrench myths that “high-rise never works”.
Second, the real choice is not between density and no density; it is between smart, transit-supported, precinct-scale density and chaotic, unplanned density plus ongoing sprawl.
The former can deliver much lower emissions, lower lifetime infrastructure costs and more affordable access to jobs and services. The latter gives us the worst of both worlds: congested suburbs and angry communities who quite rightly feel they are getting all of the impacts and few of the benefits.
Third, politics and governance are doing as much damage as bad design. Local vetoes and height phobias in well-located suburbs push growth to the fringe and though these are reducing because of changing values from residents, they are still common.
State governments set ambitious infill targets but then quietly default to the path of least resistance when those targets collide with loud opposition in safe seats. Approval systems focus heavily on short-term visual impacts and not enough on long-term public value: emissions, infrastructure cost, access to opportunity.
Perth has shown this tension in sharp relief. For years, the city has been formally committed to lifting its share of infill, yet the reality on the ground has lagged badly.
Even now, as housing pressures intensify, there is a risk that we respond with a quick-fix mix of more fringe estates plus ad-hoc “bolt-on” density that enrages communities and further erodes trust. That is exactly the outcome we do not need: locking in the car-city pattern just as we need to be pivoting to transit and walking fabrics, and discrediting the very idea of higher density in the process.
If we keep treating mid-rise and high-rise as the villain, we will continue to fight the wrong battles while the real damage continues at the fringe and in the household budgets of those shut out of well-located housing.
If, instead, we take seriously the evidence on TODs and precinct-scale sustainability from Australia’s major cities, and from global cities, then we can start asking better questions.
Not “are you for or against towers?”, but “where should we concentrate growth, and under what rules, so that it delivers the low-carbon, low-car dependent, affordable and liveable cities Australians are telling us they want?”