For too long, we had a two-speed housing economy. Great swathes of suburbia are making Australian cities the lowest density in the world, with high rises clustered in the centre, or centres, of cities. And the quality of the design and construction at both ends has been roundly criticised.

There are 3 intertwined issues in future dwelling design.

Firstly, the quality of the design of the home itself must be high, with amenity and durability combined, understanding the positive values that people find in suburbia.

Secondly, there must be a greater variety of housing types, giving a far wider choice of home desired by our polycultural population. We need to increase the number and variety of house types that we offer as homes. And accept that not everyone wants a family suburban home.

And thirdly we need greater density, not as an end in itself, but for the benefits it delivers by gathering dwellings together, closer to services, shops and schools (the 3 S’s). This promotes infrastructure efficiency (power, water, sewer, and roads) and promotes walking and cycling in lieu of car demand.

Suburban homes

Demand for suburbia remains high, even though less than 50% of households are a traditional family. It’s seen as an ideal dream, given the high level of personal amenity. But the key issue in suburbia is its low density. Infrastructure runs are extended, and distances from houses to the 3 S's are too far, requiring private cars, as public transport is inefficient.

Suburbia can be made more sustainable by increasing density in two ways: more people in each house and/or more houses on each site. The former indicates multigenerational housing, or multi-unit houses; the latter suggests tightly designed courtyard houses and duplexes.

Either way, if those changes cannot be implemented, we need to divert resources away from extending suburbia and reorient designs into other types, increasing the density in the missing middle areas, as below.

Townhouses

The soft end of density increase is townhouses, sometimes called terraces, which can triple or quadruple the number of houses on a single site. Two issues arise from the ‘rack, stack and pack’: ensuring high-quality private outdoor space in these ground-based buildings and keeping the cars away, either in rear access lanes or underground.

Three/Four Storeys

There is a long tradition of 3-storey walk-up flats (3SWUF) in Australia. Almost every inner city and middle ring suburb has some. And 3SWUFs are the basis of some suburbs such as Elwood (Vic.), Rose Bay, and Bondi Beach (NSW). From the 1920s to the 70s, it was a favoured form of home typology.

That’s because 3SWUF offers households all the values of suburbia: ease of access, landscape areas, sunlight, cross ventilation, and open air but in a tighter package with better value and the additional sense of community. It’s the optimum compromise between individuality and density, with a dramatic fivefold reduction in the need for cars, given the increase in proximity to the 3 S's.

But 3SWUFs have been increasingly outlawed, so we need to reverse that trend. It's a tradition that needs to be actively revived, encouraged, and promoted, not simply allowed or tolerated.

Six/Eight Storeys

Many architects believe six-storey housing is ideal: a modest scale that can fit many locations.

The maximum height to maintain a connection with the ground and an optimum density for access to the 3 S’s. It’s the outer end of a relatable scale. And minimum basements can be accommodated.

Traditionally eight storeys was originally a limit: beyond that height the complexity of the services and technology required dramatically increased; the building code required sprinklers, extra hydrants, additional fire stairs and stair pressurisation. But now the code requires all those at 4 storeys, and eight levels are just ‘that much’ too big.

Now we should choose the height in storeys for amenity, not technological, reasons. Six is so much better than eight, even where higher medium density is permitted, in the same way that three is better than four storeys at the lower end of medium density.

High-rise / Ultra-ris

The next leap in size is usually around 20 storeys – a high-rise – which can extend to 40+ storeys – an ultra-high-rise. Although large-scale buildings are popular as a single ‘silver bullet’ for housing provision, they are a niche market with limited social appeal, usually the preserve of the wealthy, not the average family.

There are also adverse environmental outcomes: multiple car parks drive basements deep into the ground (affecting water tables); the shadows cast can be deeply interruptive; and the ‘wind shear’ is problematic.

High- and ultra-high-rise buildings may be efficient in providing density but not necessarily in providing access to the 3 S's, where variety within a dense area is limited and where good outdoor spaces, particularly for schools, are limited.

Summary

The most efficient form of homes for the future is concentrated in the missing middle at a scale of three to six storeys. By decreasing the dependence on a central CBD surrounded by suburbia, we can create a polycentric city, with multiple service centres within walking or cycling distance of apartments and townhouses.

This will reconfigure the entire city for increases in efficiency of all the infrastructure: electricity, water, sewer, stormwater, and the road system. More crucially, the communities retain all the benefits found in individual private houses (identity, amenity, landscape, outdoor space, solar access, and cross-ventilation), but at ten times the density and efficiency.

Perfect for our developing polycultural community.

‘Housing Australia – Noun + Verb' is a forthcoming book by Tone Wheeler, collecting fifty years of work on philosophy, policies, projects, planning, processes and the practice of housing.

Housing Australia: Why we need a greater diversity of designs

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