Sustainable Urban Planning

let alone meet the recreational needs of the ‘baby strollers’, the

‘soccer mums’ and ‘frisbee dads’.

It is of course easy to decry replica suburban layouts after their

replication! Those engaged in urban design should be able, when

so trained, to discern the essence of good community outcome

from physical layouts drawn on paper. We all have it within

us to suggest and uphold ‘key theme’ excellence (the pursuit of

neighbourliness, higher densities, urban design) believing or

assuming that attention to these factors will ‘magic into being’

future improvements and higher on-sale property values. And we

all, from time to time, harbour perceptions of designs which ‘got

it right’ although we are less certain about the actual essence of

that design correctness – be it street width, plot sizes, public space

security, housing diversity, the landscaping, or a combination of

these elements. And for well-styled neighbourhoods recognized

as such, we are made aware of a connection between good design

and social wellbeing without always understanding how this

came about.

Additional to the box 5.1 principles it is important to ensure

that urbanists exhibit ‘good neighbourhood manners’. To that end

aBasic residential componentryis presented as box 5.2. From a

regional perspective the information given represents settlement

detail: from an urban perspective these are core residential

arrangements akin to the forethought of guilds in earlier cen-

turies. The components given in box 5.2 all warrant elaboration

in detail, although in the context of outcome, the key issues to

highlight are sound policy and good design. There is also the

matter of densification. The aim is for new suburbs to have more

than 50 persons per hectare (more readily understood as 20

households per hectare – 8hh/ac – ‘net’ which includes adjoin-

ing access and excludes peripheral amenity spaces). This target

density would generally be less, for practical reasons, in retro-

fitted suburbs; and preferably more for new development.

The box 5.2 litany implies cultural workability. In order spe-

cifically to identify the ‘social’ elements in urban residential

design, it is helpful to centre in on the following four core design

criteria.^21

1 That for each doubling of intended density there should be at least a fourfold increase

to design input (or design care) – in other words a quadrupling of design effort for a

doubling of density relative to a subject community, subject site complex, and indeed

for the design of each subject building. As a rule of thumb, practitioners are

enjoined to ‘design, design, design’ higher-density projects in order to ensure

that the living offered at those greater densities is indeed ‘higher’ living. This

stricture is crude, but taken on board as social design effort it highlights the

need for lavish inputs of time for handling the siting massing and materials

208 Practice

On design, Alan Kreditor
(1990: 160) observed
that the staff of planning
schools ‘are valued on
the basis of their
research and
publications’ whereas the
staff of architecture
schools ‘seem mostly
valued for the buildings
they have built’ with the
result that ‘planners
seem to have diminishing
interest in design except
for some broader
environmental concerns;
and architects remain
dilettantes when it
comes to serious urban
analysis’.

A quietly voiced field trip
comment: ‘An hour out
here on site is worth ten
hours in lectures.’

People are known to be
wary about densifying
their way of life. In fact
for the Anglo settler
societies the post-World
War II preference and
provision has been the
exact reverse, leading
first to suburbia then
ex-urban sprawl.