being for public open space, and the developer preference
being for an increased building allowance!The traditional format compounds a serious failing with
suburbia: a hollow semblance of green-city layout, but
without open space provisions of worth and utility. This
predilection for single-use zoning and low-density con-
formity stirred Jane Jacobs in her Death and Life of Great
American Cities(1961: 15) to define standard suburban
places as exhibiting ‘a quality even meaner than outright
ugliness or disorder...the dishonest mask of pretending
order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order
that is struggling to be served’. The private home-
ownership ‘premier subdivision’ shown previously (figure 5.3) is notably bereft
of a community focus. The public-housing project shown in figure 5.9 Olwyn
Greenis an improvement, offering a well-designed layout with motor vehicles
constrained (chicanes, speed bumps, road surface changes) enabling use of the
street as a ‘common living room’ playspace.^54
Conventional-density suburbs which maintain privacy spaces, utility
spaces, and community spaces can be successfully designed and built, the key
emphasis being the engagement of good multi-professional design skills.^55 Tradi-
tional subdivisions had the ingredients – private spaces and dwellings, utility
spaces for vehicles and services, open spaces for recreation – but in the wrong
juxtapostioning.236 Practice
Apartments: Lot 17 per cent; road 8
per cent; open space 75 per cent.
Figure 5.9 Olwyn Green: Hamilton, NZ.