The Legislative Assembly’s planning and environment committee has sent the government back to the drawing board with its proposals over higher density development along Northbourne Avenue.
The Government wants to have higher densities and more redevelopment closer to the city and less redevelopment further from the city. The Liberal member of the committee, Louise Littlewood, dissented from the committee’s view. She said it was appropriate to have more high density close to the city where employment opportunities were greater.
The chair of the committee, Independent MLA Michael Moore, said a balance of densities was preferable to give residents greater choice and to minimise social problems.
There may be a special case for more high-density redevelopment near the city than other parts of the city. Nonetheless, the lessons of Kingston should be heeded to. It would not be desirable for the whole of Braddon and a large part of Turner to be given over to wall-to-wall medium- and high-density housing. It would mean changing the whole character of the area. As with Kingston, all existing residents would have to move and a whole new group who liked medium-density would move in. There is no choice in that arrangement. Further the social consequences are undesirable. It is better to have a mix of ages and living styles in a suburb. That makes better use of the range of existing infrastructure because a monoculture of medium-density dwellers tends to use similar infrastructure services and ignore others.
But there is a fundamental conflict here. Developers much prefer to redevelop in large chunks because it is cheaper than doing small pockets or clusters of redevelopment. There are economies of scale in developing large tracts. Also it is, at least initially, more profitable to build in rectangular blocks rather than creating interesting angulations and environmentally friendly orientations. These are costly and result in fewer units per given area. But in the long run it is less costly for the community to create interesting, varied and environmentally responsible residential environments even if it does cost more initially.
Mr Moore is right to urge a rethink of the potential Kingstonisation of the inner north.