So you want affordable housing but to live in a quality neighbourhood? So you want to build a large house to use up all your land or build an extension, second storey or large carport but you don’t want your neighbour building out your sunlight or having windows overlooking your bathroom?
So you want to be able to make a fast buck by knocking over your investment ex-guvvie and putting up some units or a dual-occupancy, but you want a city whose built environment is attractive enough so your tenants will want to work here and is not a densely populated urban slum?
These conflicts have been with humans since they first built cities a couple of thousand years ago and have become more intense as democracy and wealth spreads and human populations rise.
The conflicts have abounded in Canberra since self-government in 1989. This week the Government ordered yet another review of the Territory Plan.
Again, developers, business and the real-estate and housing industries will be urging for “cutting red tape” in the name of efficiency, affordability and employment. They will also chime in about global warming and the need for higher density living. These are the same people who have ritually opposed changes in the building code to make dwelling more energy and water-efficient – insulation, water tanks and the like. Profits will not be mentioned in their arguments. These are the people with money, clout and help from lobbyists.
Those arguing for residential amenity, higher (albeit more costly) building standards and a longer-term view not stand to make a profit from their views and will not have the same clout.
But if we are not careful we might lose some of the things that make Canberra special; that make Canberra Canberra.
Any idiot can create bulk, cheap housing. You can look at dozens of cities around the world, especially in the US, that have little that is special or uplifting. And then you can find places that are special and the people who live there are the better for it.
On the western side of Chicago is Oak Park where Frank Lloyd Wright built a house in the last decade of the 19th century. It had the advantage of being on the train line from town, so Wright could have town work and country living. Others commissioned him to build houses for them in the same area. They were in the Prairie style. Like the landscape they were low and flat – an American protest against the showy Victorian style. Other architects followed.
Oak Park remains despite the encroachment of the city. You have to travel 10kms through decaying suburbs to get to Oak Park. When you get there it is an urban oasis. Thousands of tourists and architecture buffs go each year to see it.
In the centre of town, things were different, but respect for architectural talent was the same. Downtown was hemmed in by the two arms of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. There was only one way to go – up. It took the architectural genius of William Le Baron Jenney to realise you could use a skeletal load-bearing steel frame and create a building nine-storeys high. His first skyscraper was finished in 1885. Since then Chicago has been the source of much architectural innovation in quality skyscrapers. They are not dull boxes.
In Savannah, Georgia, residents saved the centre of the city in the 1950s from developers who wanted gas stations, parking lots, large hotels and freeways to replace the splendid, but alas then-decaying mansions, many built before the Civil War.
When a funeral parlor sought to demolish the decaying Isiah Davenport House, for a parking lot in 1954 seven Savannah women bought it and sold it to someone who would restore it. They formed the Savannah Historic Foundation and in a similar way saved about 800 of Savannah’s 1000 or so architecturally worthwhile buildings.
Thousands of tourists and architecture buffs come to see Savannah every year.
Both Savannah and Oak Park remind me somewhat of the residents of Old Red Hill fighting in the courts to save what had been laid out by one of Lloyd Wright’s students, Walter Burley Griffin. Griffin created the large blocks in Old Red Hill for Government Ministers and senior public servants. Yes, it is elitist, but such areas are now rare in the world’s cities. If Old Red Hill had been carved into smaller blocks in the name of efficiency we would have rued the day.
I suspect that the reason we have had so many revisions of the Territory Plan is that developers have never been happy and keep plugging away until they get their way.
In the next review of the plan we should isolate some of things we should keep – things like the National Capital Open Space System which precludes building on the hills and gives Canberra that unique bush city feel.
We should abandon the idea that the building code should be the same of all areas of Canberra. It may be that larger set-backs, smaller building ratios, no front fences and policing of street trees should apply in the older areas of Canberra.
Sue, the national attractions like Parliament House, the Australian War Memorial and the National Gallery will always provide a stream of tourists. But if we fail to ensure that Canberra is not just another city with building as far as the eye can see with little room for trees and few green spaces, Canberra will not be a special place for Australians to visit and be proud of.