Urban intensification gets a lot of criticism for supposedly wanting to force “high rise” development onto everyone – whether they want it or not. This came through in a recent NZ Herald article which broke the news of the Auckland Plan backing down on wanting 75% of all urban development to occur through intensification:
Auckland Council has eased up on its vision of squeezing residents up closer by keeping 75 per cent of new housing on existing land and just 25 per cent outside the limits within the next three decades.
Instead, it is now discussing a 60/40 split, which the development sector is hailing as a victory after intense opposition and lobbying and independent reports which criticised the original scheme as unworkable.
The image of high-rise hell in heritage waterfront suburbs such as Birkenhead and Northcote caused an outcry…
Inevitably, such emotive language makes people think of previous developments which are seen as intensification failures – and unfortunately Auckland is quite full of them. Whether it be the chicken-coop apartments on Nelson Street or out of place towers in Herne Bay:
The Herne Bay towers are an interesting example of an important distinction to make: high-rise and high density are not necessarily the same thing. Take the closest of the two towers in the image above – known as the “Shangri-La”. It’s comprised of a mere 16 apartments (one for each floor presumably) and sites on a site of 3070 square metres, most of which is garages and asphalt for cars to manoeuvre: 
At one unit per 192 square metres of land, the tower is actually not particularly high density at all. Sure, it’s denser than most typical standalone houses, but it’s extremely easy to build significantly higher densities than this without needing high-rise development at all. In fact, there’s a good example of this just a few minutes away on Sheehan Street, around the back of “Three Lamps” in Ponsonby:
Not more than three levels in height, tucked quite close to the street with parking around the back.
So what kind of density do these terraced houses reach? Well we have 29 units on this site and a total area of 3552 square metres – so an average density of one unit per 122 square metres – a full 36% denser than Shangri-La!
While in some areas high-rise residential development will be an appropriate way to intensify, we need to break the connection that high-density automatically means high-rise apartments. Each Sheehan Street terraced house has a small courtyard, a deck, there’s a shared (admittedly quite small) green space in the internal area for residents to share. Each place has its own front door and a direct pedestrian link to the street – all at a density significantly higher than that of a 16 level tower block.
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Those Herne Bay towers can take quite a lot of the blame for the public’s dislike of intensification I think. To learn that they aren’t even high density just rubs salt into that wound.
Who the heck allowed them to be built?
Good question.
I always remember the urban legend (presumably) that the first buyers for the top Shangri-La penthouses turned out in fact to be fronts for the Mongrel Mob, who subsequently publicly announced they were shifting in – and were promptly bought out by the horrified developer, earning the Mob a tidy profit in the process.
Hey mate,
I would get all your facts right before you go mouthing off about something like this.
I happen to know the developer quite well, so I thought I would correct you on a few matters.
1) ‘Out of place tower’ is an opinion, not a fact.
2) There is no asphalt. Have you actually visited it? The garages are all on the outside, and it is not very hard to manoveuvre, unless you’re an idiot.
3)You compare it to that of ‘three lamps’. For a start, high rises, in every other city, (apart from the ones in your brain) are the solution to density problems. Even so, those apartments you mentioned are chicken coups compared to Shangri La.
I know that I would rather live in Shanri La than a modern day coronation St.
You also fail to recognise that a lot of Shangri La ‘wasted’ space is taken up by a tennis court, pool, club room, and pavillion. Which, by the way, totally contradicts the argument that high rise apartments cause ‘loneliness’ or anti social tendancies.
Oh and by the way, the first buyers of Shangri La were not Mongrel Mob. That happened to Westwater (the one down the road) but never happened to Shangri La. In fact, everyone who bought apartments were screened.
Way to totally miss the point Cameron!
Good work Matt. An important distinction to make.
You are very much correct that arguments surrounding urban form often translate to high rise vs suburbs and I come across it a lot. I call this the ‘polarised city’ which is an extremely simplified view used of a false dichotomy used to raise emotions in the argument (often against densification).
Sadly the debate seems to have lowered to the point where people are treating this as a fight to stop Auckland becoming Hong Kong. The reality is this will never happen.
Even worse than this is how business park development has been allowed to run free in East Tamaki / Highbrook. The amount of land given over to parking is staggering. Check Google out for Fisher and Paykel Healthcare. Their carpark is huge. The wastage of land in Auckland is obscene.
Comment-There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy.
High buildings have no genuine advantages,except in speculative gains for banks and land owners. They are not cheaper,they do not help to create open space,they destroy the townscape,they destroy social life,they promote crime,they make life difficult for children,they are expensive to maintain,they wreck the open spaces near them and they damage light and air and view. But apart from all this, which shows they aren’t very sensible,empirical evidence shows they can actually damage people’s minds and feelings.
The strongest evidence comes from D.M.Fanning (“Families in Flats”)British Medical Journal,18 November 1967 pp.382-386. Fanning shows a direct correlation between the incidence of mental disorder and the height of peoples apartments. The higher people live off the ground the more they are likely to suffer mental illness. And it is not simply a case of people prone to mental illness choosing high rise apartments. Fanning shows that the correlation was strongest for people who spend the most time in their apartments. Among the families he studied, the correlation was strongest for women who spend the most time in their apartments,less so for children and weakest for men who spend the least amount of time in their apartments.
A simple mechanism may explain this: high rise living takes people away from the ground and away from casual, everyday society, that occurs on the footpaths and streets and on porches and gardens. It leaves them alone in their apartments. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which takes people out into the world the tendency is to stay home,alone. The forced isolation then causes individual breakdowns.
Fanning’s findings are reinforced by Dr. D Cappon’s clinical experiences(Canadian Public Health-April 1971) and others. Children in high-rise are active later and are less well socialised and adolescents suffer more from the “nothing to do” ennui etc. etc.
Conclusion: The problems begin when buildings are more than four stories high. Therefore in any urban area,no matter how dense,keep the majority of buildings four stories or less. It is possible that certain buildings may exceed this limit, but they should never be buildings for human habitation
That’s why everyone in Hong Kong is crazy right? Seriously I could poke a million holes in this and I will.
1. You’ve picked two journal articles from middle of last century as your supporting arguments. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then including the rise of the premium high rise apartment building. This was also just after the post war period when governments were faced with rebuilding as quickly as possible destroyed infrastructure and housing and facing a massive growth in the population. This is why apartment buildings of the era are crappy and ill thought out. You can hardly compare an apartment in a park in Stoke with Trump Towers in New York or even a Metropolis or Silo apartment with all the amenities of a modern city a 30 second list ride away.
2. You state social isolation is caused by being high off the ground making going out a “formal and awkward” process. How is this any different to living on a farm? You’re far more isolated from “casual, everyday society” when you have to make an hour long drive to get to town than a 30 second lift ride.
3. The two references refer to families. The majority of households in Auckland have no children. Therefore your references have no relevance to half the households of Auckland.
Conclusion: Your conclusion is wrong as it based on faulty logic.
Well said. Ironically, the suburbs are perhaps one of the most disconnected places people live. At least in the elevator you can strike up a conversation with a pretty girl/boy in apartment block.
Regardless, this post is about how we do not need to live in high rise buildings (!) to achieve high density.
Didn’t we diagnose “suburban neurosis” at about the same time, for housewives isolated in suburbs with few facilities?
“A simple mechanism may explain this: high rise living takes people away from the ground and away from casual, everyday society, that occurs on the footpaths and streets and on porches and gardens. It leaves them alone in their apartments. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which takes people out into the world the tendency is to stay home,alone. The forced isolation then causes individual breakdowns.”
Hmm, lets just change one set of words:
“A simple mechanism may explain this: cul-de-sac living takes people away from casual, everyday society, that occurs on the footpaths and streets and on porches and gardens. It leaves them alone in their set back houses. The decision to go out for some public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task which takes people out into the world the tendency is to stay home,alone. The forced isolation then causes individual breakdowns.”
This (http://www.haboakus.co.uk/) is Kevin McCloud’s development in Swindon, UK. I think it’s another example of the density Auckland will need, but it proves that it can also be communal, aesthetically pleasing and desirable.
All it would take is one or two ‘daring’ developments like this to generate curiosity and interest.
Surely it must cost a developer the same or less to build a higher-density development on a smaller, more valuable piece of land, than a sprawling suburb of 1/4 acre sites.
Yes, a few good quality developments would definitely help to show that higher densities are livable. A few weeks ago I pointed out an area near me with a decent density even when you included roads and a park. One thing I have noticed is that the park is almost always in use by the local kids and is probably much better utilised than most. Some will say that they have no choice but to use the park due to not having a big backyard but a positive side effect seems to be that interact with other local kids a lot more which is something you don’t see in more ‘sprawl’ suburbs. Further due to the layout with houses surrounding most of the park many of their parents can keep an eye on them while doing things like cooking dinner. This means they can let the kids play without strict supervision which something many of us probably remember from our time as kids and something you woudln’t see so much in other areas of the city.
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2012/02/10/what-does-density-look-like/
That’s a very good point Matt. Back in the 70’s, when I was a bit younger, the place we lived in had a park / playground out the back fence. From memory, about 14 houses backed onto this park and every day after school there were kids everywhere. Heck, if our current house backed onto a park, I would have put the tramp out there for all and sundry to use. It seems such a waste for it to be used just by us 3 (and the big sandpit for that matter).
The big problem of course is that all houses these days seem to be oriented for access by the motor car.
I dunno. The Haboakus “triangle” still looks pretty car dominated. And where are those fields Kevin is standing in? That ain’t the same architecture in the background…
“most of which is garages and asphalt”? The pic shows two tennis courts and a swimming pool taking up nearly half the land area of the Shangrila apartments. Can’t see any communal open space in the Sheehan St complex.
Well I certainly wasn’t advocating more greenfield quarter acre sprawl. Phil is right. We do not need to live in high rise to achieve high density. I didn’t know anything about Haboakus but it looks pretty good to me.
The anti-high density (and anti-high rise) view is just another example of “the rest of the world is wrong – we’ll do it differently in Auckland, thanks”.
Public transport, sports stadiums, urban planning, architecture, – you name it. Its just baffles me why Auckland looks at things that work in other cities and then responds with “won’t work here” – and then the NIMBYs whinge at the consequences.
I lived in the Blake St/Shenan St complex for a time and it would be fair to say while it illustrates your point on density in just about every other respect it shows the issues we face in increasing density.
The units were badly constructed and needed substantial rebuilding work recently. The floor size of each unit was around 200sqm but badly laid out so most units were occupied by couples (each unit consisted of 2 bedrooms plus a huge top floor that most used as the main bedroom), which is an extreme waste of space (by comparison I live in a 110sq villa now and have 2 extra people living here who weren’t around then). The ‘shared green space’ was good for the outlook but never used as a communal space. Access from each apartment was downstairs via the garage and across the driveway so quite cut off. We had endless issues with Stebbings duplication- they had a fan that blew into the compound night and day and was extremely noisy to the point of affecting sleep. It took about a year of complaints and work with the council to have this fixed.
Prior to that I lived on the 11th floor of a downtown apartment block for 3 years so according to Warren’s summation was crazy by then.
I think that what we really need to make clear is that people in this city have a range of needs for accommodation that change as they do. The ‘quarter acre dream’ in but a phase in most people’s life- maybe a long one, but a phase non the less. How often is the story of a large house for sale ended with the ‘Ken and Joan are looking to downsize now all the children have moved out’? For many, even most, a stand alone house on a large section is not what they want in the stage of life they are in, and this (non-stand along housing) part of the market has, in general, been poorly served. While there have been some standout developments, too often the results have been badly designed and poorly constructed.
My friend who moved to Auckland in 2004 constantly criticises the Sentinal in Takapuna for its poor design.
However looking at the following photo I wonder if he has a point-:
http://www.nz.open2view.com/tour/photo/260597/6
Is it a bath with a view or a good view (from the street below) of someone having a bath?
Hey mate,
I would get all your facts right before you go mouthing off about something like this.
I happen to know the developer quite well, so I thought I would correct you on a few matters.
1) ‘Out of place tower’ is an opinion, not a fact.
2) There is no asphalt. Have you actually visited it? The garages are all on the outside, and it is not very hard to manoveuvre, unless you’re an idiot.
3)You compare it to that of ‘three lamps’. For a start, high rises, in every other city, (apart from the ones in your brain) are the solution to density problems. Even so, those apartments you mentioned are chicken coups compared to Shangri La.
I know that I would rather live in Shanri La than a modern day coronation St.
You also fail to recognise that a lot of Shangri La ‘wasted’ space is taken up by a tennis court, pool, club room, and pavillion. Which, by the way, totally contradicts the argument that high rise apartments cause ‘loneliness’ or anti social tendancies.
Oh and by the way, the first buyers of Shangri La were not Mongrel Mob. That happened to Westwater (the one down the road) but never happened to Shangri La. In fact, everyone who bought apartments were screened.