The new suburbia; detached buildings so close you wonder why they bother and every mood from drab to dreary. At least you can no longer hear children play… now they’ve been banned.
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The new suburbia; detached buildings so close you wonder why they bother and every mood from drab to dreary. At least you can no longer hear children play… now they’ve been banned.
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Children’s new toy is iphone and ipads.
And people actually aspire to this?
Yes they do. People aspire to owning homes that suit their needs, which may be different to yours. Have you actually looked inside these homes – most are very nice.
And it looks even worse on a satellite image. 1.5m wide gardens on the sides and the back. Which makes the complaints about noise from playing children in the park especially sad.
Is there some set of planning restrictions leading to this kind of development? Like what this blog figured out in Seattle: http://seattleurbanism.blogspot.co.nz/2009/10/townhouses-part-2-problem.html
I have worked with a developer considering to build a very tightly packed, low-cost subdivision like that in Auckland. When hearing that they’d have garden strips each side thin like towels, I asked why they didn’t at least put every two houses together, maximise at least the width of useable land on ONE other side…
His answer was a) banks won’t lend as easily to a house with a joint wall to a second house and b) parents don’t consider it a type of house worth lending money to their kids.
So everyone goes the easy way. Sad.
What a horrible contrast to Hobsonville. CS Lewis describes “a grey suburb, ever expanding outward” as a description of hell.
let me guess Mount Wellington Quarry. The UP will result in worse. Planners do not understand urban design despite thinking they do.
Could be Millwater up near Silverdale – looks like this too.
What your photo shows is the result of greed. What is different between this photo, and say Westmere, is that in Westmere houses were provided with a backyard. That allows for seperation distances, tree planting and an actual suburban existence.
All typologies other than apartments should be provided with ground floor garden space. The only reason for not doing so is greed.
Which brings me to Stonefields. Guess who wrote the planning rules for this area…. The developer!
No-one twists the buyers arms. Commercial success is what it is. This is non-news.
Meet the new suburbia, same as the old suburbia…
I’ve got to disagree, I think it looks fine. The suburbs have always had similar-looking buildings, because most people don’t want to pay extra for something totally bespoke. And slightly detached buildings give you a little more light and air at the expense of just a metre or two or land. My house (built circa 1908) is literally one metre away from its neighbour, and that’s definitely worth it. Lots better than having a party wall and no window at all.
The problem with those new suburbs is that there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, except for get in a car, and drive, and drive, and drive. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with mixed use development, some genuinely useful public space instead of some random grass patches, a better street network, less space wasted on cars, and some decent public transport. The buildings can look the same for all I care.
That said, how hard would it be to buy paint in a colour other than grey?
Stonefields wastes almost nothing on cars. If you have a party, the street will be blocked so the neighbours will not be able to leave their driveways.
Unfortunately a mixed used shop like cafe is too noisy and hard to acquire resource consent.
> too noisy and hard to acquire resource consent
Too noisy for who? A cafe would be pretty similar to, or quieter than, the lawnmowers, parties, and so on you normally get in the ‘burbs. As for resource consent: yes, it is too hard. Urban planning in this country is crap.
Yea I agree with you Steve D. What the point is there is always naysayers who can find a random reason to complain.
There was a news a neighbors complained about the ‘coffee’ smell nearby when a coffee shop wish to get a resource consent for extension.
>as for resource consent, yes it is too hard
Not anymore it isn’t, for instance nowadays you can get a car wash facility to operate near residences 7 days a week without any form of sound mitigation to receive non-notified consent. It’s seemingly only hard to get consent for developments that risk ending up being an amenity to a neighbourhood, such as a café. The world, no Auckland Council’s gone crazy.
>as for resource consent, yes it is too hard
That depends, for instance nowadays you can get a car wash facility to operate near residences 7 days a week without any form of sound mitigation to receive non-notified consent. It’s seemingly only hard to get consent for developments that risk ending up being an amenity to a neighbourhood, such as a café. The world, no Auckland Council’s gone crazy.
The lawns are so small they could be cut with scissors.
Having worked in that industry Steve, I would have to completely disagree with you on what most people want. We had 30odd std designs, but in five years, never built one. What most people wanted was bespoke design, but never thought they could get it and most building companies never offer it. When offered the option most people do want something different, but builders and developers never offer it and people don’t realise they can get it. The economies of prefab, window sizes etc are all still there, as is the economy of consents as all consents are one off. There is a small difference int he cost of drawing up the plans, but that is offset but the sale cost of bespoke houses when selling. The problem these days is builders demand flat sections because they can’t (won’t) build on slopes and want to sub out foundations to rib raft, which is easier, then developers spend millions terraforming hills into flat sites and cutting down small forests to build timber retaining walls. All adding cost when I most cases a bespoke house on a sloping section would be cheaper, if the option actually existed. Add to that the thought that in the 50’s Housing Corp build huge areas of new housing, all the same, all the same material and all the same age, over time they all aged to what, and what became of those housing corp subrubs. Take a look at Taita now, or Naenane in Wellington.
> I would have to completely disagree with you on what most people want.
I didn’t say people didn’t want something bespoke, just that they weren’t willing to pay extra for it. I want a V8, but I’m not willing to pay extra for it, so I have a four-cylinder.
I don’t doubt your experience, but I’m talking about the vast majority of suburbs that were built from 1920-1990 or so, back when we were still building houses for ordinary people. These days, building a new house is the preserve only of the rich, and they of course can splash out on bespoke designs, sloping sections, etc.
In most cases, they actually don’t have to pay more for it. It depends a lot however on the people involved and also who they go to. Builders and the spec home companies offer no options other than the std plans, architects tend to put them selves on a pedestal and price themselves out, architectural designers take over the field, when it should not be there preserve and they often lack the practical knowledge to keep costs down. Working to sht sizes, economies of size etc etc. Reduce wastage on site and costs come down. When I was in that market, we built houses for solo mums, young couples etc, admittedly not in Auckland, Auckland has its own problems. One day these mass produced sub-divisions will look very different. I’m not sure it will be a positive aging that occurs.
The real problem with this sort of thoughtless development is that we are lumbered with it. It is truly remarkable how long the Victorian suburbs have survived and that is only partly down to how robust the building typology is [ie keeps the water out], it is much more to do with the inertia of built value. It costs a lot to by a property with a building on it and start again. This is usually only possible if the new structure provides significantly more value. Either because the underlying land has appreciated greatly, or, especially, because a higher density can be applied to the site.
No, we are going to be lumbered with these crapy buildings for decades and decades. The new sprawl, the semi-dense kind, makes for the worst of both worlds: a dispersed typology on a dense pattern.
At least the sixties and seventies sprawl ‘burbs are now redeemed by trees. There little no room for these places to get such an uplift.
Every room has windows in a typical nice terraced street somewhere like suburban London – but they also have decent sized yards and much better use of equivalent land area. I’d rather have a solid brick party wall between me and the neighbours than glass and sheer curtains inadequately obscuring partially clothed, auto-dependency-induced obesity and accompanying bodily noises
Agreed. And if any of the people complaining had actually travelled overseas or lived in Asian countries – these homes are just what a large chunk of our immigrant population want. Discrete with decent internal space and little section to have to maintain. Quit carrying on about it and realize that different houses, different folks. What a storm in a teacup about nothing. Can’t even believe it’s a subject worth getting excited about. It’s a commercial enterprise and the homes sell. Sellers and buyers are happy.
A commercial enterprise grossly distorted by regulation.
That’s a good point. For me, coming from Europe, it looks odd. There a development with similar density usually would be terraced housing, with a small garden in the back.
But I had a random look at Tokyo on Google Maps, and you indeed see a lot of free-standing houses with just tiny alleys between them. And yes, I’m also one of those people not willing to maintain a big garden.
Could have said the same about Westmere in 1927?
It probably would have had red corrugated roofs. That’s one of the things I loved about the antipodes when I arrived 40 odd years ago – the red roofs. They were a nice splash of colour.
Can’t have roofs like that in Stonefields, because the run off (tin, lead, other heavy metals, bits of stone and tar) from a “tin roof” or those fake tile roofs would contaminate the Waiatarua reserve (where all storm water ends up from Stonefields).
So developer says to buyers its tile roofs or nothing, of course they could be red tiled roofs, but they doen’t blend in like grey ones do so council planners don’t like it – “can’t have too many “look at me” buildings in the ‘burbs, got plenty of those in town” is what they say – so thats why they’re all tiles and 50 shades of ’em.
No. The difference between the periods is the size of the dwelling to the plot. What’s ghastly about this is by insisting on fully detached buildings with this kind of site coverage is that there is no usable outdoor space, and that you have all of the burdens of whole building maintenance without the advantages.
This is a a density that cries out for terrace housing. This is essentially a Georgian scale of landuse but without the genius of the Georgian pattern of landuse. It is attempting the Georgian land/dwelling ratio with a 20C sprawl building typology. Stupid. Instead, by having a couple of shared walls and all the land grouped together front and/or back it is usable. A 1.5m strip down each side is useless and a burden. This is dumb planning, dumb design, and downright ugly and inefficient.
And the grey is vile. And, is it?, mandated. If so; this is enforced miserablism.
As well as dwelling, plot and architectural features, I’d suggest that suburbia is defined by the arrangement of buildings in relation to each other, in a tree-like street network. By contrast, Westmere in 1927 had a beautiful, dense grid of streets, which has thankfully survived. Our challenge will be to rehabilitate some semblance of a well-connected grid out of the new suburbs (at least for non-motorised and PT modes).
Yes, and why? because they were formed by the tram network. All our old ‘streetcar suburbs’ also have walking connections, shortcuts especially designed to give people moving under their own power the best and most direct routes, especially to main roads where there is always shops and other amenity and the Transit stops.
The colour is pretty drab but that can be changed. Most people are probably happy to be living in their houses, even with only a couple of metres between them. Does anyone know what the average ownership/tenancy time is for an inner city apartment? I liked Stonefields much better when it was a productive quarry and you could go to the top of Mt Wellington and see the shot blasters in action.
“And the grey is vile. And, is it?, mandated. If so; this is enforced miserablism.”
This is a master planned development with covenants up the wazoo on all properties (real and imagined). Council says can’t have light coloured blank walls facing the street.
But says nothing about “bland walls” which these are.
So most people won’t paint it any other colour but what it is already, and they can’t touch the roof for runoff pollution reasons.
And they know the neighbours will complain if they don’t keep the colour as it is – for ruining the amenity and resale value of THEIR houses.
So yes its enforced miserablism – enforced by the developer, the council and the owners belief/concern over “what the neighbours think”.
I really don’t get it – all the new divisions have are housing staring at each other from a meter away. My apartment has 50+m clearance on one side and 6-7 in the lightwell to my neighbour. What is the benefit of freestanding in this situation?
Freehold title are generally more desirable than a title with body-corp. So a ‘standalone’ house sells more.
Ad-jointed house/apartments has legal complication and sometimes restrictions when one owner wants to do something with his house.
Our law are pretty much pro house.
Having the gap also makes it possible to give every room daylight and air, even if it’s just from just a one metre gap. The difference between no window at all and a 1m outlook is bigger than the difference between a 1m outlook and a 7m outlook.
You don’t have a body corp for a duplex or terrace, just sometimes an agreement over the party wall which basically says if you damage or modify the common wall you are liable to keep the other persons house standing up.
In some cases they just build to separate structural walls next to each other and the boundary goes between them.
Also you probably don’t mean freehold, freehold refers to when you own rather than lease the land and has nothing to do with body corporates. Most apartments are freehold (I.e. the owners own all the land between them rather than leasing the land from a third party), and standalone houses can be leasehold (bunch of these around Mission Bay and Kohimarama for some reason).
Another thing is quite a lot of new standalone housing is being sold with body corporate structures (and levies) anyway.
Steve, you can have terraced houses that have light and windows in every room, thats actually the norm. Don’t need a 1m strip for a window, that’s just shoddy design.
Yip. The only 2 rooms without windows, in our terrace, are the 2 bathrooms.
I don’t get this argument about body-corporate. It’s common in a lot of places to have terraced houses on freehold sections.
And, are you allowed to have big windows in your side wall if there is another house 1 meter away? I have seen some plans with only tiny windows in those walls. Maybe that’s because of privacy concerns.
Not under the unitary plan you can’t, need several metres of outlook space from any bedroom or living room (but not bathroom or utility rooms).
The short answer is probably it’s an easier product for developers to sell – and that’s because there is more certainty and/or less complexity in the land title. No party walls, no body corp fees, no common areas or shared spaces….
The other issue these days is Sum Insured insurance. My aunt is in a block of units that are group insured, and the other residents refused to insure for the Sum Insured value she thought was required. In a total loss situation, she could now be under insured against her own wishes. That’s not an issue in a stand alone, separately insured property.
It’s just inertia, the construction industry is geared up to build stand alone timber framed houses, and people think they need a standalone timber framed house. I think it really is just nobody really thinks to do much different, although the likes of stonefields shows the winds of change may be starting to blow.
My prediction is that someone in the next few years will get the formula right for good terraced houses and make a mint (I have designs that it’s me, but probably not…).
Each with spare bathroom and two spare bedrooms
They’re lucky just to be able to buy them.
I thought blandness meant affordability?
No blandness means bigger profits for the developer. got nothing to do with affordability.
same distance as any 2 houses in Ponsonby…
With none of the charm. An unlike Ponsonby, never will have any until the day they’re bulldozed to make way for something else [or Mt Wellington erupts and covers Stonefields with ash – and then the grey roofs will match the surroundings for once in their life].
True dat.
Ponsonby houses have a certain level of ornament that makes squished together homes visually pleasing en masse. This grey box nightmare will only improve with painting, trees and enough trim to give them some sort of character.
It truly is a depressing place to visit
Ponsonby was built as same same cheap characterless worker housing, much of it simple slab fronted weatherboard boxes with tin roofs. It’s only a hundred years or so of intertive change that has made it charming.
Err- I’m pretty sure those villas you’re talking about had finials and corbels and differing amount of lace. This is called “Ornament”.
Oh yeah, and original villas were colourful too. So not really the same at all?
Yes famous for the pretty villa, but ut in reality most of them aren’t actually villas with corbels and frippery. Of course some streets have lots of villas, but much of it is a lot are very basic.
Take a look around here for example: https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/25+Summer+St,+Ponsonby,+Auckland+1011/@-36.8518453,174.7429247,18z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x6d0d479089443a49:0x8fad8d950892be61
A few doors down from the main road and it’s plain worker cottages.
The six cottages in a street of 90 villas?
If your point is to show Stonefields looks nothing like Ponsonby did, or does now even, then you’ve made it?
Not just there, take a walk down the street. Most of those villas are actually very basic flat fronted weatherboard houses. Only one in three or so are the classic bay window ornamented villa. Ponsonby was built as a working class suburb with cheap houses.
The point is simply that these neighbourhoods were also built in a carbon copy form, with most of the dwellings very similar to their neighbours and many (most perhaps) built for economy without much flair or ornamentation.
It’s only a matter of time before the likes of Stone fields develops into more varied and nuanced appearance, and I’m sure in sixty or seventy years people will remark about the classic detailing on the best examples of those period houses.
Eww youck. It looks like a nightmare.
Do any of these houses have a driveway I guess there is a big road in between each row of houses. Which is a waste of space when you could have a 3m wide drive serving up to 8 houses and have larger space between streets. That will be my theory in getting more houses in a smaller area.
Also these people (developers) building large clumps of the same house need there head read.
And for the new drab of drab, removing hills to make flat sections for New Zealands high standard of lazy architecture.
I think having a house dug in or hanging over a slope gives a house so much more character.
My question is what has happened to architecture since the 60s and 70s.
Can we get rid of these barby doll houses please.
If you are comparing like with like for you 1960 and 1970s question this is the style of house you should be comparing it to.
http://www.realestate.co.nz/2407431
Yes that is a geed example of a typical low cost 60s house.
Im going from what i see where i live, the north shore. And After the bridge went up it was mass development. And most of the houses are 60 70s and most built large and resemble the nz batch. And built into the landscape usually 2 level with cylinder block lower and low pitch roof.
In a globally warming world all those roof tiles should be white or at least one of the whiter 50 shades of grey!
Interesting. I actually like this….
I do agree that the better approach would be to have one common wall, allowing for some space down each side. Semi-Detached. But overall it strikes the balance between density, people’s desire to live close to the CBD while also allowing them their own stand-alone piece of paradise without the massive maintenance effort that goes with the “1/4 acre block” or however small it is these days.
I also think the shot is a little misleading. if you look at the first 2.5 houses behind the two in the foreground, they are all subtly different. I think this is more noticeable at ground level. Over time, people will grow different trees and flowers, they’ll re-paint their houses different colours, , and it won’t look so cookie-cutter.
Aside from being banned from the park, kids could play relatively safely on the streets in close proximity to neighbours. There will be cars, bikes, kites, on-road cricket and soccer games….
I’d live there – rapid PT amenity permitting….
“they’ll re-paint their houses different colours”
You’d think, but people that buy those houses there don’t want to have to (re)paint their houses – ever – so won’t happen soon. And this is a master planned development with covenants up the wazoo on all properties (real and imagined). So most people won’t paint it any other colour but what it is already as they know the neighbours will complain if they don’t – for ruining the amenity and resale value of THEIR houses.
“I’d live there – rapid PT amenity permitting”
you’ll be waiting a long time then.
Feels like a lot of the people commenting on here know absolutely nothing about the area and have never been to Stonefields. This photo looks like it is taken from the top of Mt. Wellington which gives you a view dominated by grey roofs. The experience at street level for a pedestrian is vastly different and much more pleasant than many Auckland suburbs and the locality is maturing year after year. The photo also gives the impression that the suburb is dominated with standalone homes which is definitely not the case. There are a wide range of housing options available with a mixture of standalone homes, terraces, duplex townhouses and apartments. Plenty of housing choice and from what I have seen, a diverse range of residents too in different stages of their lives. I am not sure if I could say the same for other areas in Auckland, Ponsonby included. That’s not to say it’s all perfect but I encourage those that haven’t been to this part of Auckland to have a look around. Great coffee at the local market and walking distance from the 3 new apartment blocks 🙂
from what I see the problem is, developers these days seam to like selling complete land house packages. Unlike earlier decades they just surveyed up some land put in access and utilities and left it to the buyer to flattern it and put there house on it, and it would be highly unlikely it was going to be the same as there neighbors. And men had a larger role in the purchase and design. So not many barby doll houses built in that time ether.
The other problem is people’s attachment to street side sections. For some reason. Maybe they don’t like walking driving long driveways or maybe its putting there rubbish next to there neighbors. I don’t know.
Long driveways. Because Auckland was too cheap to install streets.
Isn’t this a big piece of non-news? No-one forces anyone to buy any particular house. If these homes were as God-awful as all the respondents here think, then they wouldn’t sell. It scares me that something like this creates so much backlash on a blog like this. Nuts.
A quick Google image search of Stonefields would suggest the reality is somewhat different to that portrayed in the selected photo above.
Which may suggest the story here is less to do with the quality of Stonefields as a development and more to do with the prejudices of the author…
This is absolutely about the ‘prejudices’ of the author. What on earth are you expecting? Valueless opinion? It’s certainly not what you are expressing.
Hi Ricardo, you say that but with the way Auckland’s housing costs are sky rocketing (much like the South East of England where I live), first home buyers are often forced in to buying what they do not like as its all that they can afford.
I make no mention of Stonefields above. My attention was drawn to this part of it, as a particularly poor outcome. There are other better built responses to there, although on the whole there are still clear structural problems with the entire planning. Especially with the absence of deliberate, clear, and focussed attention on connecting this new medium density development to the nearby Rapid Transit stations. For it is that that would make this land use more effective, the density more viable, and the surrounding streets and roads much less negatively affected at the peaks by the new traffic volume that this place is generating.
Another issue is the speed of the road design; way way too fast. This is a dangerously detailed poor example of traffic engineering in a context of promoted auto-dependency. On the whole, despite the apartments and terraces, this is a fail by the planning authority and the developer.
Additionally much of the design is poor and grey and dreary, but that is my personal, though not uninformed view.
Then why didn’t you say so instead of running with inflammatory headlines and ridiculous statements about children being banned?
Reads as if it’s been designed to attract a certain reaction. And appears to have succeeded.
Children **are** banned from playing in the local park at Stonefields because local residents claimed the noise of children playing on the flying fox affected their quality of life.
Its not inflammatory if its true.
They didn’t **ban** children. They closed down a flying fox. Which was deeply unpopular with many residents at the time.
Doesn’t matter whether you ban the books or burn them – the results are the same.
Same here, you ban the kids from using the only reason they use the park, you’ve banned the kids from using the park. End of story.
And the council said upfront the flying fox and its noise wasn’t the problem – it was the noise **the kids made** as they used it “that was over the noise limits”.
So they canned the flying fox solely to shut the kids up. If that isn’t banning the kids then what is?
No self-respecting kid (or adult) would dare or want to use that park after that little kerfuffle. Knowing that the locals don’t want them there.
The local residents also complained that the “park” and its sandy covering made their neighbourhood “into a beach”, and they didn’t want that either.
So basically, you got some NIMBYs who got the kids banned.
Tony: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11388340
Yes, and?
Most can work it for themselves, but just for you Tony: Grey people in grey houses.
I also thought the banned children remark was obviously a reference to the flying fox at Stonefields.
The street design is not too different from, say, Ponsonby? Although I think the corner radii are larger. Too bad they didn’t abolish this practice of not having zebra crossings, and aligning the stop line to the roadway and not the footpath.
At least it’s not this ratmaze of crescents and cul-the-sacs you see in so many other places.
Now, for people on the outside of their cars: is there a pedestrian link to the shops on Lunn Ave?
“is there a pedestrian link to the shops on Lunn Ave?”
There was an informal one that the residents formed as they toiled up the slope from the quarry depths to the Lunn Ave shops.
That route is now fenced off from use using 6 foot high chain link fence.
Perhaps they should add a note to the fence.
“Please travel inside your car at all times.”
http://stonefields.org.nz/news/
I think single family detached can be awesome in the back streets, see this photo essay on Setagaya-ku in Western Tokyo for an example: http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/061211.html. Small lot sizes and narrow streets help.
That’s a good example. Despite it’s density, a significant portion of Tokyo’s housing is detached single family homes. It’s a shame that our road standards prohibit narrow streets like that, and our planning rules mostly prohibit small plots of land. In Auckland greenfield developments roads take up about a third of developable land. New Zealand’s requirement for wide roads in subdivisions are an overlooked part of housing affordability and make it difficult for new suburbs to be anything other than autodependent.
Exactly Frank.
Freeman’s Bay has bunch of 200m2 sections with 100m2 houses that are very popular even 100 years on.
The former Admin wrote a great post about it a few years back..
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2011/07/31/two-types-of-urban-development/
At 50 homes per hectare all with gardens that’s pretty darn good density….
Nice. Actually most of the nicer parts of Sydney (e.g. Glebe, Newtown, Paddington, Woollahra) have lot sizes of 100-150m2, now I think about it (and even then with many too-wide streets)…
Wish we could embed photos on this blog!
If the house is nice inside and there is enough light getting in, then most people will be happy enough with the dwelling itself. Other factors like traffic, amenities, services and recreational areas are important. If you can’t see a nice space right out your own window….you’ll be happy enough if you can take a short walk to the end of the street to get it. I’ve lived in developments like this overseas. Typically, significant green space was required between blocks of detached and semi-detached houses. Mainly so kids had somewhere to play…..as many people buy first homes with kids in mind. Though I noted that in winter in Canada these open areas were often wind-swept wastelands dominated by snow drifts….with the occasional home made ice rink created by those motivated to do it.
Nothing a coat of paint can’t fix