Author:Felicity Lewis

Development of new housing in Sydney is highly polarised, with a disproportionate number of one and two-bedroom apartments at one end of the spectrum and detached houses at the other end. However, as the size of all dwelling types shrinks, the gap in the middle is becoming wider. Medium density housing typologies such as terraces and townhouses play an important role in filling the gap known as the ‘missing middle’. They often represent the best of low-rise, high density living within proximity to shops and transport by providing a relatively cost-efficient home, often with a small garden.

According to ABS data from 2022-23, the cost of building a new townhouse in NSW is, on average, almost 9% cheaper than building an apartment, and 18% cheaper than building a new house¹. Townhouses in NSW are, on average, about 30% smaller than detached housing, but 55% larger than the average apartment². Terraces and townhouses generally also have more private open space than apartments. This shows that townhouses sit in a ‘sweet spot’, typically larger than apartments, slightly smaller than a house and cheaper to construct.

This data also points to an interesting trend as in the ten years between 2012-13 and 2022-23, in NSW, new apartments and houses have reduced in floor area by 18% and 7% respectively, while new townhouses have not changed in size. This means that the relative advantage of houses providing more space is reducing, and the advantage of townhouses providing more space than apartments is increasing.

While the provision of smaller apartments increases the number of dwellings with smaller floor areas, this increase in housing diversity needs to be offset by the provision of more family size apartments and an increase in medium size dwelling types like terraces and townhouses. Smaller apartments provide fewer bedrooms, a key determinant of population density. In Greater Sydney, 60% of all apartments are two-bedroom, while just under 16% of apartments have three bedrooms or more³.

A study⁴ by the Grattan Institute in 2011 found that the ‘number of bedrooms’ ranked highest in the What Matters Most survey about dwelling preferences across Sydney and Melbourne. Whether the home is detached ranked 5^th and having a big garden ranked 20^th. Survey participants across all groups had a high preference for locational features such as proximity to local shops and public transport. Having a detached house ranked higher (2^nd and 3^rd) for couples without children (aged 45-64 and aged 18-44) than it did across the overall group. However, the big garden becomes a higher priority for ‘young couples with children’ (ranking 7^th) it did not rank in the top ten for the groups without children. All of this suggests that while the number of bedrooms is a ‘deal-breaker’, and the proximity to local shops and transport is often a high consideration, the preferences for the type of dwelling (whether it is detached) and the size of the outdoor space are more varied. 

As overall dwelling sizes decrease, combined with an increasing demand for more dwellings in well-located, infill areas, it seems inevitable that the detached house will continue to be replaced by higher density dwellings. As the detached house is slowly shrinking in size and the townhouse remains about the same, the differences in these housing types will become less pronounced. And as apartments get smaller, the need for smaller townhouses and terraces also increases. This all points to a need for medium density housing to not just ‘fill a gap’ by providing additional dwellings, but also deliver a diversity of housing including townhouses and terraces.

References

1. Australian Bureau of Statistics (April 2024) ‘Building Activity Average Cost (dollars)’ [data set], Building Activity Australia, accessed 9 May 2024.
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics (April 2024) ‘Building Activity Average Floor Area (square metres)’ [data set], Building Activity Australia, accessed 9 May 2024.
3. Taylor, Andrew. “Can Big Apartments Solve Sydney’s Housing Crisis?” Sydney Morning Herald, June 25^th, 2023.
4. Weidman B. & Kelly J. (2011). The Grattan Institute, “What Matters Most, Housing Preferences Across the Australian Population.”

By Nicky Hughes
Consultant

Everyone is talking about AI, but how it will affect urban design is still unclear. While this technology is developing, understanding it now will ensure we are primed to take advantage of emerging tools as they become available to us. 

We sorted the most relevant current tools according to three broad uses: writing, ideation and visualisation. 

Writing: Writing help comes with a low barrier to entry: simply chat to ChatGPT, Bard or Copilot, and thanks to Natural Language Models their applications are limited only by imagination. For urban design, AI can suggest a report structure, turn bullet points into paragraphs, summarise text, or act as a phrase thesaurus. We found that good results require thoughtful prompts, substantial editing and thorough fact checking. Remember that your input could become another user’s output, so never disclose confidential or sensitive information. Issues of bias and copyright can also be problematic. It is good practice to check with clients before using AI, and to disclose any writing that has been AI generated. 

Ideation: Some AI platforms can analyse datasets and can generate site specific design options. While the outputs are often imperfect, they can help urban designers explore numerous and varied scenarios very quickly. Experienced designers can pick the right options to develop further, but the danger is that the raw outputs can be used to bypass designers, creating unrealistic designs. 

Visualisations: We have all seen examples of amazing AI artwork. While these AI imaging platforms can be useful, prompt engineering is a real art (excuse the pun), and the further refinement of output images can take time. AI platforms that are built specifically for architecture and landscape design, such as PromeAI, can produce results that are more tailored to urban design applications. AI can also be useful to simplify and streamline image adjustment, with Adobe now integrating AI tools in some of their products. Therefore, while AI visualisation tools can quickly express rough ideas, or alter existing images, polished, detailed and specific visualisations are still relatively difficult to produce and benefit from the input of artists and designers. Users should also be aware of unresolved problems with visualisation engines, including copyright, privacy and intellectual property issues. 

Love it or hate it AI is here and it will only become more prominent as technology and infrastructure improves. Some AI tools can help streamline urban design processes, but – at least so far – they have not replaced the need for experienced designers. As with all tools, AI is only as good as the hand that uses it. 

With thanks to my phrase thesaurus, ChatGPT 3.5, and my image generator, DALL-E 3. 

By Simina Simaki
Senior Urban Designer

Urban designers strive to create successful places for people’s enjoyment and delight. Successful places that are active, inviting, lively and attractive. We invest countless hours designing, and redesigning spaces within places for people walking, people cycling, people resting and people exercising. These parks, plazas, footpaths and cycleways are a perfect balance of carefully conceived form and effective function.

From time to time, these places experience change, sometimes well planned and designed and at other times less so. The installation of new services, the repair or replacement of underground infrastructure and new connections to provide residents with phone, TV, internet, gas, electricity and water often leave scars in our beloved places. Once the workers, machinery, traffic controllers, temporary barriers and bright cones have left, the impact becomes all too evident. The once carefully thought through and impeccably laid pavement is now visibly scarred, replaced by poorly laid asphalt waiting to cool.

Given the visual aspect and uneven finish of these scars, one could think this new material is temporary, Days, months and even years go by, and the temporary looking job has become permanent. A shock to the eye at the beginning, it starts to blend in with similar-looking interventions up and down our footpaths, cycleways, parks and plazas. Eventually, there are so many scars that the original well-laid pavement starts to feel like a foreign, uninvited, unwanted material.

These poorly laid scars don’t only look unappealing, affecting the aesthetics of a place, they also present a risk to all users, especially for the elderly and those with reduced mobility. These interventions also commonly appear on cycleways, often overnight, creating a critical risk as people cycling at speed may lose control and risk serious injury. People driving cars are less likely to be impacted in the same way bicycles, but people cycling also use roads and therefore the need for carefully designed surface treatment on roads is equally important.

The repairs and interventions that create these scars are necessary to sustain the urban lifestyle and services we all enjoy, however, all stakeholders must work together to ensure they are carried out in a sympathetic manner and preserve the aesthetics and physical integrity of a place and the safety of the people using it.

By Rod Sepsot
Urban Designer/Planner

Public art is one of the most accessible formats of expression for artists – a highly visible gift to inspire and challenge the public, all free to experience. In a city awakening from COVID-19 restrictions, innovative and exciting public art proposals provide an attractive focus as we emerge from lockdowns and re-engage with our friends and communities in outdoor public settings that are safe and enlivened.

Like so many industries, the pandemic had an unprecedented impact on the art world, with traditional art galleries, museums and exhibitions closed for many months. While some artists may have been able to adapt to exhibit works online, the virtual medium rarely compares to experiencing an artwork in the flesh. There is now an opportunity to re-invest in local communities and local artists who have the power to create vibrant artworks that ignite the imagination of the public as we venture back into public spaces. 

The consecutive cancellations of Sculpture by the Sea and Vivid Sydney in 2020 and 2021 saw the loss of two of Sydney’s largest public art exhibitions. The anticipated return of these cultural institutions in 2022 will provide critical keystones in Sydney’s public art calendar, providing reminders that life in our cities and open spaces will also return and adding much needed economic dividends to the economy (the 2018 Vivid event was reported to contribute $173 million in tourism related spending to the NSW economy)¹.

As we look across the globe for examples of safe and effective re-opening strategies, we can also look at international examples of public art being used as a spectacle and symbol for re-opening. Personally nothing captures this more clearly than the striking wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in France by the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. This dramatic installation was unmissable for locals wandering through the streets of Paris and equally inescapable in social media feeds across the world.

All public art interventions, from small to large to monumental, all contribute to a more vibrant and engaging public domain. Whether it is a crowd of wooden spoons emerging in local parks painted by school kids or state funded art spectacles, public art can bring people back into the city and put a smile on all our faces.

1. Destination NSW, 2019, https://www.vividsydney.com/
   Image by Jacques Gaimard from Pixabay

By Adam Natoli
Urban Designer