Becoming Urban: Exploring the Transformative Capacity for a Suburban-to-Urban Transition in Australia’s Low-Density Cities

Abstract

Metropolitan planning and development of Australia's cities for much of the past 75 years has been strongly influenced by what could be termed the "North American model" of low-density, car-dependent suburban development on greenfield master-planned housing estates. The negative social, economic and environmental consequences associated with perpetuating this low-density greenfield model were becoming evident by the 1990s and "compact city" policies began to feature, albeit in piecemeal fashion, in the long-term metropolitan planning strategies of the major capital cities in Australia. This compact city transition, from "suburban" to "urban" (i.e., from a low-density urban form dominated by detached housing with its own surrounding private space to one where there is a significant presence of medium-density and apartment accommodation), remains a challenging work in progress, as reflected in a rapid succession of metropolitan planning strategies-and reviews-for cities such as Melbourne and Sydney since the beginning of this century. Urban infill targets of 70% for new housing construction in these cities now represents a major break with the past and a challenge to the major stakeholders involved in urban development in Australia: state and local government, the property development industry and residents of the established, ageing "greyfield" suburbs that are a focus for intensified redevelopment. This paper comprises four parts. The introduction identifies the multiple challenges confronting 21st-century urban development in Australia. The second part frames transitions required for a regenerative retrofitting of the established suburbs of its major cities, with particular focus on the greyfields. The third section extends transition management research into an examination of the transformative capacity of each of the four key stakeholder groups that are central to achieving such a regenerative transition. To date, the greatest resistance to more intensive redevelopment has come from urban residents. The final section of the paper focuses on this stakeholder group, and draws on data from a major household survey that examines the attitudes of resident property owners in the middle suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne to neighborhood change and medium-density housing development.

The Uncommon Nightingale: Sustainable Housing Innovation in Australia

“…There are some examples where energy generation is being regulated for inclusion and/or required as part of minimum performance requirements, but there will be ongoing challenges around how to design flexibility into regulation to more rapidly take advantage of emerging technology developments. The challenge remains that housing is delivered to the minimum regulated requirements-which fall significantly below those required for a low carbon future, and with entrenched building regimes that are reluctant to change [28].…”

“…For instance, at the landscape level, events such as the Paris Agreement, more serious and frequent climate change related disasters, and increased energy security challenges have changed both the narrative around sustainability and the urgency with which we must act [27]. Regime-level changes include incremental improvements to minimum standards and continued resistance from key building regime stakeholders against future regulatory changes towards low carbon building [24,28]. At the niche level, the rapid cost reduction in sustainable technology such as photovoltaics have impacted the building industry [29].…”

“…Progress towards improving the sustainability of housing in Australia has broadly followed international approaches, with the setting of minimum building standards [30]. However, there has been limited advancement of these standards in relation to delivering low-carbon housing performance since their introduction in the early 2000s [24,25,28]. In fact, Berry and Marker [27] find that house energy standards in Australia lag behind leading practice in the UK, European Union, and North America by up to 15 years.…”

Extraction and Spatial–Temporal Evolution of Urban Fringes: A Case Study of Changchun in Jilin Province, China

“…The urbanization level was 49.9% in 2010 and reached 57.35% by 2016 [5]. The studies on the evolution of the urban fringe are significant in strengthening the orderly management of land resources and realizing the rational control of urban development and rural urbanization [6].…”

“…The primary task of an urban fringe region study is to execute the spatial recognition and boundary division of the urban fringe area. No uniform standard is available for the extraction of an urban fringe [6]. The urban fringe depicts significant differences between two continuous areas.…”