Stephen Glackin

Understanding Infill: Towards New Policy and Practice for Urban Regeneration in the Established Suburbs of Australia's Cities

A major challenge for urban Australia and its fast growing cities in particular is the provision of an adequate supply of appropriately located, affordable and sustainable housing across a range of dwelling types. A related challenge involves attempts by the metropolitan planning agencies in the capital cities to restrict residential sprawl and deliver more compact cities. Residential infill in the established suburbs has emerged as one of the principal urban planning policies designed to address this dual challenge. Infill targets, typically in the 50–70 per cent range, are now integral to all capital city planning strategies. This article examines the current pattern of infill housing development in Melbourne, Australias second largest and fastest growing capital city. It highlights the existence of two infill segments—brownfields and greyfields—each with distinctive patterns of development that need to be better understood if urban regeneration is to figure significantly in delivering more liveable and sustainable cities. Current urban policies, programmes and practices are lacking an effective response to redevelopment of the greyfields.

Contemporary urban culture: how community structures endure in an individualised society

This paper examines the ways in which socio-cultural norms have shifted to accommodate higher levels of autonomy in urban communities. Largely critiquing traditional concepts of community as well as current dystopian perspectives on the fluid and vapid state of social organisation, it will show how individualism has been incorporated into societal norms, producing highly autonomous personalised networks that, when combined with large amounts of social interaction and imaginative cultural appropriation, create the common social and cultural practices emblematic of community structure. It also illustrates how many activities, traditionally viewed as indicative of social decay, are socially productive, in that they go towards generating the common bonds and world-views that unite individuals across urban landscapes. Focusing particularly on the spaces of community interaction, the construction of common identities and common sense of belonging, this paper sets out to explore alternative modes of community creation and enactment in a contemporary urban environment.

Engaging the greyfields: community engagement and co-design in residential redevelopment of public housing

This collected volume is mainly focused upon the Australian situation, with some international examples too. The main question that the book seeks to answer is, ‘how do planners seek to achieve a more equitable and sustainable approach to planning?’ To cover this brief the book is divided into four parts. The first part discusses the challenges and barriers to achieving change: but the opportunities available too. The second part is concerned with strategies for change, the third part, instruments to implement change, and the final part illustrates the role of technology in facilitating the planning process and policy achievement.

Modelling housing typologies for urban redevelopment scenario planning

Abstract Increasing levels of urbanization, combined with growing populations and a need to manage urban redevelopment more sustainably has prompted the need for new tools for urban regeneration in established urban areas. While significant activity is occurring in the areas of volumetric analysis and 3D visualization, utilising these technologies in the development of urban planning tools requires a data schema for defining precinct objects for performance assessment while simultaneously addressing the complexity and interconnected nature of issues relevant to the urban built environment. This paper presents the outcomes of the research and development of a web-based 3D precinct visualization and assessment system, Envision Scenario Planner (ESP), which uses a library of housing typologies to generate easy-to-use, bottom-up, precinct-scale reports on residential infill. The paper illustrates how, through the specification of a residential precinct object data schema and the provision of a set of housing typologies, end users can quickly, and without domain knowledge, generate visualizations and assessments for a variety of housing scenarios, which allows them to determine fit-for-purpose solutions that address a range of issues relevant to contemporary planners and policy makers.

The unintended consequences of strata title for urban regeneration

This chapter explores the diffusion of strata title across Australian cities since the 1960s. Based on this review, we identify stages in the housing life cycle of strata-titled property and emerging pressures for redevelopment in greyfield areas of Australian cities. Drawing on data from an urban infill project, we argue that the spatial pervasiveness of smaller scale strata title development is acting as a major inhibitor to precinct-scale residential redevelopment. This is particularly evident in inner and middle suburbs, which in current metropolitan planning strategies are key targets for intensification of development. We conclude by placing Australian strata title development within a wider international context of current legal and planning instruments. Here we compare the positive and unintended negative consequences of contemporary approaches.