News & Discussion: Height Limits

[SRW]

There are a few pleasant laneways in Adelaide, such as James Place, but they are few. If the council ever did follow Melbourne's lead on laneways, and develop a coherent approach, it would have a great impact on the city's vibrancy. We've many lanes with great potential; for instance, Bank Street is ripe for a makeover.

[Bulldozer]

Any attempt by Adelaide to excite visitors purely on the basis of tall buildings is doomed to failure. There is too much emphasis on this site on building heights. The most important thing for Adelaide is to get the street level activity and infrastructure right. Most of Adelaide's streets present an extremely poor image.

I believe the general thinking is that the streets seem dead because of the low population density of the square mile and we don't care as much about impressing visitors as making Adelaide a more vibrant place to live. Tall buildings hold lots of people, thus increasing population density. Streets can't be active with businesses, etc. unless you have the population to support them.

[duke]

Any attempt by Adelaide to excite visitors purely on the basis of tall buildings is doomed to failure. There is too much emphasis on this site on building heights. The most important thing for Adelaide is to get the street level activity and infrastructure right. Most of Adelaide's streets present an extremely poor image.

I believe the general thinking is that the streets seem dead because of the low population density of the square mile and we don't care as much about impressing visitors as making Adelaide a more vibrant place to live. Tall buildings hold lots of people, thus increasing population density. Streets can't be active with businesses, etc. unless you have the population to support them.

Yeah thats my thinking. A increase in population would naturally bring in the extra money to the council to afford these things. Also the extra people would bring in the money to support the additional businesses. Tall buildings in Adelaide will never excite visitors. We will never compete with the eastern states in this area. We need the tall buildings to support our local population and businesses.
As I said, we should build tall if the markets call for it. Builders want to build taller but they are restricted at the moment. They should be allowed to build as tall as they can fill with tenants.

[Ho Really]

I agree with urban and some of the things you guys said since. Put those plans into place and then let developers build buildings to the height limits (where possible) and let's stop this silly idea of modelling Adelaide into a Disney-looking castle.

Cheers

[Ben]

An example of what happens when a city restricted with height limits suddenly removes them.

From the Australian:

DEVELOPERS are planning a multi-billion-dollar swag of super-tall projects in Brisbane as the City Council moves closer to lifting CBD height restrictions.

Five skyscrapers are proposed that will be in the same league as Austcorp's 79-storey Vision tower in Mary Street. After lengthy delays, construction is scheduled to start soon on the 259m Vision tower with its spire soaring to283m.

Two mixed-use towers that Stockland is planning on its Eagle Street Pier site are expected to be 278m and 249m, and Meriton's proposed 70-storey apartment tower on the corner of Adelaide and Boundary streets is due to top 243m.

Two towers, both of which have Brisbane City Council approval, will come in at 240m: the APH consortium's project at 480 Queen Street and developer Metacap's Empire Square on Elizabeth Street.

After the council flagged the removal of CBD height restrictions last year, the concept had now become a statutory document and was set to be approved by both the council and the state Government before the end of the year, a council spokesman said yesterday.

Releasing the plan for public comment last week, Deputy Mayor and urban planning chairman David Hinchliffe said some building heights would still be restricted.

"But for about 80 per cent of the CBD, height restrictions would be effectively lifted," Mr Hinchliffe said.

Limits would remain around malls, parks, public squares and next to heritage buildings and vistas. Protection of history was a significant part of the plan, Mr Hinchliffe said.

Currently, 125 places are listed on the heritage register, and the plan will add a further 36 buildings and 16 structures to the list.

Mr Hinchliffe said the plan focused on creating high-quality pedestrian experiences, promoting excellence in building design and providing "appropriate" high-density living.

Mirvac's Queensland chief executive, Chris Freeman, said he supported the plan because it paid attention to good design and its qualifications meant it was not a blanket approach allowing unrestricted development.

"It is a very sensible approach that allows flexibility," he said.

Brendan Gleeson, professor of urban policy and director of the Urban Research Program at Griffith University, said the plan sought to restrict the footprint of very large buildings rather than letting them spread to a wider area. "There may be all sorts of reasons why you would build tall buildings, but they are not environmental," he said.

But he said he applauded the plan for its focus on building design, and he urged the council to pay close attention to the environmental standards in the proposed new towers.

New buildings were more sustainable than others that had been built even in the recent past, Professor Gleeson said.

Mr Hinchliffe urged people to read the plan on the council's website and said they could comment until September 17.

The $500 million, 44-level Riverside II tower that GPT last week committed to build in Eagle Street is to be about 193m tall.

But none of Brisbane's new generation of towers reaches as tall as the 322m, 80-storey Q1 on the Gold Coast, or Melbourne's 92-level, 297m Eureka tower.

[AG]

Brisbane has a very good reason for increasing it's height limits though. They have the smallest CBD by area of the 5 largest cities, and the CBD is almost chock-a-block full near ground level, combine that with the lowest vacancy rate in the office market in Australia (and high demand for it), and that would explain why almost all the new CBD developments up there are so tall now.

[skyliner]

Urban wrote on 22/08/07 'There's too much emphasis on tall buildings...the most important thing for Adelaide is to get the street level activity and infrastructure right'.
Bulldozer wrote on 22/08/07 'Tall buildings hold lots of people, thus increasing population density. Streets can't be active without businesses'.

In reply to both commoents -
A. I agree that the street level activity and presentation needs addressing.
B. I also agree that you need people in the city to do this.
C. Note - the people can't be just business people - they have a habit of leaving the CBD dead after work as
well as on weekends.You need resi blocks of permanent population and hotels as well to keep the life in the
city ALL the time. Resi blocks are getting taller as are hotels - the current 'fashion' - hence tall buildings
tend to link to people being IN the city.

Now people of themselves are only half the solution to 'life' and vibrancy in the city and attractivenesx thereof. The rest comes down to street level activity and infrastructure. Allow me to add to this -
A. The tram line is visionary in this regard - ease of transport within the city fewer cars - I believe the
loop and the Nth Adelaide extension are still important to this as infrastructure needed. Crawf said
trams in Hutt St would be good too - I agree.
B. Having active street frontages in as many buildings as possible (with covering cantilevers for weather
protection) rather than glass and doorways only is needed.
C. AS SRW suggested, laneways need to be made not byways but key points of attraction of people and activity
- Eg. 'fashion strips', eatery strips, entertainment strips, places operating on a theme architecturally and
culturally etc.Some laneways could be made into walkways only like James Pl. Add new and interesting
neons, LCD screens, tickers. (There used to be a fantastic one on the SW corner of Morphett and Hindley
Streets for Peter Stuyvesant - scrapped about 1976 when they widened Morphett St.).
D. Increase visual interest and aesthetic quality - eg Brick the laneways, varied spatial dimensions, trees.
E. Deal more with safety for increased numbers of pedestrians eg. increased lighting in the city, improving
poor microclimates.
F. These things cost money - the council can get this through a bigger population in resi blocks etc.

And to finish off - small restrictive thinking will cause a great delay in the above. I remember visiting Adelaide in the '90's and going to the CBD on a Saturday afternoon - only hoons, skaters and a few kids with nothimg to do and umbrella weed blowing down Grenfell St. Very scary - very dead and very few cars. It made me think Adelaide was on the way out.

Tall buildings with the right functions and revitalisation of streetscapes and infrastructure will make a big difference and will most likely occur together - not as an either/or situation.

ADELAIDE - TOWARDS A GREATER CITY SKYLINE.

[stelaras]

Well Said Skyliner!

[omada]

not so sure this is entirely relevant, but i guess It is relevant to making Adelaide a more friendly place for pedestrians and more attractive streetscapes, but I had to go into the city Tuesday for a seminar, it took me 45 mins to get to a carpark from Richmond, ok it was peak hour, but when you hit the city, it's jam packed, now surely all those cars weren't just city workers? these are people going through the city to get to their work in the suburbs.. is this a bit stupid? does this happen in the other CBD's of Aust? We need some decent freeways, expressways that bypass the city surely

[Ho Really]

not so sure this is entirely relevant, but i guess It is relevant to making Adelaide a more friendly place for pedestrians and more attractive streetscapes, but I had to go into the city Tuesday for a seminar, it took me 45 mins to get to a carpark from Richmond, ok it was peak hour, but when you hit the city, it's jam packed, now surely all those cars weren't just city workers? these are people going through the city to get to their work in the suburbs.. is this a bit stupid? does this happen in the other CBD's of Aust? We need some decent freeways, expressways that bypass the city surely

Where are you going to build these freeways? Besides the NIMBYs do you really think the majority of Adelaide residents want to see a freeway circling the city with ramps encroaching onto the parklands or thereabouts? This may have happened 30 or 40 years ago. The idea was dropped by Don Dunstan (for good or bad), and I don't think it will happen now or anytime into the future. A north-south freeway is a different proposition.

In a different thread I said, I didn't want to see Grote-Wakefield Streets blocked at Victoria Square because it was a great east-west thoroughfare which gave the eastern suburbs access to the airport, etc. Now, I'm not against a pedestrian city as suggested. I'm all for it. We also need better public transport to go with it. I do see though that we need to keep several streets in the city left open (somehow). King William, Grote-Wakefield, Grenfell-Currie, Pulteney, Morpthett Streets and North Terrace are the main ones in the CBD that I think should be untouched, improved or undergrounded (in some areas). The rest can be worked on. Maybe those others should have trams running down them since traffic already flows slowly through them, though many of these streets are away from the educational, health, shopping and entertainment precincts. What are the solutions?

Cheers

[rhino]

it took me 45 mins to get to a carpark from Richmond, ok it was peak hour, but when you hit the city, it's jam packed,

Did it occur to you that you were adding to it? How come you didn't use public transport in from Richmond? It's an inner suburb so I expect it's a Go-Zone. In the end I'm sure it would have been quicker than 45 minutes.

[stelaras]

If at its present state and size it takes 45 minutes to travel from an inner city suburb Richmond across the city then something is not quite right. That distance from richmond across the city has got to be less than 6km.

I live 12kms out of Melbourne city and during peak times it takes me 45 minutes to get across the city. Granted i use the eastern freeway system, but since i dont have an e-tag as soon as the eastern terminates i have to use local roads. If it takes this long with a population of 1.5 million how long will take with a population of 2million??

At some point in time the state will have to think about building/creating a dedicated freeway/tollway system. There is no way around it, no matter how much PT improves it will never be enough as people will still use their cars.

Adelaide will need a proper ring road setup at freeway/tollway standard, it will need a north/south corridor (at freeway/tollway standard) and it will need an east/west corridor (at freeway/tollway standard)

Yep it will cost a great deal, and im not sure how it would be done..but it needs to be done!

[rhino]

If at its present state and size it takes 45 minutes to travel from an inner city suburb Richmond across the city then something is not quite right. That distance from richmond across the city has got to be less than 6km.

Omada said it took him 45 minutes to get into the city and find a car park, not to get across the city.

[omada]

rhino wrote:
did it occur to you that you were adding to it? How come you didn't use public transport in from Richmond? It's an inner suburb so I expect it's a Go-Zone. In the end I'm sure it would have been quicker than 45 minutes.

ok yes that was a fair call, guess I could've taken the bus, but I had to go to work at Fullarton after the seminar..with the addition I am a lazy bastard who finds it hard to get up early (I do have a small car though - if that is any consolation)

Solutions? I'm not the one to offer a good opinion i'm afraid (plenty of others on this forum have some excellent ideas), but yes Ho Really' suggested keeping the Grote-Wakefield operational, and undergrounding certain intersections, that sounds like a good idea, but as Stelaras said why not spend the dosh and build a proper ring route?

We probably wouldn't have this problem if the MATS Plan went ahead..

[stelaras]

If at its present state and size it takes 45 minutes to travel from an inner city suburb Richmond across the city then something is not quite right. That distance from richmond across the city has got to be less than 6km.

Omada said it took him 45 minutes to get into the city and find a car park, not to get across the city.

Sorry, i missread the post but thats still an aweful long time to travel just a few KM's.....Im wondering if Omada is including the time to find a car park as travel time??