[U/C] 181 Waymouth Street | 53m | 17 Levels | Apartments

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Not yet is the key. You need existing density and amenity in the area (in the entire centre while we're at it) to justify that next step up of developments. Melbourne attracts high quality development now, but not before it had to ride out a lot of bland crap.

Were not even talking higher level infrastructure like schools and clinics, but even just having reliability located supermarkets and other boring retail which doesn't happen without having residents.

Exactly - the CBD is far from full. There is not much real pressure at this point for developers to build particularly tall or choose creative designs on constrained sites, because there is still so much easily developable land.

Melbourne's CBD is essentially full. It is at a point now where the only real options for most developers are to demolish 5-15 story mid-century buildings and replace them with 70+ level skyscrapers. Or to find creative ways of reusing existing older building stock, much of which is heritage listed.

Adelaide has a long long way to go before it gets to this point. To put things into perspective, Adelaide within the parklands (not including North Adelaide) is about twice the size of the Melbourne CBD. With a significantly smaller population, the demand for that land is a lot lower, and so the premium which can be attracted for the kind of interesting developments many people on this forum would like to see is a lot lower.

At current rates of development, Adelaide probably has a century or more worth of land supply within the parklands. Of course, not all that land is likely to be developed, due to heritage and character constraints, especially in the southern areas. But there is still space for dozens, if not hundreds of buildings on the scale of 181 Waymouth, all built on land which is currently occupied by 1-2 story offices and warehouses, or which is lying vacant or as open-air carparking. Space is simply not at a premium yet.

Interestingly there was an article a few days ago with developers saying they should be allowed to build higher to help reduce housing costs.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/subscrib ... nt-2-SCORE

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if Adelaide CBD is full of low cost high-rise apartment housing it will turn into a shithole. mark my words

it doesn't have the business/financial district of larger cities in Australia, it will just be poorer people packed into a tight space