Infrastructure Report: Building a community

By Greg Hall

NZ Herald·

19 Aug, 2015 01:00 PM6 mins to read

Wilanow has the lowest crime rate in Warsaw and also the longest life expectancy of about 90 years.

A model development in Warsaw has just the right space to make residents happy and healthy.

Intensifying Auckland shouldn't just involve giving residents a convenient space to live in — it should be providing them with the right space so they are happy, healthy and engaged, says Guy Perry, Aecom's executive director of Asia Pacific.

"Ultimately cities and buildings should focus on people's well-being — physical and mental — and a sense of belonging," he says.

"We may engineer our world to be too convenient. People need to walk 10,000 steps a day, and that's difficult if cities are overly dependent on automobiles or elevators."

Perry says a trend in many wealthier countries is an increase in non-communicable diseases like diabetes and obesity and "we are looking at how those trends have echoed urban lifestyle changes over the last few decades.

"An increase in non-communicable diseases is costly to both the household and government. The United States, though wealthy and technologically advanced, has a population with among the world's highest rates of non-communicable diseases. Health services there now account for more than 19 per cent of GDP and rising."

Perry says Hong Kong can be thought of as "a mother city of densification", with land at a premium and more than 50 per cent of the population living above the 15th floor.

But it might also be thought of as the mother city of diabetes. Nearly 10 per cent of adults in Hong Kong have diabetes, and the picture of the city's future generations isn't any prettier. A 2009 study reported that the number of Type 2 diabetes cases among Hong Kong children under 19 had increased tenfold between 1997 and 2007. The childhood obesity rate rose from 16 per cent in 1998 to 21 per cent in 2011.

Just over 5 per cent of New Zealanders have some form of diabetes. The number seems low next to Hong Kong's, but Auckland should pay attention to lessons learned overseas with regards to its impending densification.

Perry looks at Hong Kong as a lesson. "We are now finding there's a correlation between children going up on high floors of buildings and being overweight, obese or diabetic," says Perry. "The kids are not getting out enough and not getting down to the playground. There's a tendency to give them an iPad instead of waiting several minutes for the elevator."

New York-listed Aecom is a global provider of architecture, design, engineering and construction services, and unites and encourages professionals to transform communities, positively impact lives and make the world a better place.

Perry says Wilanow, a 300ha district in Warsaw, Poland, is a prime example of intensification in which health and sustainability is not compromised.

"A lesson from the Polish example is that you can achieve very high densities — 10,000 people per square mile — without a building over five levels. We stuck to a certain density that allowed everything to be in walking distance. People can walk to the shop, the pool, their entertainment, their sports facilities and place of worships, and we did this with apartment buildings no more than five levels high."

The five-storey limit was a key requirement in designing and developing Wilanow and with the exception of one historical building, was faithfully adhered to. "We built the new community to take in the principles of human-scale cities. Creating a height restriction meant people were more likely to take the stairs when leaving for work or coming home."

The planning team was also very conscious about the more inconspicuous necessities of city living.

"When it came to parking cars we placed them underneath buildings so that the car parking did not determine the scale of the neighbourhood. Once you start parking cars, it completely amplifies the scale of the neighbourhood to a point where people just don't want to walk because everything is a little bit too far away.

"We placed playgrounds within the courtyards of each apartment complex so that you're never more than 70 metres away. This means that kids are getting out five or six times a day to play as opposed to just once or twice."

The cumulative effect of all this is that Wilanow has become a community. The district is compact, amenities are close and the buildings are filled with people on a variety of salaries.

"You'll go to the parking garage and see a brand new Bentley sitting next to a 20-year old Toyota," says Perry.

The design of Wilanow, which has a population of about 30,000, has generated a sense of engagement and wellbeing.

The neighbourhood boasts the highest life expectancy in the city of Warsaw. It can brag about having the lowest childhood obesity rate, the lowest cancer rate, the best educated female population in the country, and the highest birth rate in the country.

Wilanow has the lowest crime rate in the city, despite not belonging to Warsaw's 'business-as-usual' class of gated communities.

"All the buildings are very open to the streets, which means that if you walk around at any given time there can be 100 windows looking at you, and most of those windows are on terraces. So the street is almost like a stage — not an environment conducive to crime," says Perry.

Thanks to this rich sense of community, Wilanow has weathered the global economic storms. Its dwellings continued to sell at record pace while other 'business as usual' developments were flatlining, according to Perry.

"If people feel part of the community, they will be content because they're interacting with neighbours in a place where they can age, they can invite their parents to stay and their kids can grow up well. We know that sells and is pretty much universal," he says.