The Big Squeeze: Cities that grow up in style

TIM WATKIN and KATHERINE HOBY look at how overseas cities deal with the challenge of making crowded places look good.

As apartments sprout up all over Auckland, the city council is looking out. Since 1997 the council has been scouting the Pacific Rim and beyond to find the best ways of managing the growth that, by 2021, will see the city squeezed into the existing space.

Penny Pirrit, the ACC's manager of environmental planning, says the council is keen to learn lessons from cities that have been there, done that and got it right.

It has looked at all the major Australian cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne. It has studied examples on the North American west coast, such as San Diego, Vancouver and Portland, the latter "a beautiful place that's done its streetscape, amenities, transport integration really well".

It has peered right through to Baltimore, Minneapolis/St Paul and even New York to learn about waterfront redevelopment and regeneration of a working port.

Pirrit says Auckland planners are cautious applying overseas models here, because they are typically much better funded and work under entirely different regulatory and legal systems. But some common truths shine through: public consultation must be thorough, people must live near public transport, urban design must be a priority and councils must be hands-on.

"It's the cities that have said, 'Let's develop a way of managing future growth' that achieved good quality results," she says. "Ones that said, 'We'll just let it go where it wants, that the market knows best,' those were the ones that were struggling to cope because they hadn't thought about what infrastructure was needed and where they wanted the growth to go."

Such careful planning is on show in Portland, where the council is developing the city's south waterfront area - 56ha of largely vacant land - into a new science and technology-based town centre where people will live, work and play. The city spent more than three years consulting and preparing development standards before bringing in zoning codes and design guidelines this year.

Buildings in the new zone are encouraged to meet maximum heights, allow for public space, and have "active" uses such as cafes or retail at ground floor. Buildings on the waterfront should have varied facades and in key east/west streets must "step back to allow views through the district".

Like Auckland, the Portland standards are guidelines, not requirements. In Vancouver, the council takes a firmer hand. There, Mother Nature is boss and she has the power of city regulations behind her.

The steady march of residential progress downtown has been planned every step of the way according to topography, and the city now feels as if it revolves around its natural assets - the water and the mountains.

While Vancouver began to value urban design in the early 70s, it was not until the mid-80s that it truly began to assess itself and its priorities.

After hosting Expo '86, director of current planning for the City of Vancouver Larry Beasley says Vancouver took the opportunity to rethink its core.

"Any city has a choice of inner-city objectives. Our priority was to be a place to live," he says.

From that was born the "Living First" strategy. Areas were rezoned from industrial to residential, and land previously used as railyards became some of the city's most sought-after inner-city real estate: waterfront areas with names such as Coal Harbour and False Creek.

The best way to protect the city's mountainous skyline was judged to be tall but slim apartment buildings. Unlike Auckland, where the controversial Scene apartments have created a visual sea wall on Beach Rd, unobstructed "view corridors" are an essential feature of Vancouver's urban planning regulations.

"The people of the city didn't want the skyline to be the result of commerce. We have stuck to that," Beasley says.

Now each apartment block development is assessed on an individual basis, and held up to a series of measures including: type of building materials used, requirements for social mix and public art and environmental sustainability. Further, each new project is peer-reviewed by fellow architects and designers.

Vancouver's inner-city population is growing at a rapid rate - 13,000 more living downtown in 2001 than five years before that - a 19 per cent increase. In fact, Vancouver's inner city proudly claims the title of fastest-growing downtown population of any North American city.

Building in one area, Yaletown, is 10 years ahead of projections, and other areas are five years ahead.

Preservation of natural resources has been at the heart of the past decade's development - 26ha of new parks have been created, and when completed, there will be 25km of continuous waterfront walkway bordering the new urban living spaces.

By closing the distance between where people work and where they play, Beasley says the benefits can be huge - saving billions on infrastructure and easing pressure on the natural environment. Because fewer cars make the journey from the suburbs, air pollution has reduced, and roads are less clogged.

"We used to be known as a setting in search of a city. I think we've found the city, and that is the contribution of this generation," Beasley says.

Sydney's relationship with apartments goes back much further than Vancouver's or Auckland's - to the early years of the 20th century.

"Sydney's always been an apartment town," says Diane Beamer, assistant minister for planning in the New South Wales state government.

Yet familiarity has not always meant quality construction, and in the 80s "it went through a period of 'build it quickly and as ugly as possible'," she says.

"Little thought was given to how you can get great design elements into a building which makes people want to live there. We were getting buildings that met building codes, but were just too ugly."

As in Auckland and Vancouver, the apartment rush was driven by rapid population growth.

In 1996, premier Bob Carr and his deputy Andrew Refshauge launched a design offensive. Showing a sure touch for politics and urban planning, the policy was a response to the 1000 people moving to Sydney each week and the 32 per cent leap in the city's number of apartment dwellers in the past 10 years.

An Urban Design Advisory Service was set up to advise councils, then, in 2000, new laws were passed requiring all apartments three storeys or more high to be designed by a registered architect and introducing design principles of streetscape, scale and landscaping to guide architects.

Launching the programme, Refshauge said: "Higher design standards must be satisfied at each of the development approval, construction and occupation standards. A registered architect will be required to verify that design quality is maintained throughout the design and building process."

Design panels were set up around Sydney to vet new buildings - and unlike Auckland, they were mandatory. Involved in meeting with developers before they sought building consent, Beamer says the panels have forced architects to lift their game "just because they know they're going to be assessed on an aesthetic level".

An Urban Design Charter, agreed to by government departments and major developers, promised to "consider natural systems", "respond to local characteristics" and "forge connections with the past". Government architect Chris Johnson even designed a series of apartment templates, one each for urban, coastal and garden apartments, displaying the kind of architecture the Government expected.

While critics said templates would squash innovation, Beamer says the huge number of apartments going up in the city convinced the Government its priority must be to set a minimum.

"We now have the authority to say, 'Go away, your building doesn't look good enough'."

As council and state authorities have demanded better building, so apartment buyers have learned to expect more. Now, Sydney has what Auckland architect Patrick Clifford calls "one of the most sophisticated stylish apartment markets in the world".

Bob Hamilton, managing director of award-winning developers Mirvac, reflected that view when he told the Sydney Morning Herald that customers wouldn't put up with small, unimaginative apartments any more. "The old box is still the cheapest to build, but we're getting to the stage now that people won't buy it."

James K.M. Cheng, whose architecture firm is responsible for 35 of the towers that grace the Vancouver downtown, agrees that widely consulted and clear skyline regulations have been the key to successful development in his city.

Regulations such as those requiring 20 per cent of inner-city neighbourhood housing be set aside for low income housing are well-known. "The developer gets no surprises," he says.

Developers are expected to build a "public realm" first so that amenities exist before people move in.

"It's not just about the apartments - it's about schools, medical facilities, shopping, transport, parks, art and all the facilities people want in their daily lives," he says. "If those are available, the people will come."