It's about the design, stupid

Michael Buxton, an urban planning expert at RMIT, was quoted in today’s The Age as being against residential highrises for the reason that they are stealing airspace from the general public. While I understand his argument, this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. A good (and enforcable) urban planning policy would include view tunnels, to ensure that views and sunlight reach all the right places. 

I believe it’s not about the height of a building, it’s about how well the building interacts with the streetscape below, regardless of its height. Does the design of the building encourage its residents to walk around the neighbourhood? I think that’s one thing that Melbn has been quite so-so about. Some buildings do this quite well, others very poorly. Compare the ways that two relatively recent projects: Federation Square and Southern Cross Station. Fed Square is very inviting: you barely know when you’re “in” the building or “out” of it. It’s so permiable, and accessible from pretty much any direction. Southern Cross, on the other hand, does a very poor job interacting with the streets that border it: a huge indoor shopping centre; tens of metres of blank walls, and a completely inaccessible side facing Docklands. What were they thinking?

The same ideas apply to highrises: no matter how tall, the building needs to be designed to fit in to its area, and encourage the free flow of all of its users - the ones who live or work there, and people from the local community on which the building has some impact.