Possible massing of residential buildings in North Curtin for 1300 dwellings. Images: ACT Government.
The ACT Government showed its hand early on in its hopes for housing development in North Curtin on the horse paddocks.
It proposed 1300 homes, with building massing showing tall multi-storey apartment blocks along Yarra Glen, receding to smaller buildings, and then to what appear to be townhouses.
Despite all the talk of the missing middle and the need for greater housing options for young families, the opening gambit is for apartment blocks. And not the walk-up type of a few storeys.
The Southern Gateway along the light rail route to Woden offers opportunities for new housing, but Adelaide Avenue and Yarra Glen are not Northbourne Avenue, where swathes of land on either side have been and still are being developed for high-rise units.
For a start, embassies already line parts of Adelaide Avenue. There is also the Lodge and Canberra Girls Grammar. On Yarra Glen, much of one side consists of playing fields. Behind the North Curtin area will eventually be a diplomatic estate.
Any development will need to be softer than that of Northbourne. Do we need more one- and two-bedroom apartments?
If the arguments for more diverse housing choices and price points for couples and families hold true, then the ACT needs a lot more family-sized apartments that could genuinely be described as homes.
North Curtin is the major development opportunity on the Southern Gateway, and the belatedly released consultation report on proposed housing there unsurprisingly calls for a medium-density development of townhouses and apartments up to four storeys high.
It also points to the obvious need for services and shops, a desire for open green space and amenities, and the need for increased traffic to be managed effectively.
This is not controversial, but the median-density vision will conflict with the financial imperative of the Suburban Land Agency, which now has carriage of North Curtin and the Southern Gateway, and the fiscal needs of the ACT Government.
The North Curtin Residential Area is a 13 ha strip of the horse paddocks. The rest will be a diplomatic estate.
North Curtin is the major development opportunity on the Southern Gateway, and the belatedly released consultation report on proposed housing there unsurprisingly calls for a medium-density development of townhouses and apartments up to four storeys high.
It also points to the obvious need for services and shops, a desire for open green space and amenities, and the need for increased traffic to be managed effectively.
This is not controversial, but the median-density vision will conflict with the financial imperative of the Suburban Land Agency, which now has carriage of North Curtin and the Southern Gateway, and the fiscal needs of the ACT Government.
Yield is everything to developers, no less to the SLA. The fear in the inner south and among those seeking housing diversity is that the government will seek to build as many dwellings as possible on the 13 hectares of land.
That would be a disaster for the area and a waste of a golden opportunity to deliver a model medium-density development that provides real homes, rather than small apartments that are not much better than hotel rooms.
If people do want an apartment, there is plenty, and plenty more to come, just down the road in Woden.
Another trap for North Curtin is that, if it is developed as a medium-density suburb, it would price people out and become yet another enclave for the wealthy, given its prime location.
The economics of housing are diabolical (just look at the SLA’s prices for blocks in Whitlam and Jacka), but government has an obligation and the means to be more than just another developer.
It should have greater capacity than the private sector to be creative in financing, design, and the communities that should evolve along the Southern Gateway, including North Curtin.
