Ageing well in the bluefields

摘要

Suburbanized cities, regardless of scale, face a common dilemma: how to increase both housing supply and diversity while maintaining an established low-scale leafy character. While greenfield and brownfield zoning continue to increase housing supply through establishing new suburbs, densification is provided in greyfield1 precincts through urban regeneration infill and in transit corridors via apartment developments. One intention of all these four strategies is the avoidance of intensification in established suburbs, leaving them to their business-as-usual housing model. This raises the question of what this "business" is, for the suburbs continue to see substantial change regardless of falling outside of infill policy. I call these established suburbs the "bluefields."2 They are suburbs usually quarantined from strategic density and diversity increases: is replaced with duplex or triplex housing. Often, each new house offers the same accommodation as the single house being replaced, with each new dwelling selling independently for more than the value of the original property. The result is an increase in suburban density but not in housing choice, coupled with increasing unaffordability. In the bluefields, change is also observable in alterations and additions, where houses are extended into even larger single-family homes, further increasing the risk of gentrification. In both change scenarios, mature landscape is often the collateral damage, with many local councils across the country struggling to replace tree canopy lost from private land development.