Apartments: how close is too close?
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Location of proposed Queensbridge Tower relative to existing Freshwater Place (note: distance between buildings at nearest point was increased from 8 m to 10 m by Minister)
A reader sent me this plan (1st exhibit) of how the proposed new 71 storey Queensbridge Tower (cream) will sit in relation to the existing 62 floor Freshwater Place building (grey). While the plan shows they’ll only be 8 metres apart at the closest point, it’s important to note the developer has increased this to 10 metres by sliding the entire Queensbridge Tower south-east by 2 metres.
Ten metres doesn’t seem a lot to me. It’s about the width of a tennis court or about half the length of a cricket pitch. It wouldn’t feel like much if you’re looking out the window of your level 50 bedsit at the neighbours in the adjacent building, or they’re looking at you. It wouldn’t just be the neighbour directly opposite either, since those above and to the sides would get a view in too.
Then again there are many examples of both high-rise and low-rise buildings that are at least as close. Here’s a ten metre wide street in Copenhagen (2nd exhibit) with four to five storey apartment blocks. Here’s one of the many even narrower streets in Paris (3rd exhibit), with buildings of six and seven storeys.
I’ve lived in streets this narrow before (e.g. Palmer Lane, East Sydney) and amplified sound in particular can make it trying. However with the benefit of air-con and thick glass it would be much more amenable.
24 Skindegade Copenhagen (click to look around - H/T Small Streets)
As long as the buyers know what they’re getting, I’m inclined to let them decide how close is too close. There’ve been too many cases in the past of paternalists driving up costs – and even excluding some groups entirely – by insisting on minimum standards they feel others should live at.
In this case buyers of the proposed Queensbridge Tower will know what they’re getting because Freshwater Place exists and should be shown on the developer’s interior renderings. However the buyers of Freshwater Place didn’t have that advantage and that’s led to some controversy.
They’re concerned about loss of views, light, air and privacy. Many say they did not expect a development of that size on the adjacent site.
Of course they should have done their due diligence and gotten the appropriate advice about what might happen on surrounding sites. After all, theirs is a 62 storey building that’s been constructed right to the boundary, so they should’ve anticipated other developments.
They don’t in any event have a right to a view. No one does, otherwise the first building constructed could sterilise the development potential of adjacent sites. From the look of the plan I expect the units in both buildings will still get adequate light and air.
But as I noted in discussing the Wills Court and Highburydevelopments recently, humans aren’t perfect. We’re renowned for our inability to correctly judge risk. We’re poor at seeing and responding to the long-term costs of present delights. We’re even worse when we’re young, as many inner city apartment buyers are.
3 Rue Volta, Paris (click to look around)
Assessing possible future unknowns is very hard for some buyers, perhaps a lot. It’s easy for a buyer to plunge ahead and commit to a first apartment with a lot of light and even a view, but be unable to imagine, or unconsciously selectively ignore, the high likelihood it will literally all disappear one day.
The Capital City Zone applying in the city centre might also have added to the complexity. It reduces certainty because it gives the Minister a lot of discretion. That has advantages but probably also makes it harder for buyers to make sensible and rational decisions.
I don’t think this case is as severe as the Wills Court one. In that instance some residents will get all their light and air from a 32 storey, 5m x 6m light well, if the contiguous Highbury development goes ahead as originally proposed. A light well that small is likely to lack breezes, create a cacophony of noise, and not actually deliver much light to lower floors.
In the Queensbridge-Freshwater case the separation between buildings is much greater and it’s open at both ends. However as with Wills Court, it seems the QBH developers are acting within their rights. The Minister has approved the proposal.
The main issue here I think is about consumer information – ensuring buyers are aware of what they’re getting for their money. A lot of that is the task of the agents marketing the building.
Queensbridge buyers need to be careful too. As a result of the separation between the two buildings being increased from 8 metres to 10 metres by the Minister, Queensbridge Tower will now be built very close to the southern boundary. Buyers of apartments on that side of the building will need to understand clearly that adjacent sites could be redeveloped with buildings just like theirs.
It would also help if the Minister were to prepare some advice on what’s a reasonable distance between facing living areas for different types of buildings. This would help buyers make informed decisions about what sorts of trade-offs they’re prepared to make – e.g. between price and privacy – when choosing a dwelling.
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Nathan Alexander here, Alan.
I lived in an apartment tower in Abu Dhabi with one neighbouring tower about five meters away and another about 10. All were glass boxes, with glass curtain walls from floor to ceiling. My kitchen window looked down onto another kitchen in the closer building, and I often saw the occupant preparing food. My living room window looked onto numerous living rooms in the further tower, and was looked onto by them. At night we could all see each other, especially as I had no curtains in my home. The viewing never worried me, and I saw little sign of it worrying my neighbours. Some of them drew their curtains sometimes.
The comments on the Wills Court-Highbury case retrievable from http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/not-enough-light-at-end-of-tunnel-vcat-20120528-1zffb.html also warrant reading.
I’m not so fussed on massive, high rise apartments right cheek and jowl to each other. Those European examples you mentioned are quite functional and liveable because they are rarely taller than 4 or 5 storeys (plus a basement). These buildings provide a good level of density without losing the element of human scale.
My mother lives on the 3rd floor of a 5 floor inner-city terraced apartment building in a medium sized city in western Germany. The street is very narrow, maybe only 10m between buildings on each side too. However this area is extremely liveable and pleasant due to the orientation and design of the buildings allowing plenty of fresh air and light, the medium height, the large back yards (that are joined to the rear neighbours backyards creating a large open green space), rear balconies, tree lined streets and street lighting that faces onto the street (not spilling into people’s homes).
AD wrote: “As long as the buyers know what they’re getting, I’m inclined to let them decide how close is too close. There’ve been too many cases in the past of paternalists driving up costs – ”
Once again you write before you think. This statement is deeply worrying coming from someone writing on urban planning. Don’t you know the history of laissez faire in such things? Nevermind Asian cities or other developing regions, just look at earlier in NYC where developers built tiny, windowless airless rooms and crammed in renters until the city had to intervene on health grounds.
Of course such things have to be regulated by government because who else will do it? It is a neo-conservative fantasy, in fact delusion or grotesque irresponsibility, to say that the buyer/renter should be free to choose then the market will sort it all out. I know of no such case in the history of the planet’s cities. It seems from Nathan Alexander’s post that the wildfire development in non-democracies of the Gulf states are repeating lots of earlier errors of city (non-) planning. Seriously, are we to use them as a model? (Incidentally it seems curious in the Islamic world where I have understood privacy in housing has always been of prime consideration; are these towers just for foreigners?)
In Australia this past decade we have seen a relaxation of central regulation–usually by stealth and the abdication of responsibility by outsourcing building approvals (which in practice means that if you can pay enough you will usually get what you want, nevermind building restrictions or heritage factors etc). Thus we are getting these absurdities of high-rise that are both too close and poorly designed (as other comments note, glass curtain walls with zilch provision for privacy). Planning laws evolve slowly and with lots of pain/learning so it is pure folly to jettison it for any reason, least of all the desire of developers to cram ever more saleable square metres into a given space.
As usual Australia seems determined to be pig ignorant and ignore the lessons learned in older denser cities (both European and American).
Michael: LOL! I’m not anti-regulation at all – you’re straw-manning me (and hardly for the first time). Regulation is something to be resorted to when markets fail to sort it out, not something that’s done because that’s the way michael r james likes others to do it. Your sort of paternalistic thinking is why we use to have oppressive minimum standards on lot sizes and house sizes that priced the poor out of housing. Made the paternalists and moral police happy though. AD
Also, to concur with other commenters, it is silly to compare low-rise European situations with hi-rise. It is true that, though 19th century apartments are quite cleverly planned, one might still have some neighbour in view from particular windows etc, but in my experience in Paris it is always limited and livable. In hi-rise it can be, without exaggeration, dozens or even hundreds of other apartments that intrude on each other (exacerbated by the obsession with glass curtain walls).
And it is also a bit misleading to focus on the few relatively rare situations like rue Volta in Paris which clearly is a leftover from the 18th century; there are not too many such streets in Paris (though some such as the little warren in the 6th/7th arrondissements rue de Seine, rue du Buci etc, are nevertheless highly desirable).
Then there are areas like Barcelonetta (east side of the port and which only narrowly survived demolition on the pretext of the Olympic development) which has a large number of very modest, low-cost housing. I am sure some modernists or neocons, and of course 100% of developers, think they should have been demolished and bigger more luxe apartments built in its stead; and far fewer housing units and for the rich and priviledged only. (Incidentally there is a current fuss there right now because the owner of the adjoining ship-repair wharves wants to build a dock for super-size, superluxe yachts but because of the proximity of these houses in Barcelonetta, the developer wants to build a 12m high wall to shield the super-rich yacht owners from the prying eyes of these modest home dwellers!)
michael: “hundreds of apartments” my arse! And who are the “other commenters” you’re concurring with? One? The differences in privacy between looking across ten metres from a seven story compared to a fifty story building are what exactly? I suggest the similarities are greater than the differences. You’re just on your anti-high rise hobby horse, which is not what the article was about. AD
Alan, an issue I am most concerned about, thanks for posting.
I like your points about Melbourne buyers not being able to conceive that their view – or the case of Wills Street actual light – might be built out. Guess this is all new to most who grew up here. And of course estate agents dont spell out what might happen. And also given lack of controls, or sticking to them, plus lack of appeal, existing residents get a rude shock when something as big as their own gets proposed 10m or less away from the only window of their one bedder.
Quite different to both european and abu dabi buyers, and for that matter purchasers of 1960s towers in sydney, where the light and views are known.
My opinion is that its not a matter of how close is too close, but how much light should an apt have as a minimum, Enough to read a book by in daylight hrs 5m from habitable window ? Enough that you dont have to have to turn the lights on all the time ? A 10m gap might give “enough” light depending on how high or wide the gap is and where your apt is.
Oddly as far as I can tell, there doenst seem to be an Australian standard for amount of light to an apartment, only one about how much window there should be. Surely there should be a minimum, even just on sustainability grounds.
Alan, I was not “straw-manning” you. Your statement “Regulation is something to be resorted to when markets fail to sort it out …” is patently historically incorrect. It was in fact tried all over the place, including in the NYC example I gave. I would say lack of regulation is exactly what is giving us the unworkable horror of McMansion exurbs that trap their residents into commuter hell (and high mortgages for tacky houses as well). And melburnite at 5:47 pm, Alan is explicitly disagreeing with your last statement–ie. those regulations on light and air requirements for apartments should only be introduced if the “free market” fails. (I do believe setbacks above the podium level are supposed to do that–it is not clear to me if that is different to Melbourne building regs or whether it is somehow failing.)
I cannot think of a single example of where relying upon the “free market” has not resulted in disaster.
I have inspected almost every hi-rise apartment block in Brisbane and, Alan, this is partly where my objection to hi-rise comes from. (But also hi-rise in Paris & NYC, of course combined with my 20 years experience of living in 19th century low-rise in Paris and UK.) The group at the Howard’s Wharf (Story Bridge) end of town are particularly crowded together; some of them claim super-luxe status (reflected in their asking prices) but in one of them it was, as I said, dozens of other apartments from at two other blocks–which I pointed out to the agent, who pointedly said nothing.
And your statement about paternalists driving up prices is also mostly hot-air. Prices have risen to absurd levels in our cities and it has zip to do with regulations. For the record I am not totally against hi-rise however I am very unimpressed with most of it that I have seen (for residential). In Brisbane I can tell you that the quality is poor, and the design is even poorer–particularly the lazy glass wall obsession which makes these things like ovens in summer and winter alike. Even worse is when they get their hands on a large greenfield or brownfield site like Melbourne Docklands which is all wrong.
And I emphatically reject developers (and parroting by politicians) that say that hi-rise is necessary to achieve the density to support TOD and efficient city living. It is not and Paris is just the best example since it has the highest density of any western city with the vast bulk of housing being lower than 8 (and mostly at 5 to 7) floors.
It was Karl at 11:08 am I was agreeing with.
Michael: I really don’t think you can lift your blinkers enough to see what I’m getting at. One of the key issue in cities is markets almost always fail because of externalities – that’s the basic rationale for (the political art of) planning. But that doesn’t mean there’s a theoretical or moral basis for paternalists to completely ignore consumer preferences on each and every occasion. Sometimes what people say they want actually is what they want. Sometimes doing what those people want is what is best (or least worse, anyway) for the wider community. And the history of planning is replete with examples of how what paternalists think is best for others turns out to be worse than the result even the stumbling, failing market would’ve produced. And as often as not it’s the weakest and poorest who lose out and the paternalistic elite who win out. AD
“a theoretical or moral basis for paternalists to completely ignore consumer preferences on each and every occasion.”
What nonsense is that? I would give all kinds of (different) people a very wide choice of housing type and cost. It is the current system, driven by developers who claim that what they do is driven by “consumer choice”, a lot of people, perhaps a considerably majority have almost no choice. And they are over-paying for it (ie. in mortgage) and then paying for it every day in commuting hell, multiple cars and poor quality lifestyle.
I suppose your definition of paternalists makes the Victorians among the greatest ever. And of course Baron Hausmann the single greatest paternalist ever and who happens to have remodelled an unplanned mess of a 17th century city into what is commonly accepted as one of the greatest cities in which to live (yes I’m biased). On the other hand you lurve those US SunBelt cities even though I strongly suspect you will never want to live in either of these situations (sprawl 30 to 50 km from the centre).
Then: “Sometimes what people say they want actually is what they want.”
I’m old enough to know that this is almost never true when people are not informed or have restricted choices, both of which coincide with youth/inexperience, especially Australians who haven’t lived o/s, and until recently saw a very limited set of housing options. Of course in the US this is taken to an extreme because for the last 60 years (the entire post-WW2 period) options were curtailed by (1) mortgage eligibility (almost impossible to obtain for anything other than sprawl), (2) zoning laws and (3) deliberate neglect of inner city/fringe zones allowing them to decline into crime-ridden slums. These things did not flow from planning considerations but from unadulterated influence of big business including developers, house builders and the road & oil lobby.
I am guessing you have seen the pictorial book called A Field Guide to Sprawl (Dolores Hayden). My favourites would be Zoomburb (Sun City, Phoenix, page 118), Leapfrog + Ruburb (=Urbanized Rural Area; Denver p56) and Boomburb (Plano, Texas p26). Do you see any choice in these horrifying scenarios? But this is what the “free market” and “free choice” has produced, and 70% of Americans live in this sprawl.
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