FUTURE WEST 01 The Next City by UWA School of Design

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looks towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. Are there clues to be found in the west that can inform better citymaking around the world? T

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THE NEXT CITY Every state, region, city and town has a vision to be the world’s most livable, smart, creative or confident place, but it is extremely difficult to turn these lofty aspirations into reality. The task is made harder due to the crises that can encircle us – crises of climate, energy, government, economy, identity or even mid-life. They make it challenging to anticipate the future, let alone to predict what will happen next year. Vision can get awfully fuzzy.

The premiere issue of Future West (Australian Urbanism) investigates the theme of The Next City, taking Perth and Western Australia as its starting point.

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If the current city is not working well enough to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, what do we do to change the city? We may not be able to predict exactly what The Next City is, but we can recognise some trends that are emerging. Future West touches upon some of these – building innovation, social entrepreneurialism, distributed infrastructure, urban densification. These forces can produce challenges – but challenges can be liberating. They can provoke invention. They can force systemic change. Future West begins by looking for clues to The Next City found around us today. The Next City is very near. T

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OPINIONS

8 DEMONSTRATING OUR HOUSING FUTURE Geoffrey London Rich residential display projects may be the ideal catalyst for creating smarter cities. 14 BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME Paul Whyte interviewed by Geoffrey London Good design and experimentation underpin our housing future. 20 CREATE TO REGENERATE Bree Trevena Supporting creative communities is key to urban regeneration. 24 CULTURAL CAPITAL Janet Holmes à Court interviewed by Timothy Moore Citizens have a role to play in the creation of place.

30 BIODIVER—CITY Julian Bolleter If Perth is to be a model for other locations, harnessing biodiversity is fundamental.

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38 FLUSH WITH PROMISE Timothy Moore A crowdfunded toilet-paper business is helping build sanitation infrastructure. 44 F ROM PLACEHOLDER TO PATHFINDER Timothy Moore As industries re-orientate in a post-mining-boom landscape, so must buildings. 50 SOLAR FOR THE SUBURBS Brad Pettitt and Peter Newman A WA project shows how solar technology for the home could look in the future. 54 AIRBNB URBANISM Jacqui Alexander With the input of governments, planners and designers, Airbnb could provide benefits for all.

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With state governments across Australia now acknowledging the need to limit urban sprawl, fill the gaps within existing metropolitan areas and build higher-density housing on selected sites, many opportunities have opened up. Demonstration projects are key to ensuring quality outcomes, and government has a leading role to play. The Western Australian target for urban infill is at the lower end when compared to other states. In August 2010 the Department of Planning and the Western Australian Planning Commission released Directions 2031 and Beyond, a report that proposed a more consolidated Perth, with an infill target of 47 per cent of new housing. The report stated that 328,000 new dwellings would be needed by 2031, so the 47 per cent translated to 154,000 of them. The target of 47 per cent was a 50 per cent increase on infill trends at the time. In 2015 the same two government agencies released the draft document Perth and Peel@3.5 million, in which the 47 per cent infill target was again nominated. However, the authors acknowledged that the 2014 rates of urban infill had reached only 28 per cent, short of the trends earlier predicted. This means that, to reach the 47 per cent goal, the required increase in infill has moved from 50 per cent to 68 per cent more than the most recent actual infill numbers in the five years between the publication of the two reports. This is a substantial change, and one that will require significant shifts from ‘business as usual’ approaches to housing delivery along with community acceptance of higher residential densities. Government can assist with these shifts and, in doing so, help to fill a conspicuous gap in the content of the two reports. This gap is the absence of anything more than the briefest of references to the nature of the housing that will provide the increased infill and density. There is no real discussion of housing types and their design, methods of construction and delivery, or forms of ownership that may encourage a greater take-up of higher-density housing. At the same time, there remains a level of community resistance to higher residential density and infill. Some of this resistance is justified, in that much of the completed suburban infill is of a poor quality and too fragmented to result in the positive changes that higher density can bring to the public realm and the level of amenity it offers. A quick Google-maps scan across the middle suburbs of Perth shows the dominant form of suburban infill in the city. It is a compressed → T he degree to which infill is contributing to urban consolidation is modest: “This follows on from a net infill rate of 32 per cent in 2011 and 28 per cent in 2012. Infill developments yielding one dwelling per lot accounted for approximately 62 per cent of all new infill dwellings.” P.3, Executive Summary, Urban Growth Monitor, WAPC, December 2015.

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15–17m 15–17m 15–17m 15–17m

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Standard industry infill strategies in middle-ring or greyfield suburbs. Diagram: Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University

→ I nfill Opportunities: Design Research Report can be downloaded from the website of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect: bit.ly/1oizpOy

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suburbia, with large houses squeezed together onto sites, reducing useable private outdoor space to leftover space, reducing access to sun and cross-ventilation, and diminishing existing tree canopy. Driveways, car courts and double garage doors engage with the street. Looking at this begs the question: how do we improve the current standard? Researchers at Swinburne and Monash Universities in Melbourne and at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC) at The University of Western Australia have proposed solutions. The Monash project, Infill Opportunities: Design Research Report (2011), prepared for the Office of the Victorian Government Architect, explores how the application of considered design strategies can contribute to better quality infill redevelopment outcomes in the middle-ring suburbs. The strategies include going above a single storey, with the height shifted away from the site boundaries to reduce overlooking and shadow-casting of neighbours; the allocation of useable private

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courtyards to each unit; the provision of good solar access, cross ventilation and outlook; and the development of a car-parking strategy that can change over time. In addition, the idea is for the units to have a degree of inbuilt flexibility so they can adapt to changing household circumstances. While this work remains diagrammatic, it nevertheless demonstrates that, with a clear focus on design and how design considerations enable amenity to be optimised, suburban infill can provide attractive housing options. There are infill projects being built in Perth that do demonstrate what is possible when real design intelligence is at play. For example, LandCorp’s stage 1 development of Knutsford, 1.5 kilometres from the centre of Fremantle, provides a mix of well-considered housing types with good indoor/outdoor relationships and clever spatial strategies to enable a high degree of internal flexibility, while being offered to the market at very reasonable prices. Twenty-three units were completed in Stage 1, with 33 being built in Stage 2, all designed by Spaceagency. We need more good examples like this, a greater diversity of housing types, and for the potential that is implicit in higher-density housing – the opportunities for social engagement, sharing of facilities, fewer cars, richer urban potential, better public space and urban realm – to be made explicit.

The streetscape of Stage 1 at Knutsford, designed by Spaceagency, is free of driveways; access is provided at the rear. Image: Robert Frith

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For over fifty years the use of display villages for the promotion and sale of detached project housing has been successful in enabling buyers to see what they are buying and to understand the potential of the broader setting of the house. Historically, these display villages promoted, through built example, the houses that eventually formed suburbia. In the same way, a display village for higher-density housing units could promote options that are not currently on offer in the housing market, would allow potential buyers to experience and understand the qualities of the housing on display, and would demonstrate how, with intelligent design, these units can be spacious, adaptable and work effectively with outdoor space. For Perth, a display village of higher-density housing would provide a valuable means for industry to innovate with housing types and forms of construction: a government imprimatur and the willingness to underwrite the first projects should ensure this outcome. The village would offer design diversity in terms of type and form, construction innovation including modular and prefabrication techniques, use of new materials, and the ability to test new strategies for utilities and waste. It would showcase design for low energy use on a precinct scale, and design for a reduction in car dependency. It would take advantage of Perth’s climate and allow a fluid relationship between indoors and outdoors, enabling a sense of space, light and air. The project would be planned and promoted by government and industry, would be on land provided by government and delivered by the industry, and would be open to the public for a period of time then sold on to individual buyers.

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Affordability remains a major obstacle to broader acceptance of higher-density housing: selling prices per square metre are considerably more than those of a detached new house built on the suburban fringes. The display village could also explore alternative forms of land and house delivery and ownership (the subject of a later article in this series). The pursuit of higher-density housing need not be a threat to the traditional Australian notion of suburbia. It need not be seen as a denigration of the values that recognise suburbia as having a particular quality that helps establish the idea of an Australian way of life based on the detached house and its backyard. There is a vast existing stock to ensure those values will remain in place. The development of well-designed, high-performing and higher-density infill housing will, in fact, protect existing suburbs from the poorer quality infill that is occurring, while allowing the sharing of benefits from an enhanced public realm. The Western Australian government has a major challenge in meeting its infill targets. It can meet this challenge through initiating a government-assisted display village of quality higher-density housing – and be the first state government in Australia to do so.

Stage 1 of Knutsford, designed by Spaceagency, sold in a few short months as a result of the quality of the design. Images: Robert Frith

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Geoffrey London: What innovative housing strategies have been introduced into the WA Housing Authority in the last few years?

Paul Whyte: We’ve made it a strategic priority to deliver two transformational housing projects each year. And that really focuses our collective efforts on making sure that we are not simply adding to what’s already out there, but truly contributing to greater diversity in the market. The Housing Authority and its predecessors have a rich history of innovation, with most of the housing types that you see across Western Australia either having been piloted or developed in some way through public housing. Often, however, people think that innovation in housing is only in product. What building materials are you using? Who are you designing it for? How are you building it? In fact, it can be just as transformative to → E stablished in 1912, the Housing Authority provides quality affordable housing in Western Australia by working in close collaboration with government, and the private and not-forprofit sectors.

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have a different form of tenure as it is to have a different form of structure or design. We’re talking about things such as community titling and shared equity ownership, for instance, in addition to the different ways to deliver built form. It can even be transformational in terms of how the local community comes together around the built form. What are the two transformational projects this year?

One is in modular design and the delivery of adaptable product. The other is working towards delivering a micro-lot development in an established urban area. Here, we are focusing on lot sizes of less than 100 square metres. What will happen on the micro lots? Where will the housing designs for these lots come from?

What we have learned is that if we create the opportunity, it can stimulate interest and contributions from a wide variety of professionals, industries and local community members. If micro lots are made available, then something contemporary will have to be built on them. And while the first example may not be perfect, if it’s going to become a part of the mainstream, then people in the community and professionals become interested and need to be involved. In particular, the lot and dwelling design need to be very cognisant of the environmental elements in WA – the sun and the wind in particular – and the different lifestyle choices in Western Australia, because we have a very outdoor way of life. That needs to be incorporated into the brief, together with how it interacts with the existing built form and local amenity, all within a 100-square-metre parcel. Micro lots could influence, for instance, how open public spaces and communal areas are designed in the future. It’s an iteration process. Do you accommodate the car on the micro lot or would you contemplate community parking areas at the end of the street? Also, how do you deal with the capacity to build to each of the boundaries?

Absolutely. I think some of the key questions to be asked are: Is the micro lot all dwelling, and how far up do you go? Then you need to consider what you may have around you in terms of communal or shared space – plus space to picnic and kick a footy and do those sorts of things. Micro lots present a number of challenges, but they also present a whole lot of opportunities. The size of the lot isn’t innovative in itself; it’s what you do on it that can help pave the way for the future.

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How do you deal with the regulatory environment that controls things like the number of stories and site cover?

That’s where, by trialling new concepts and demonstrating them well, we can get others to pick up on it, including the regulatory bodies and the local governments. Successful demonstration that achieves community support and positive recognition is most important. It would be interesting to test whether the R-Codes inhibit the potential of these lots.

There’s still plenty of opportunity to do things within the current system and within existing planning guidelines and policy that probably aren’t fully understood or haven’t been fully tested as yet. To undertake a demonstration project costs money and can take a lot of time and effort. And that’s where government can contribute in terms of making the extra effort to show what can be done and what can be achieved. What have been some other successful transformative projects?

In Aberdeen Street, we explored transforming a vacant block of land in the inner city into a mix of public housing, rented and owned homes, subsidised rental homes, and affordable housing, all in the one development. Malvern Springs at Ellenbrook is an example of going to five- and 7.5-metre frontage blocks with rear loading capacity. In these instances government seeded the market with good demonstration projects that have gained general market acceptance of that product type and housing mix. While we’re a joint venture developer in the land developments across the state, we have virtually had to underwrite a number of innovative projects to ensure that they happened. Malvern Springs on its own, for example, didn’t achieve a commercial return on investment as it wasn’t an example of efficient building techniques, but it paved the way for that to happen. The market now sees five- and 7.5-metre product as mainstream and it has become a very attractive, cost-effective means of building and living. What are some projects that haven’t met expectations?

There have been some projects that, while providing good accommodation and being of sound design, have not (as yet) been replicated or taken on by the mainstream market. I don’t think of such projects as failures, but as projects that we can learn from and which in many cases may prove to be ahead of their time. A change in technology or processes might be needed, or public acceptance of that → R -Codes provide an extensive basis for the control of residential development throughout Western Australia in order to facilitate appropriate, respectful, sustainable and affordable residential design outcomes.

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housing style or type. People may not want to commit to a new design until it’s had five years on the ground, for instance, and proven it’s not going to blow away or depreciate significantly in value or style over time. You raise an interesting point there: the role of design in encouraging take-up of innovative projects, particularly higher-density projects.

I think, more than anything else, good design is the most critical success factor. You have virtually no chance with poor design. If you are prototyping something, it will stand or fall on whether it’s a good design. Good design gets replicated and improved on. Poor design doesn’t get that chance. People see something that they like and, provided it is well delivered, are often very ready and willing to give it a go. Do you see attitudes to residential density changing in Western Australia or in Perth, in particular?

Inner Perth has done a tremendous job in improving design density and diversity. The outer suburbs are doing their bit too, with some outer suburbs having higher density than Subiaco. There’s a common view that outer suburbs are sprawling on 700-square-metre lots, with four-by-two houses on them, and that’s simply not the case. People in newer suburban developments have embraced density and more compact design principles. The challenge is in the middle ring areas of Perth, from about seven kilometres out of the city to about 20 kilometres out. That’s where the underutilisation of land exists. It’s where we have houses that may still have life and value in them, but they are predominately on large blocks. They’re not necessarily well positioned on the site or designed to today’s standards, and there’s not a natural likelihood that they will be redeveloped in the next fifteen years. That’s almost too long to wait for opportunities for further development. This is also very true for public housing constructed in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, and we need to address this situation through urban renewal. It could mean getting more creative with a site, maybe through the addition of auxiliary dwellings. The additional dwelling doesn’t necessarily need to be there for 30 or 40 years. It could be there for 10 or 15 years to provide some extra housing in an established area.

There’s good infrastructure in place in the inner/ middle ring, a large percentage of that population wants to stay in those suburbs, and there is a lot of housing that has reached its use-by date. How do you promote good → T he Western Australian Office of the Government Architect provides good design guidelines, which can be downloaded from its website: bit.ly/1NOCpyf

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intensification? We are not as yet meeting our infill targets which, compared with the rest of Australia, are quite modest.

There is a need to motivate people and engage in discussion around what it is that you need, how much house or land you’ve got that’s surplus to your needs, and how you might better use that. It may be about incentivising people choosing to downsize so, for instance, they stay within five kilometres of where they currently live. Currently, there’s not a reasonable incentive for people to move, especially where there’s not another viable or attractive option for them. Often people say to us, “I’m happy to move as long as I’m in the same area, and I can get out of what I’m in and into what I want with some extra money in my pocket.” There is plenty of opportunity for residents to move well away from where they are and achieve that outcome, or alternatively move somewhere near to where they already are, but gain no extra financial advantage. It’s been mooted that owners are more willing to downsize when they can do so and be left with an extra $100,000 in their pocket. They are able to use that extra cash in many ways. When people do the sums and there is only $10,000 or $20,000 left from a changeover, they often decide it’s simply not worth it. There may be a lack of incentive as a result of poor examples of densification that have been built. I don’t think that three units are too many for a single lot but, again, it’s the way they have been designed. You get large units crammed together with very poor solar access, you get residual spaces as the outdoor areas, you get tree canopy reduced and, as a visitor, what you are faced with is a large tarmac area for cars and double garage doors. This can act as a disincentive for people to accept more intensification in those areas.

Leading through good example is very important. The community is pretty unforgiving when you get it wrong. It’s a matter of accepting the shortcomings of the past and promoting achievements and the really good examples of where we are getting it right for the future. One way of doing this is by creating a concept or demonstration village. People need to see, touch and interact with design before committing. They may not necessarily know what good design is, but most people know what poor design is and that’s where attractive and innovative demonstration projects can help lead the way.

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The creative industries – encompassing a range of disciplines from game development to architecture, media, design and the arts – are a hot issue in urban development. Australia’s creative industries contribute $90 billion to the economy every year. Creative businesses, almost by definition, are innovative, and so drive new ideas, people and technologies into the market from the experimental edge. It follows, then, that strategies to make a state, city or town more creative can fuel urban regeneration, economic growth and cultural development. The logic flows: attracting creative talent is increasingly tied to competing in growing global markets. Places with a creative industries base also attract businesses and skilled workers from other knowledge-intensive industries like health, science, engineering and technology. This realisation has seen regional governments across the globe, including some in Western Australia, implement policies to make themselves more creative. While making a city ‘more creative’ has obvious economic rewards, gaps can emerge between policy and reality. Creative businesses often struggle in the face of rising rents and development pressures, and have difficulty in accessing property, finance and business advice. The sector is characterised by freelance, part-time and portfolio work, and financial insecurity, uncertain employment and demanding working conditions are very real challenges for a large proportion of creative industry workers. Many cities, including some Australian state capitals, also have to unpick the mechanics of city regeneration that have complicated creative industry development through investment. Public investment in the creative industries is often most visible in designated innovation or cultural precincts. The large public institutions and signature buildings often found in these areas make plain governments’ involvement. However, iconic architecture and major events alone aren’t enough to build robust creative economies. In fact, the creative economy in Australia is underpinned by the 98 per cent of Australian creative businesses that employ less than 20 people, and it’s this sector that plays an outsized role in innovation, experimentation and new ideas. When municipal or state governance bodies join forces with these smaller creative communities to shape urban regeneration the results can be far-reaching, although government’s role is often less visible. The creative sector feeds on affordable commercial space, physical and digital connectivity and a critical mass of like-minded but → A policy basis for a creative Western Australia built on latent and budding clusters already exists. The state’s Creative Regions Program supports creative projects in regional communities. The City of Fremantle is pursuing a creative city strategy while the City of Perth has prioritised creative industries alongside resources, retail and tourism as key industries.

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DUS Architects initiated the 3D Print Canal House in the creative cluster of Tolhuistuin. Image: Timothy Moore

diverse neighbours. Small-to-medium creative enterprises are often deeply embedded in their local contexts and highly networked, and use formal and informal platforms to match ideas with potential collaborators, as well as private, government and third sector investors. Creating clusters from scratch is notoriously difficult. Building on latent and emerging clusters through leveraging existing property assets and local knowledge is far simpler and usually works a lot better. This sounds intuitive, but often doesn’t happen due to a heavy stakeholder focus on building something new as well as control over land and property use. Amsterdam’s municipal council has introduced economic, cultural and spatial development policies that involve partnering with small-to-medium creative entrepreneurs to rehabilitate brownfield sites. Creative-led partnerships have developed clusters at De Ceuvel, NDSM Wharf and Tolhuistuin, with the municipality ceding some of its usual powers to the sector. At Tolhuistuin, the government provides the land, old building stock and a maintenance budget for a fixed period while the creatives develop the precinct themselves (under the watch of a board). The outcome is a new asset-based blueprint for sustainable mixed-use urban development with shared responsibly for delivery

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and success. Tolhuistuin’s early seeded clusters have set the stage for larger projects including the Eye Film Institute, the A’DAM Toren and the redevelopment of the Van Der Pek and Overhoeks precincts. This all builds on the municipality’s longstanding broedplaatsen (breeding ground) program, which facilitates creative clustering in underutilised buildings across the city by releasing 10,000 square metres of studio space per year. The municipality empowers creative industries to take the lead in developing these projects, while it unlocks funding sources and offers expert advice to the creatives on bureaucratic and legal processes. In Canada, Section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act has helped transform private, government and creative sector partnerships. Section 37 allows development regulations to be relaxed in exchange for community benefit, including creating living spaces for creatives. In the early 2000s, social enterprise Artscape, with the support of the City of Toronto, leveraged Section 37 to develop Artscape Triangle Lofts, home to 68 creative live/work units and Propeller Gallery. An innovative affordable ownership and rental program ensures a mix of uses and incomes in the building. This far-sighted policy decision by the City of Toronto helped the city retain and grow its creative community in the face of rising property prices. Today the creative sector contributes $9 billion annually to Toronto’s GDP and employs 130,000 people. The takeaway from this is that constructing a creative economy means implementing long-term transitional strategies to build talent and capacity over time. This prevents the need for more interventionist, expensive and risky strategies down the line. Western Australian towns and cities have an enviable opportunity to set the conditions for a healthy creative economy before regeneration of its older building stock comes to pass. Nurturing this sector through a mix of smaller policy interventions could be an affordable and effective way to kickstart sustainable creative economies. More modest interventions also allow the luxury of learning from failure and trialling more experimental ideas that can then flow through to the wider creative ecology. All ecologies rely on the ongoing interplay between the large, medium and the small, with each bringing something different to the table to create a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. This means a policy mix that can support big ticket projects with investment in sustainable careers and spaces for creative small-to-medium enterprises. This is true creativity at work. → B roedplaatsen translates as 'breeding ground' or 'nest'. An English summary of the broedplaatsen policy framework can be downloaded from the website Cross Innovation: bit.ly/21n10MU

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imothy Moore: Why do you live in Western Australia? T What binds you to this place?

Janet Holmes à Court: My presence here gives me a great love of this place – my place. I feel it when I look up at the big brilliant sky, at the indigenous flora and fauna, at the distinctive colours of landscape, of ocean, of forest; when I travel to the Pilbara, the Kimberley, the southwest, the Wheatbelt, the Darling Range. And of course there are the people. I have friends of nearly 70 years’ standing and friends I have made in the last couple of years, and friends from all the years in between. Best of all, one of my sons has chosen to live here with his wife and five children. Having deep roots to one’s birthplace is very important. I think this explains why I feel such empathy for refugees and our indigenous people. Indigenous Australians have a connection to land that is deeper than anything we can comprehend. This connection has been totally disrupted for many of them, and refugees, by definition, suffer similar disruptions.

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I have also spent a great number of the last 50 years out of WA – most of them in London, where we owned several theatres in the West End for about 20 years. I also spent time in New York. In Australia, when I’ve not been in WA, I’ve been mainly in Melbourne, where my family had a second home for 20 years, and where my children received their secondary education. John Holland, a construction company I owned for several years and chaired for about 24 years, is a Melbourne-based company. I have chaired the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, also based in Melbourne, for nearly 30 years. I have always been free to ‘escape’ WA. These frequent periods out of Perth have amplified my fondness for the place. You are very upbeat about the West.

It’s not to say I love everything about this state. We suffer from very short-term thinking by our politicians. There seems to be very little thinking about the consequences of many of the projects we dive into. For example, Graham Farmer Freeway’s Northbridge tunnel is an excellent piece of infrastructure, but did anyone think about the effect it would have on Thomas Street? The new football stadium may have been needed – I doubt it – but did anyone think about what it would do to Subiaco? And did anyone think about what people would do after the game? There are many more examples I could mention.

A render of the new stadium in Burswood, by Hassell, Cox Architecture and HKS. Image courtesy of Perth Stadium

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If short-term thinking is a problem, who has vision?

Not many. Here are some. In the arts, there is Margaret Seares [academic and former chair of the Perth International Arts Festival board], Craig Whitehead [chief executive of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra], Duncan Ord [director general of the Department of Culture and the Arts], Andrew Ross [founding artistic director of Black Swan State Theatre Company], Kate Cherry [current artistic director of Black Swan State Theatre Company], Alec Coles [CEO of the Western Australian Museum] and Ashley Smith [clarinettist and academic]. In property development, there is Adrian Fini. He has brought grandeur to the old State Buildings. What makes this collection of people visionary?

They are well-educated, well-travelled and they think. In general, people who have vision are preparing for the fade from the resources boom. They are long-term thinkers who look beyond the political cycle of three to four years. They are working out what we are good at, apart from digging and pumping and shipping out, or servicing those companies that do that. We should be thinking about what else we are good at, and setting ourselves up for the inevitable. They think regionally and originally. s a citizen, where do you dedicate your time outA side of working hours?

I like to devote my time to causes I feel passionate about, and where I feel I may be able to make a difference. They are not always popular causes. Much of my support is for organisations that are based outside WA, but which influence what happens here. These include the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australian Institute of Architects. As for Western Australian institutions, I support the Chamber of Arts and Culture Western Australia, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO), the Black Swan State Theatre Company and the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC). There are no sporting clubs on my list. There are plenty of people to support those organisations, and there is plenty of political support for them. In contrast, WASO has been homeless for around fifteen years. There have been numerous proposals put forward to solve this problem. We need a relatively small amount of money. It has always been a problem for government to come up with it. But it’s no problem to build a new football stadium for more than a billion dollars. Governments do silly things; for example, the WA government spent over $100 million on the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia, → A UDRC is a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving the quality of urban places in Australia. It is affiliated with the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia, and government agencies.

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but doesn’t fund the local companies sufficiently to use this fabulous venue for as many nights of the year as they would like. That’s crazy. here has been a decrease in expenditure by state T and federal governments on public services. What role should government play, especially with respect to the arts? And what role should a citizen play in public life?

The citizen has an important role to play in the creation of society. You must be a participant, not a spectator. Stand up and be counted. I have always had the luxury of being able to do that. My late husband made that possible for me and encouraged me. My upbringing demanded it of me. I realise it is not easy for many people, such as working mothers or single parents. As government reduces funding to arts organisations, they are being encouraged to seek and rely more on corporate sponsorship and private philanthropy. There has been no discussion with private or public companies about this. There has been no discussion about the fact that this is what governments now expect, nor about what tax incentives might encourage corporate support. The idea was just dumped on us all. All arts organisations would agree that their success in raising non-government funding is a double-edged sword. It lets governments off the hook. And in hard times, such as now in WA, the arts organisations suffer when the sponsoring companies withdraw their support. In the US there is almost no government funding for the arts. In Europe the opposite is the case. In Australia, we have a balance between the two extremes, but there is a swing away from that model, with governments expecting corporations and private citizens to make up the slack. I am a great believer in a balance between government, corporate sponsorship and private patronage. We are fortunate in WA to have some very generous companies, like Wesfarmers, that recognise that a community thrives when its arts and culture thrive. It will attract good employees with its reputation; it is interested in being a good (exemplary) corporate citizen. Some companies support arts and cultural organisations to save tax. Some do it if they know they can leverage their donations. Some say they want to ‘give back’. I hate this expression. Giving back implies you have taken. Just give – your time or your money. Make a difference.

Right: Gold anodised aluminium tubes guide patrons at the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia, by Kerry Hill Architects. Image: Robert Frith

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This inaugural issue of Future West (Australian Urbanism) poses the question: Can Western Australia, and its isolated, somewhat prosaic capital, Perth, inform better city-making around the world? Perth is not known as a model for suburbia: its suburban condition is similar to that of developed cities the world over. However, it does stand out in one respect: it sits in an exceptionally biodiverse natural setting. A strong, informed vision for this setting’s relationship with the city could help Perth become an exemplar for similarly positioned metropolises everywhere. The greater Perth region has been designated the Southwest Australia Ecoregion (SWAE), one of only thirty-five so-called ‘biodiversity hotspots’ in the world. Reconciling future growth with biodiversity is one of the key issues facing urban design and planning this century. Indeed, if current trends continue, by 2030 global urban land cover will increase by 1.2 million square kilometres (about half the area of Western Australia), and much of it will happen in biodiversity hotspots. This is important because, if we continue to fail to protect the hotspots, it is estimated that we will lose nearly half of all terrestrial species, as well as the ecosystem services upon which human populations ultimately depend. ‘Ecosystem services’ may sound like abstract jargon; however, it’s actually a term used to describe ‘services’ provided by nature – such as clean air, water and food, and heatwave and flood mitigation – without which human life would be extremely unpleasant, if not unviable. Perth has a reputedly strong planning system and is comparatively wealthy. If it can’t control city form to protect biodiversity – compact cities generally being recognised as the best model for protecting land for conservation – then elsewhere, particularly in the developing world, city administrators are likely to struggle. The current treatment of the Australian environment has its roots in the European annexation of Australia, which has been characterised by catastrophic misreadings of the land. Governor Stirling, who was singularly responsible for the European annexation of Perth, was the kind of man who saw what he wanted to see rather than what was there. In her book The Origins of Australia’s Capital Cities, Pamela Statham writes: …arriving at the end of … an uncommonly cool, moist summer, [Stirling was] misled by the tallness of the northern jarrah forest and the quality of the alluvial soils close to the river into believing that the coastal plain would offer fertile farming and grazing. It was, Stirling wrote, equal to the plains of Lombardy; → B y definition a biodiversity hotspot must contain at least 1,500 endemic species – the SWAE has well over 2000, but has lost at least 70 per cent of its endemic vegetation to clearing. See conservation.org/How/Pages/Hotspots.aspx.

AUSTRALIAN URBANISM Vegetation of Southwest Australia Ecoregion at the time of European settlement. Based on the statewide mapping carried out by John Beard between 1964 and 1981 – at the Perth scale. Endemic plant associations 1829

Vegetation of Southwest Australia Ecoregion in 2015. Remnant endemic plant associations

Cleared land

Source: DPAW/WALGA, courtesy of AUDRC

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and he persuaded himself that the cool easterly land breeze of these early autumn nights must originate from a range of snowy mountains. The results of such misinterpretations of the land were generally less poetic. Stirling sited the settlement of Perth on a narrow, constrained strip of land between swamps to the north and marshy river edges to the south – low-lying areas that fuelled plagues of mosquitos and, once polluted, deadly typhoid outbreaks. Due to a lingering discomfort with Perth’s ‘unsanitary’ wetlands, in time, more than 200,000 hectares of them – the equivalent area of 500 Kings Parks – were drained on the Swan coastal plain. These biologically productive areas directly or indirectly support most of the coastal plain’s wildlife, and as such the effects on biodiversity have been catastrophic. Furthermore, a perception of the Banksia woodland and coastal heath on Perth’s fringes as unattractive and useless has seen much of it cleared for the outward expansion of the city. Indeed, between 2001 and 2009 an annual average of 851 hectares of highly biodiverse land on the urban fringe was consumed by suburban growth. The lesson to be learnt from this experience is that any future growth in a biodiversity hotspot, or indeed elsewhere, has to be founded on the understanding that we cannot continue to bend nature to our will, but that we must learn how to work with it. Within this humbling process, however, there should be a recognition that working with the land is not an entirely pure or noble act; rather, it is imperative for humanity’s survival. As species and ecosystems become threatened and vanish, so too do the ecosystem services that support human wellbeing. The release of the state government’s long-anticipated Perth and Peel Green Growth Plan for 3.5 million may herald a shift in the relationship between the city and the biodiversity hotspot. The plan encapsulates two broad goals: firstly, to protect fringe bushland, rivers, wetlands and wildlife in an impressive 170,000 hectares of new and expanded reserves on Perth’s fringe, and secondly, to cut red tape by securing upfront Commonwealth environmental approvals for outer suburban development. While ostensibly positive achievements, questions remain as to how ecology is interwoven through the city itself, and whether the plan is legible enough for the public to be able to conceptualise the city’s fringes (since being able to conceptualise the edge, such as with London’s iconic greenbelt, leads to people ‘caring’ about it). There

AUSTRALIAN URBANISM Conservation Priority areas for future conservation acquisitions

Proposed conservation reserves

Existing conservation reserves

Source: DOP, courtesy of AUDRC

is also the question of how a plan that places restrictions on outer suburban development will accommodate the powerful local land development industry over time, and finally how, in broader terms, the lingering estrangement of European Australian culture from the land can be eroded. These perplexing questions are being explored through research and teaching at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC). The ultimate goal of this ongoing project will be a plan for Perth that synthesises the provision of ecosystem services and urban density. The entwining of ecosystem services and urban density is significant in that they are often considered separately in planning, and as such positive synergies between them are not maximised. In 2003, the ABC asked revered Western Australian landscape architect, Marion Blackwell, “Are we at home now in the land we live in?” She replied, “No, we’re not. We don’t know enough about it, and not enough people know anything about it.” We still have much work to do on our engagement with biodiversity in Western Australia, and Perth specifically, before we can become a model for future cities.

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r On 10 July 2012, Simon Griffiths sat on a toilet, pants round ankles, to raise money for his new start-up. In a web stream from a logistics warehouse that went across the globe, Griffiths delivered a series of humorous one-liners – “sitting down for what he believes in”, “help Simon get off the toilet” – while outlining the concept of his new business: a toilet paper producer that directs part of its profits to aid projects. In the stunt’s fiftieth hour, and after obtaining $1 million dollars worth of global media without any marketing budget, Griffiths met his crowdfunding target of $50,000, which would allow him to do the first bulk production run of the toilet paper, aptly named Who Gives A Crap. He then went to bed. Who Gives A Crap is part of a new movement of social enterprises that are designed to confront a social problem while also being financially sustainable. Here, the problem Griffiths addresses is sanitation in the developing world. Fifty per cent of Who Gives A Crap’s profits go to WaterAid, which delivers sanitation projects in two of Australia’s closest neighbours, East Timor and Papua New Guinea. Every roll sold provides access to one person to a toilet for a week. Within two years of business, it provided toilet access to almost 70,000 people.

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� W ho Gives A Crap received 177 mentions across media during the campaign, which helped drive 77,324 visitors to its site. This led to 1366 donations.

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“Sanitation is not a sexy topic,” says Griffiths. “One third of the world’s population does not have access to adequate sanitation. Partly, the reason [for that number] is that people have an aversion to talking about it. Clean water is way easier to sell to a donor – it’s easier to ‘demonstrate’ having an impact with a picture of someone turning on a tap rather than one of someone on the toilet.” Who Gives A Crap works around this lack of glamour by directly linking its product to the issue in order to generate a conversation around it. The business disrupts the traditional model for delivery of foreign aid by working around two roadblocks: a limited and competitive funding pool in the non-profit sector and the difficulty of changing people’s behaviour. It does this by aiming to change people’s buying habits rather than their behaviour. It then layers literal toilet humour on top: lines like “good for your bum, great for the world”. Who Gives A Crap conceals the donation within a product that people use daily so that people give more. Griffiths remarks, “You can’t motivate a sale with guilt, but humour goes a long way.” The initial business development was aided by a stint by Griffiths at the Unreasonable Institute in the US (which offers support to entrepreneurs), along with a grant from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, but since then Who Gives A Crap’s growth has been driven entirely by its customer base. The decision to raise start-up capital through crowdfunding was very deliberate: it allowed the business to maintain ownership over its ideas while reaching micro-investors, who would become the customer base and brand ambassadors. There were some early teething problems for the business. When Griffiths wanted to test out if a toilet paper called Who Gives A Crap would actually sell, he set up a small e-commerce store that pitched his product against established brands. The first customer was from Albany (418 kilometres south-east of Perth). Griffiths recalls, “We put 48 toilet rolls in the box for a retail price of $30. It cost us $54 to send.” This initial logistical hurdle was the catalyst for Who Gives A Crap improving its distribution in the west. A Swanbourne garage became the Perth logistics centre for the expanding business and was run by Griffiths’ father, who did the work outside his day job as a management consultant.

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� T he Australian Centre for Social Innovation is a non-profit group established in 2009 to develop new solutions to social challenges and to share this knowledge.

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Griffiths reflects, “When we first got started we would service all of Western Australia by sending pallets on the train. My father would store the pallet in the garage and use the family car to deliver boxes to people who were close by. [When the recipients were] further away, he would send [the rolls] via the post. He would then keep the receipts, and I would reimburse him.” When sales started to boom, rather than stretch the relationship with his father, Griffiths started using a logistics centre south of Perth, towards Mandurah. It wasn’t easy to find. Griffiths explains that logistics and freight in Western Australia are geared towards mining, and do not necessarily accommodate small-scale businesses, including pick-and-pack warehouses. Who Gives A Crap highlights how infrastructure can be funded across geographies and time zones: a toilet roll sale in Albany can help build a toilet in Dili. It also demonstrates alternative models for raising start-up capital; in this case, through crowdfunding. While Griffiths had success with crowdfunding, this is not the case for all businesses. Only slightly more than 10 per cent of crowdfunding campaigns are successful. In the design profession, most successful crowdfunded projects originate from global cities that attract media attention (New York, Paris or London), are gimmicky in order to go viral, have project budgets of around $12,000, and are supported by people aged 25 to 35 years old. While it’s mostly community parks and gardens that get funded, there have been a few rare instances where civic projects – a public swimming pool in New York City, a skyscraper in Bogota and a pedestrian bridge in Rotterdam – have been the beneficiaries of public largesse. It’s much easier to raise crowdfunded capital for products than for buildings or infrastructure. Who Gives A Crap neatly circumvents this problem by using a product to contribute to civic infrastructure in another location. “Doing good” has seen the company grow rapidly in four short years. This begs the question: what other infrastructure can be built with new models of product and service delivery?

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Fremantle’s five-storey Myer department store closed in 2013 after four decades of service. The demise of a mass-market store in the heart of Fremantle should have been a large blow to the retail and broader character of the area. In the twentieth century it would have been. But times have changed, in Australia and around the world. Instead, rather than being left dormant while new development plans were being drawn up, the building reopened as MANY 6160 six months after Myer closed. MANY 6160 is Australia’s largest temporary place activation, with over 20,000 square metres of space dedicated to retail, production and events. It provides spaces for independent artists, designers, other cultural workers and small business enterprises. In February 2016 it became home to Australia’s second-largest private gallery (after Hobart’s MONA). Called Success, it operates from the building’s basement. The temporary use of space has become popular in cities and towns across the world. When properties have lost their capacity to be rented or sold at a profit, or when they are left vacant for redevelopment plans, they have the potential for interim uses while the owner waits for development or for property prices to warm up. The advantages of temporary occupation are many. It allows members of a community to come together to work, socialise or learn, unencumbered by market-rate rents. It taps into culture’s current interest in customisation, localisation and co-creation. (At MANY 6160 you can buy everything from 3D printed jewellery to surfboards.) Temporary users can also act as surveillance and maintenance providers for the property owner, and bring cultural cachet to the space and the adjacent area. Temporary occupation can bring about the challenging and redefinition of planning regulations and rental contracts. At MANY 6160, rental contracts are short, with only thirty days needed for renters to opt out. Existing planning regulations tailored towards permanent occupation saw the local council slightly confounded as to how to determine the building class of the gallery in MANY’s basement. “The city would not sign off on it at first,” says MANY 6160’s architect, Nic Brunsdon of Post- Architecture. “We had to get an independent evaluation to certify the building. All you need is

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� J ana Perkovic describes the opportunities and challenges of temporary use for formal planning practice in her thesis R e t h i n k i n g t h e I n f l e x i b l e C i t y , which can be downloaded from the Melbourne School of Design website: bit.ly/1SSCsIB

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Above: The former Myer department store in Fremantle. Image courtesy of City of Fremantle Right: MANY 6160 hosts retail, making and working spaces. Image: Dave Sharp

a piece of paper [of certification] rather than do something to address the code.” Brunsdon delights in this grey-area-ness. “It’s the place where no-one wants to be. It’s fertile ground. You need to revel in uncertainty and risk.” Recognising the benefits to users and owners, government agencies and developers are making it easier for real estate to become available for temporary use; for example, through reducing the liability for building owners and providing incentives for owners and citizens to start up their own projects. Space-brokering agencies have emerged across towns and cities in Australia – Adelaide, Townsville, Geelong, Newcastle and Parramatta – and further afield, in places like Christchurch, Singapore, Chicago and Dublin. Perth has its own space-brokering service, Spacemarket, also available as an app since 2016. The service helps a diversity of users, from tech start-ups to community groups, to use the thousands of square metres of underutilised space in the Perth CBD. It also partly solves a problem for commercial leases: vacancies fluctuate with market cycles; when vacancies are high, temporary occupation may be a solution. While many local councils see the temporary use of space as the solution for the provision of cheap spaces for creative workers,

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in the long term it may not be so. Buildings will still be bulldozed or converted, rents will increase and tenancies will become affordable. When this happens, those occupying the temporary space can get squeezed out, even though it was their presence and activity that made the area culturally and economically valuable to start with. This is a potential scenario for the creatives at MANY 6160. A $220 million dollar development planned for Kings Square may eventually force them to move on, despite the ambitions of the local council to preserve the diversity of the temporary occupation in future plans.

MANY 6160. Image: Dave Sharp

So, can temporary use influence local city-shaping and state decision-making in the long term, rather than simply being a stopgap? Can projects like MANY 6160 help to forge new approaches to urban design and planning? The answer is yes. Temporary occupation affords a range of opportunities for a new type of city-making. With the current trend towards decreasing public expenditure on the built environment, the temporary use of space demonstrates alternative models of governance where local developers, councils and citizens work together to resolve the issue of a lack of resources. The MANY 6160 project, in particular, demonstrates a shift in government behaviour towards incentivising and supporting citizens. The City of Fremantle contributed $20,000 to the

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� T he proposed redevelopment of Kings Square includes new civic and administration buildings for the City of Fremantle along with 16,000 square metres of retail space and 30,000 square metres of office space.

AUSTRALIAN URBANISM The production floor provides 4,000 square metres of workspace. Image: Dave Sharp

project. Thousands of hours of volunteer labour from citizens have also contributed to it, along with the architects, who have borne start-up costs of over $50,000. (There is also the goodwill of building owners Sirona Capital.) A new world of cross-societal participation in urban design and planning has been opened up. However, the biggest advantage of temporary use has not been leveraged at the Fremantle site. The missed opportunity is an incremental approach to development, where temporary occupation becomes a pivotal intermediate step contributing to long-term development. In this scenario, the occupation of MANY 6160 could inform and influence the Kings Square development. Learnings about the location, the community and other local factors derived from the temporary place activation could contribute to the next iteration of the site. The temporary project could be embedded within broader master plans and urban frameworks in order to test out new experimental programs and governance models that could be brought into the longterm development. The temporary occupation of space is ripe for exploration in Perth and the regions of Western Australia where there is constant and changing use of sites. When we cannot predict the future, let alone the next decade, interim use provides ways to reimagine buildings, especially when citizens are increasingly demanding spaces for hours, days, weeks or months rather than years. This type of future city, contingent on mobility, requires a looser planning vision, along with an allowance for temporary occupation to inform future occupations, rather than being a placeholder for the development to follow.

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Solar technology is transforming our cities. Australia now has more rooftop panels per capita than anywhere else in the world, with 1.5 million Australian homes now having solar power systems. Over one in five households in Perth now generate solar energy, making these combined rooftops the largest power station in Western Australia. There are several reasons for the enthusiastic take-up. Australia enjoys a lot of sunshine; Perth has over 265 days with some sunshine per year. Australians are also early adopters of new technologies. However, the biggest factor may be that the cost of fossil-fuel electricity in Australia is one of the highest in wealthy economies. These costs will continue to rise in Western Australia as the state government subsidy (of almost 30 per cent) inevitably decreases. In contrast, solar PV is rapidly dropping in price – especially now it is being mass-produced in China. Solar PV plays a key role at the CRC for Low Carbon Living’s White Gum Valley (WGV) Living Laboratory in Fremantle, a unique research and demonstration project led by the WA state

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government’s land development agency, LandCorp. The project brings together a coalition of actors around the urgent topic of reducing carbon emissions: this is critical in Perth, a city with one of the highest per capita CO₂ emissions on the planet. The project participants address this problem through an innovative approach to suburban housing design and construction. Residential housing accounts for over 13 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions, and in this project, solar PV becomes one of a matrix of strategies to reduce emissions.

Perspective render of White Gum ValIey Living Laboratory. Image courtesy of LandCorp

The WGV Living Laboratory is 2.29-hectare, medium-density development of 80 dwellings incorporating diverse building typologies (detached houses, town houses and apartments), climate sensitive design, creative urban greening, innovative water management strategies and solar PV. WGV has performance targets of around a 60 per cent reduction in energy use, while carbon intensive mains-water usage is expected to drop 70 per cent across the various dwelling typologies, the result of a suite of initiatives with relatively modest cost implications.

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Solar power is key to reaching these targets. It is expected that the dwellings could effectively achieve net zero operational energy status with a combination of adequately sized PV systems and good occupant behavioural practices. It may be slightly more expensive to buy apartments in complexes with solar panels, but in the long term there will be savings on electricity bills (when strata owners pass on savings to their tenants). The WGV project focuses on how to achieve low carbon outcomes, with a view to making them mainstream. Projects like WGV show that the transition to a more sustainable economy cannot be achieved through policy alone. Experimental demonstration projects are also vital, and must interact with and interrogate policy and legislation to unlock thinking around environmental issues. Demonstration projects can transform the actors involved and produce new knowledge, and provide an opportunity to visualise what a transition to a sustainable economy may look like. The next phase of solar energy in Australia will include home battery storage, which is now rolling out across the country. Battery storage capacity – just like on our mobile phones – is expected to rapidly increase within a decade, while by 2020 being independent of energy utility companies – or going ‘off the grid’ – may be more cost competitive than staying connected. In WA these factors are contributing to the rapidly increasing uptake of solar energy by individual homeowners. However, local government authorities must lead on solar PV, especially when it comes to multi-residential developments managed as strata developments, which have faced barriers to introducing it. Again, demonstrative projects could be a means to transform policy into a tangible and visible reality while unlocking barriers for stakeholders and citizens alike. Solar energy is rapidly emerging as one of the easiest and most efficient ways to replace fossil fuels as a source of energy in Western Australia. WGV is likely to be the beginning of a disruptive transformation of energy use and storage in multi-suburban residential developments. Demonstration in the present will ensure a healthy solar future.

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� L andCorp’s White Gum Valley website outlines the various sustainability strategies of the project: landcorp.com.au/ innovation/wgv/

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Infrastructure in our cities – let’s call it the hardware – remains much the same as ever, but the software – the way we use it – is rapidly transforming. One piece of ‘software’, Airbnb, is dramatically reshaping the world’s cities. The digital platform, which allows citizens to find and rent short-term accommodation from other citizens, has the potential to rupture the traditional spatial relationship between tourist and local, making our cities more vibrant and diverse places to live in and to visit. The question is, what opportunities and dangers does the platform present? What are the implications of repurposing existing residential infrastructure for short-term accommodation? What happens when the global ‘sharing economy’ meets a city’s suburbs? Melbourne was an early adopter of Airbnb. It is also one of the top 10 cities for global travellers on Airbnb. What insights can be gathered from its experience? According to Airbnb, three quarters of listings worldwide are located outside major hotel districts. Three types of property listings exist on Airbnb: entire homes, private rooms and shared rooms. Entire homes in Melbourne make up over half the total number of the city’s metropolitan listings. Data collected in

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January 2016 reveals that their distribution is relatively consistent with that of hotels and licensed accommodation, which exist in large concentrations in the CBD and inner city. Analysis by website Inside Airbnb indicates that about 75 per cent of entire house listings in Melbourne are available for over 90 days per year. Many hosts who list entire homes lease or sublet when they go away. In Australia, tenants require permission from their landlord to sublet, so there is little risk for the landlord if they follow due process About a third of all entire-house listings in Melbourne are managed by hosts with multiple properties: the average number of properties held by these operators is three, but some have dozens of properties. Through Airbnb, these hosts are making existing housing infrastructure into informal, distributed hotels while saving on capital costs, overheads and wages. Globally, the Airbnb phenomenon has been blamed for driving up rental prices, accelerating gentrification and displacing local residents by reducing available housing stock. In Melbourne, the boom in high-density development in the CBD has resulted in an excess of homogenous apartment dwellings. Bedrooms without natural light, as well as insufficient floor area, outdoor space and storage space, characterise many of these developments, rendering them effectively unlivable for long-term residents. These properties are attractive to itinerant tenants seeking affordable inner-city accommodation.

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AUSTRALIAN URBANISM Concentration of entire-house rentals in Melbourne on Airbnb. Diagram: Jacqui Alexander and Tom Morgan

Concentration of shared-room rentals in Melbourne on Airbnb. Diagram: Jacqui Alexander and Tom Morgan

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Shared rooms in Melbourne only constitute about 2 per cent of all listings, but they are almost exclusively confined to the CBD, with Box Hill (14 kilometres east of Melbourne), and Maidstone/ Braybrook (eight kilometres west of Melbourne) as secondary outlying hotspots. The majority of CBD listings are around new apartment towers near Southern Cross Station (at the western end of the CBD) and RMIT University. A number of already small two-bedroom apartments in the Neo200, Upper West Side and QV1 towers are operating as gendered dormitories, often sleeping eight, with four to a room. Overloading these apartments results in potential fire-safety and hygiene-compliance issues. Short-term letting via sites like Airbnb allows investors to earn up to three times the amount they’d receive in rent (the average cost to rent an entire home is AU$189 per night). Travellers benefit from competitive accommodation rates, cooking facilities, convenient locations and access to private pools and gymnasiums intended for residents. Airbnb acknowledges the exploitation of the so-called sharing economy by professional hosts with multiple listings, but it has not yet taken steps to regulate it. In the meantime, governments would do well to implement much-needed minimum design standards to curb the construction of developments that fail to cater for residents or which are purpose-built for the Airbnb market (there are a few local examples already emerging).

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AUSTRALIAN URBANISM Concentration of private-room rentals in Melbourne on Airbnb. Diagram: Jacqui Alexander and Tom Morgan

Beyond the obvious need to protect the amenity of citizens, protection of the liveliness and heterogeneity of the city is essential to maintaining the kind of ‘authentic’ experience that appeals to Airbnb users in the first place. Melbourne is beginning to follow the trajectory of international cities like London, where the investor market, fuelled by capital gains tax exemptions, has pushed residents further and further out. Dispersing the concentration of entire-house and private-room rental is vital. More promising is the dispersed pattern of private rooms in Melbourne, which represent around 45 per cent of listings across the city. While there is still a concentration of private rooms in and around the CBD, diffuse listings across Melbourne’s middle-ring suburbs realise Airbnb’s ambition to enable access to the everyday spaces of cities. This pattern makes sense given the mismatch between Australian house sizes, which remain the largest in the world, and changing household structures; most significantly, the decline of the nuclear family. An increase in housing diversity in the

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middle-ring suburbs is likely to facilitate more entire house listings in these areas in the future. We are also seeing evidence of Airbnb driving housing diversity, with annexed and granny-flat configurations commonly listed in suburbs close to the Melbourne CBD like Brunswick and Caulfield. The by-product of arrangements like these is slow but genuine ‘bottom-up’ densification. Government incentives around this kind of small-scale development would help to make this a viable (and for many, welcome) alternative to densification through high-rise apartment development. Airbnb claims that tourists that use their platform “stay longer and spend more”. With additional revenue captured from the sharing-economy, governments could be funding more extensive and efficient transport networks to service both locals and visitors. Extending transport infrastructure would support the intensification of distributed neighbourhoods, and maximise the intermingling between tourists and locals. Bottom-up densification could also be a way forward for Perth. The distribution of Perth Airbnb accommodation towards its coastal suburbs highlights potential in this space: here, tourism-specific and local infrastructure can converge. This is an exciting prospect for a state that positions itself as a unique travel destination. Airbnb emerges from the same cultural tendency as the pop-up shop and interim-use place activation. Built environment professionals must recognise it as an urban issue, and lead with a framework for targeted, productive disruption. Airbnb can increase the density of people within existing building stock, and it can disperse the positive effects of the tourist economy. This requires more imagination from planners and designers, who must also consider the interests of individual citizens, whether they are renters or homeowners. Can Airbnb be a part of the solution of increasing urban infill without compromising a minimum standard of living?

Right: Airbnb rentals in Perth. Diagram: Jacqui Alexander

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� D ata on Airbnb accommodation in Perth was gathered from publicly available information on Airbnb via Airdna.

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BIOGRAPHIES JACQUI ALEXANDER is a lecturer at Monash University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. She is founding editor of POST Magazine and a director of Alexander Sheridan Architecture. SIMON ANDERSON is an architect, educator and author. He is Head and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia. He has received several national awards for his architecture practice. JULIAN BOLLETER is an assistant professor at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC) at the University of Western Australia. He is also an award-winning landscape architect and urban designer. ALESSIO FINI is a Melbournebased, Perth-raised designer. He currently works at Fieldwork Projects and was previously at Casper Mueller Kneer Architects and Universal Design Studio in London.

GEOFFREY LONDON is professor of architecture at the University of Western Australia. He is a

former government architect of Victoria and Western Australia, and a past dean and head of architecture at UWA. TIMOTHY MOORE is the editor of Future West (Australian Urbanism) and director of architecture practice Sibling. He has worked as an editor of Volume and Architecture Australia magazines. PETER NEWMAN is an environmental scientist, author and educator. He is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute (CUSP). JENNIE OFFICER is the director of architecture practice Officer Woods. She is also a senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia. BRAD PETTITT is Mayor of Fremantle. He was previously the dean of the School of Sustainability at Murdoch University. BREE TREVENA is a senior officer at Creative Victoria. She is currently undertaking research on innovation and creative precincts at the University of Melbourne.

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Future West (Australian Urbanism) is a biannual publication that looks towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. EDITORIAL BOARD Simon Anderson Alessio Fini Geoffrey London Jennie Officer EDITOR Timothy Moore SUBEDITOR Rowena Robertson PUBLICATION DESIGN Stuart Geddes PRINTING Printgraphics, Melbourne PUBLISHER Future West (Australian Urbanism) is published by the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts at the University of Western Australia.

DISTRIBUTION Future West (Australian Urbanism) is distributed by ALVA at the University of Western Australia. To obtain a copy, navigate to alva.uwa.edu.au/community/ futurewest Future West (Australian Urbanism) has been made possible with a generous private donation. ISSN 2206-4087 Copyright 2016 The material within the publication remains the right of the contributors.

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