SPATIAL & GIS
E GREYFIELDS New research into how we develop our cities has highlighted the hidden potential of middle-ring suburbs, which offer significant potential for growth via urban infill.
I
magine leafy green middle suburbs filled with old housing stock. They’re ripe pickings for developers and time-poor local government urban planners keen to stamp approval and redevelop. Many of these were once elegant communities with thriving young families and activity. In more recent times, the children have left and the housing is at the end of its life. The backyards are being in-filled with small units and an occasional high-rise, and the area is struggling to cope with public services and poor infrastructure maintenance. There is no other plan for the future. Is this the only reality? Some of Australia and New Zealand’s middle suburbs are planning a different future that is rich in growth and regeneration in a strategically sustainable manner. This type of urban growth leads to efficient infrastructure and better communities. Greening the Greyfields is a project conceived by Professor Peter Newton (Swinburne University) and Professor Peter Newman (Curtin University) and funded by the CRC for Spatial www.infrastructuremagazine.com.au
Information (CRCSI) in 2011. It flowed from independent research by both Professors who both identified the middle suburbs of Australian cities as the critical areas for growth via urban infill. The regeneration of the middle suburbs was presented to the Major Cities Unit at a professorial meeting in Sydney in March 2011 as a critical challenge for sustainable urban development. The project set out to create a new way of developing cities, so these cities could house significant population increases in a sustainable fashion. The term greyfields was created by Professor Newton in his seminal 2010 paper, Built Environment, and refers to the middle suburbs of Australian cities; places where the housing stock is ageing and being replaced by newer, more intensive housing developments, that have better sustainability performance. The volume of change in these areas is staggering, but it is not occurring in a strategic or organised fashion. Unlike greenfield (urban fringe housing developments) and brownfield (exindustrial housing development),
greyfield redevelopment occurs on small, individual lots of land, and there are many instances where planning has led to inefficient use of land and expensive, adhoc infrastructure supply. Also, unlike greenfield and brownfield developments, there is no set redevelopment model for anything other than developing individual lots. The two Professors sought to address this problem. Starting out with an analysis of housing and infrastructure costs for greenfield versus greyfield redevelopment, Professor Newman and Dr Roman Trubka, a Western Australian research fellow at Curtin University and CRCSI scholarship holder, demonstrated that greyfield redevelopment was far more costeffective because the infrastructure and services already existed. A critical second stage of the research was articulated by Professor Newton, who scoped the key elements of a spatial tool designed to indicate where redevelopment was most likely to occur. With the involvement of Dr Stephen
March 2017 // ISSUE 2
19