Upward ? Or Outward ?

One of the reasons that Sydney has much lower building height restrictions than other world cities is the limitation of having our main airport at Mascot, adjacent to the city centre.   It was reasoned that aircraft approaching and taking off from Mascot would be at risk on days of low cloud or the occasional fog that shrouds the city.

We are fast finishing a new airport to the city's west and the instrument landing techniques that are in use today are a big improvement on the days when Mascot was first established as our air gateway.  The fate of Mascot after the new airport opens is yet to be decided but it seems inevitable that it will lose much of its traffic to where a faster traffic turnaround is possible.

Pressure is building to increase the height of new buildings in the city, and one of the arguments put forward is that adding another twenty stories to the present limit would sharply reduce the purchase price of a city apartment.   At present a new apartment in one of Sydney's towering blocks sells for about $ 873,000.  That would come down to about $ 519,000 if the economies of those extra twenty stories were taken into account.

That is the appeal of the " vertical village " concept.  Going upward has the advantage of adding more people to the existing gas, water and sewage facilities and new buildings sited adjacent to transport hubs encourage greater use of public transport.  The only way is upwards if we hope to end the outward sprawl of the city.

The economics are encouraging, but it does come at a cost.  Those ultra tall buildings cast a shadow and block the sun from the older, lower buildings that remain and the " canyons " they create increase wind speeds at street level.  The sheer economics of having a roof over our heads is diminishing the dream of having a backyard where the kids can play and making that the prerogative of the very wealthy.

If height limits are increased it will further serve to widen the price difference between an apartment and a free standing house.  A greater proportion of the population will be forced to adopt apartment living which many people consider a drop in living standards.   The city skyline may resemble the scenes we deplore in China where its vast population is housed in tiny apartments separated from the ground by massive elevator systems.  In the event of a power failure, thousands are stranded high in the sky.

The alternative is developing satellite cities on our outward perimeter but the blocks of land are now so small and the houses we build are so big that no free standing space remains and those packed structures simply deliver a calamitous fire risk.  We are warned of the risk of a bushfire sweeping into the suburbs ands causing mass devastation as happened in Canberra several years ago.

That decision on building heights is enmeshed in politics.  The decision whether to go with an apartment in the sky or a similar structure occupying all the available land in the suburbs depends on the outlook of the decision makers.   How we will live and what the Sydney skyline looks like in the future will be dependent on that balance  !