Kiwi Urbanism

Isthmus director David Irwin spoke recently at the Urban Design Forum event at  Te Papa, Wellington. David referenced two current Isthmus projects to illustrate creative urban design solutions for compact and affordable housing; at Hobsonville Point we are pushing the density and size of housing lots while on a current project site in Auckland where we are exploring a new framework for freehold mixed-use urban development. Here are notes and some slides:

We are a country of small builders, a lot of the big guys are gone. We are a country of great residential architects who understand our way of life.  Auckland is working out its urban form for the future. Compact and high quality is the catch cry from the city leaders as the density increases. We are a culture of suburbanites and as we are required to increase denisty we look for ways of preserving this now miniaturised ideal, questioning how small can we go – 1/4 acre lot; 600sqm; 400sqm; 350sqm; 300sqm; Perhaps 200sqm is the minimum before the model falls apart with no yard left, the reduction function in the xerox fails.

Examples of all the above exist; if you design this out with some real market realities you get a plan that requires a yield of approximately 40 dwellings per hectare. Add some kiwi based urban design and inspiration and you get Hobsonville point, where the current master plan reflects the reality of the market struggling to accept any other form other than a suburban based model, even in one of arguably the best pieces of land for intensification in Auckland.

New Zealand is set up to realise this suburban model. Our builders are small in general a host of small scale builders building a couple a year. Our ownership aspirations our culture of brick and tile are for freehold titles, not unit or stata titles. Our banks reflect this with 10 percent deposits for freehold titles and 40 percent for others, making a lot of product unattainable. I would like to share an idea – actually part of a project – that I think can deliver true kiwi residential urbanism.

That idea is based on working with the freehold title that has lots of examples in NZ, a great inspirational track record offshore and is buildable by our builders. But it does present some consenting challenges and some new ways of thinking. Our site is in the mixed-use zone of urban Auckland, has a 15m height limit and a 2:1 FAR requirement. It looks to provide a traditional subdivision offering to the market built around a small scale street /lane at 12m wide and benchmarked off a number of inner city streets. Each site is a freehold title. All very traditional – the difference is what can be built!

The idea is no traditional terraces, no common or party walls but free-standing structures like commerical buildings with a 25mm gap; a true mixed use urban solution allowing residential and commercial use. The model is basd on the a series of case studies in and around Auckland and one famous offshore example - Borneo Sporenburg – where West8 developed a framework and design code for independent canal houses designed by various architects. The result was an amazing mix of Dutch architecture where open space was provided through a wide range of options; roofs, courtyards, hanging decks, 2 storey and 3 storey voids. Every one different.

I’ve been there and wondered if there was interest in this form in New Zealand. Sure enough, right outside our studio in Freemans Bay are a heap of examples of residential and commercial buildings (and mixtures of both) that create a similar outcome. We used some of these buildings as case studies to build up a library of forms and approaches.

This development model could start to break the typical suburban-based residential solution. Building at higher densities within a free holding structure is not reliant on a larger builder and instead attracts small investors and owners. It opens the door for innovative design-led solutions that showcase our excellent NZ architects.

The Urbanism Downunder event was supported by the planning, landscape, architecture, engineering and surveying Institutes as a forum for discussion on good urban design.

it’s all about the bike: ralph

Ralph Johns, Director. Wellington.

why do you ride a bike?

Mostly to get to work, and home again. Compared to taking the car or the bus it saves me money, keeps me fit without joining a gym and the ride home helps me leave work stress behind.

what are you riding at the moment, and why do you like it?

When it gets wet and windy i tend to ride a mountain bike for comfort. When the sun is shining I ride my favourite road bike.

what types of riding do you do?

Mostly urban; commuting and getting across town to meetings. The bike is much quicker than walking and cheaper than a taxi.

At weekends I get out a bit with the family on the waterfront, around the harbour or up the rimutaka incline.

how many bikes do you own?

Six. Three old road bikes with all campagnolo gear (early 1970s Bertin, mid 80s Peugeot and late 80s Vitus) and three old school mtbs (a couple of old Marin workhorses and a mid 90s Scott Comp Racing).

your best/worst recent bike experience?

Last year we hired bikes in New York to get around Central Park but ended up cycling the length of Manhattan on the new Hudson river trails, then right back up 8th Avenue. We had two trailer bikes with the little kids on, while our eldest handled it on her own. It wasn’t all easy new bikes lanes, but it still felt safer than cycling in Wellington. It was the just best way to see the city.

weekly kms?

75km

Auckland Cityfix: Give Way Stripes

In order to improve conditions for all road users a small design tweak needs to be implemented at most intersections. This simple fix would go a long way to make the city more pleasant and safe for those walking around.

As designed and implemented the current stop line or give way stripe is placed too far into the intersection. The result is that vehicle drivers travel through the “pedestrian”  zone before even considering whether a pedestrian may be present. So in effect every intersection becomes a serious peril for people walking and cycling. It also has the tendency to both prioritise and empower vehicular movement which degrades overall walkability/livability.

Below are several examples with red added to highlight this conflict area.

Wynard Quarter: red depicts pedestrian conflict area

Karangahape Rd: red depicts pedestrian conflict area

Pitt Street stop sign: red depicts pedestrian conflict area

Of course there are some bigger issues with overall pedestrian priority and status in New Zealand as discussed in this Herald article (and in many cases give way scenarios should be changed to full stops). But if Auckland is going spend millions on streetscape upgrades, shouldn’t we be able to get these fundamental design elements correct? And as far as low hanging fruit go wouldn’t reworking these stripes be an effective strategy to make places like the CBD more pedestrian-friendly?

Bicycles the Incredible Urban Leverage Engine

Alternative catchment measurement techniques. Mt Albert Station, Auckland.

One reason we go on about bikes here is that we see them being an incredible opportunity to leverage our existing urban form and provide one of the tools to deal with our current resource realities. I have written a few things about Auckland’s inherently interconnected streetcar suburbs (the City’s DNA), and the potential they embody. This potential is based on the fact that the streetcar suburbs were originally designed, at least in part, to incorporate walking. By first recognising this value  and secondly to find ways to exploit it, we have incredible opportunities to provide gains in mobility, health, and quality of life.

One such way to leverage the physical form of the streetcar suburbs is the use of the bicycle. While the streetcar suburbs are now mostly well covered by bus service, the soon-to-be electrified fixed rail system would benefit from maximum ridership. With the advent of rail electrification and the possibility of the cbd central loop it’s not hard to imagine the rail system becoming a true city-wide metro service.

Illustration of Reach. Source: City Form Lab, MIT.

As you recall we have been working with the software Urban Network Analysis to analyse spatial integration throughout Auckland. Spatial integration basically describes the connectivity of places to other places via streets. One particularly relevant application of the software is to quickly analyse a particular place’s reach. Reach quantifies the number of places/people that can be reached given a certain distance query.

Typically this process would be conducted by hand or oversimplified with simple radius searches using GIS. But by using the Urban Network Analysis software we can quickly create legitimate distance searches based upon the existing street, trail, and path networks.

In order to test the software we have developed a sample scenario to test each Auckland’s suburban train station’s potential for increased ridership by attracting bicyclists.  (Bicyclists could be encouraged through  infrastructure such as long term parking, better on or off-street facilities or other incentive programs.)

The first test identified the number of households within 400m of the station, this is considered the pedestrian catchment. And if we consider a comfortable cycling range to be closer to 800m we can determine the additional extent for potential cyclists.  Here is an example of the results of the Mt Albert train station.

Mt Albert Station	Pedestrian Catchment (400m search)	Bike Catchment (800m search)	(%) Change
Houses	246	1106	350%

By simply considering cyclists as viable tranist users this train station can increase its ridership catchment by over 350%. Not coincidentally this is a good example of  the area that is gained by doubling the radius of a circle. This reveals the consistency of the neighbourhood under study and demonstrates the network efficiency of traditional, walkable streetcar suburbs (and frankly makes me feel a little thick for employing high tech software to deduce something so plainly obvious).

Sturges Train Station Catchment (simple 400m radius shown)

But the results are different when testing another station. By comparison here are the results from the Sturges station located in Waitakere.

Sturges Station	Pedestrian Catchment (400m search)	Bike Catchment (800m search)	(%) Change
Houses	116	226	110%

The numbers illustrate several important geometric principles related to urban form and connectivity. For one, regular, gridded streets provide efficient and resilient movement patterns that are more easily leveraged for transit and bike infrastructure. There are also several micro scale design considerations that are revealed that we will discuss in the next post. Ultimately however, this is leading me to believe that it’s not “all about the bike” but instead it’s much more “about the neighbourhood” and this in turn has important implications about future development opportunities and land use and transport decisions.

The Work Cycle

Isthmus is proud to be featured on “The Work Cycle” a website that visually showcases cycle culture within the workplace. Images are from our Wellington, Auckland and Tauranga studios with some words explaining our approach to integrating cycling with working.

Some own a bike to commute, stay healthy and save money. For others cycling offers speed and convenience getting around town to sites and meetings. We all like to do our bit towards creating a better city by using a more people and environmentally friendly mode of transport.