urban research program
where have all the gardens gone?
An Investigation into the Disappearance of Back Yards in the Newer Australian Suburb
A Research Paper by Tony Hall
The more recent Australian suburbs display a disturbing trend. Within the past 10 years the back yard has largely disappeared from new suburban houses in Australia. The dwelling now extends near to the boundary of the plot and, in consequence, near to adjoining dwellings. There is little in the way of balconies and verandas. Windows are often small and tinted.
The design is normally single-storey, square or deep-plan and incorporates an integral double garage further reducing the scope for natural lighting and ventilation. Usually, only one room provides an outlook to the front and surveillance of the street.
The outer suburban landscape in Australia has, inconsequence, ceased to be one of large gardens with trees. As a result, the community as a whole suffers from reduced aesthetics, reduced surveillance of the public realm. There is little or no biodiversity, poor microclimate, especially loss of shade in hot weather, and increased run-off in wet weather. The residents lack the space for sitting out in private, secure outdoor children’s play, swimming pools, barbeques, drying laundry and other components of a sustainable lifestyle. They also suffer from lack of pleasant outlook from windows, dark interiors, lack of natural ventilation and increased electricity consumption. The design implies an entirely indoor lifestyle, insulated from the prevailing climate and with little opportunity for exercise.
The shift away from back yards represents, therefore, a loss that not only has serious ecological implications but also raises important questions about changing lifestyles, rendered permanent by the changes to the housing stock.
Tony Hall has undertaken a detailed study of this increasing but largely un-remarked phenomenon. To try to obtain an understanding of what has been happening a quantitative analysis of sample areas of Australian cities was undertaken.
Comparisons were also made with selected examples in the USA. A visual inspection of aerial photographs of urban areas was made using Google Earth concentrating on the Australian state capitals. The different types of form stood out clearly and occupied contiguous areas. What was immediately striking was the clear difference between the older suburban areas with their large gardens and tree cover and newer ones where there was little in the way of private amenity space.
The new pattern of development was widespread in all the cities except Adelaide. What was especially significant was the disjunction in both space and time. There was no evidence of gradual change. Although there was variation in the detailed dimensions of the plots and dwellings, the two types of form stood out as uniform phenomena. Before a certain date, suburban form had incorporated back gardens of useful size and shape and a significant coverage of trees. After this date, these were absent.
Examples of older and newer suburban form were selected from Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth and Sydney for more detailed examination. The spaces between the dwellings, and the distance from the rear of the building to the plot boundary were measured. Sizes of plots and dwelling footprints were recorded.
The phenomenon was not found to result from urban consolidation, smaller plots and higher densities. It was most obvious in the car-based development on the extremities of cities, a long way from city centres. There had, indeed, been an increase in net residential density from 9-13 dph to 13-20 dph. In general, plot sizes had been getting smaller and dwelling footprints larger. However, in examples studied on the Queensland Gold Coast and to the south of Perth, the plot areas were actually larger and the densities lower. Although plots there were comparable to, or larger than, those in the older suburbs of Sydney and Brisbane, they were almost completely covered by larger dwellings.
Whatever the size of plot, the dwelling extended over nearly the whole area except where a front set-back was required. In extreme cases, pictured below, there was not even a front set-back and the house was enclosed by a metal fence on all four sides. The most significant and universal statistic was an increase in plot coverage from around 30% in the older suburbs to 50-70% in the newer ones
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Mount Druitt NSW |
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What was being built was low-cost housing which provided extensive floor area but not high standards of amenity and lifestyle, in marked contrast to contemporary housing in city centres. The incentive is now to maximise floor area for the lowest cost, rather than to maximise amenity. Prospective purchasers drive to a locality where they can afford the price of a plot. Having selected their plot, they approach builders offering standard house designs.
Their response to the consumer demand results in a particular design. The single storey, deep rectangular plan form minimises the wall length and fenestration for a given area thus minimising cost.
The international comparisons suggested that the phenomenon was very much an Australian one. New American suburbs, as with the older suburbs in Australia, showed one-third plot coverage or less, despite widely differing circumstances. The house footprints were marginally larger but the plot areas were significantly larger. This gave a back yard equivalent in area to the older Australian suburbs. In the UK, back gardens of 150m2 or more are regularly achieved at densities between 20 and 35 dph.
There has been little comment on this phenomenon in either professional or public circles, let alone any action by planning authorities to prevent it. Nevertheless, even minor amendments to local regulations on how plots are developed could bring about a significant change for the better. In the longer term, however, what is needed is an awakening of a general concern for better residential design and comprehensive action to secure higher quality in the future.
The full report can be downloaded from the Urban Research Program page of the Griffith University so check there first as there are other papers on related subjects
or if that does not work - from here
Tony Hall is an Adjunct Professor with the Urban Research Program at Griffith University and is Emeritus Professor of Town Planning at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.
