And, yes, it has been a while since I last posted an update. I plan to start posting again in the future — perhaps around mid-year. With any luck, my first return post will be about Spectra breaking ground. Read more...

Note that both of these buildings are intended to be 9 storeys. (I can't seem to find the source for that right now.) I would actually prefer if they were all of different heights — say one 7 and one 11 storeys, in addition to Mosaic at 9 storeys — as it creates a more visually diverse setting. I'm also hoping that they are visually very different to Mosaic. I'm of the opinion that homogeneous building designs can be produce very poor outcomes. The risk isn't too high in Metro Village (there is already variety along Cheltenham Road), but I would still prefer if diversity in design were an explicit aim. Read more...

(Image is of 3 Macpherson Street at present from Street View.) Read more...

People who raise concerns about infrastructure changes are often called NIMBYs. This is most often a misnomer, because sometimes the infrastructure either doesn't directly affect the people raising the concerns (so it's not in their backyard) or because they'd be against it elsewhere as well (i.e. they'd still be against it if it was in somebody else's backyard, though perhaps not as vocally). The true NIMBY is someone who says "Good idea, but don't put it here."

What does that have to do with this article? Well, at some point The Age decided to take up the cause of people affected by infrastructure change. I'm quite OK with that. However, at some later point they twisted it into what I'm going to call NIMBY-sensationalism. That means they scour new infrastructure projects to create NIMBY concerns. (Like the drug company that creates the perception of a problem so they can sell more of their drug.) This article is in that vein. Read more...

I don't understand why politicians and planners aren't honest about why they build roads, as I'm pretty sure people would get it. It has nothing to do with congestion or traffic flow. Instead, it's all about the economy. Increasing the capacity of roads means greater capacity for road activity, which is tightly connected to economic activity. That activity grows until — the road fills up and congestion goes back to the same levels everyone was already showing a willingness to tolerate.

There are many ways to reduce road congestion — one of those is to reduce the need for transport overall by encouraging people to live, work and play locally. Read more...

The plans for the next 10 years sound promising. I think the city is underutilising most of its facilities. Rate caps are going to make fixing that very difficult. Read more...

Our primary concern should be with how we want the city to evolve, and how we allow it to grow and express itself. Areas shouldn't have static height limits. Heights should be kept within the range of existing buildings, in the absence of a major redevelopment plan (i.e. up to 3 storeys would be acceptable amongst 1-2 storey areas, up to 5 storeys amongst 3-4 storey areas). Obviously major activity areas (like a highway leading directly into the centre of a city) should be given much greater flexibility, and zoning made more in line with the city itself. Limiting properties that front on to the Princes Highway to 3 storeys is disappointingly short-sighted. A thriving city (and not a thriving suburb) needs to provide a variety of dwelling options, and this is harmfully limiting.

Ultimately, quality should be the key consideration. An appealingly designed apartment building should have greater flexibility than a more standard effort. Of course this is subjective, but one can bring a measure of objectivity to it by surveying people's opinions on the designs (which wouldn't add very much expense to the permitting process, given how long and expensive it already is).

Finally, the only reason the city is able to put these controls in place is because it really isn't a popular place for developments. Councillors are pretending they have a large say in how things should work, but it's actually the market that is expressing no interest. If the market picks up, expect all of this to be overturned very quickly. Read more...

27 Scott Street must have been sold at some point, and the new owners appear to have been kicking marketing off in the last week or so, with a new Facebook page, website and branding going up on the site hoarding.

The new development keeps the same design as City Rise, but has added a few stories since the last time we saw it. I count 14 storeys in the image (with 3 of those carpark levels). The name is an improvement on previous iterations (City Rise and The Majestic), albeit a little confusing since it's not on Lonsdale Street. Anyway, I hope this refresh goes well. Read more...

I'm undecided on the approach. All the renders look pretty, with lots of clean, light-filled parks sitting neatly under lovely clean concrete. My experience with proposal renders is that they normally fail to depict the outcome accurately (not always, but most of the time they do). The one thing we can guarantee with these renders is that the complete absence of tags is well beyond unrealistic. (Unless they plan on incorporating CCTV everywhere.) What's more, the concrete will wear poorly, there will be much less light than depicted in the renders (particularly since the renders appear to be making use of the bloom effect, which artificially increases the brightness of light in a 3D image) and the parks are unlikely to be so well-maintained.

It's also unclear where this puts the plans for quadruplication. From the renders, it looks like neither the stations nor the elevated platforms are capable of supporting four tracks without significant additional (expensive) work. What's more, the amount of overshadowing of whatever goes below would be even more severe if four tracks were ever to be built. The design doesn't seem particularly future proof.

Let's see how it goes. On the positive side, Noble Park will now get a new station (visible in the distance in the image), which was not going to be the case before. And the proposal is both quite cheap and quick to build, so we won't have to wait very long for the whole thing to be completed. Read more...

I'm unable to find anything substantial on the council or state planning registers about the site (aside from a two lot subdivision), nor on Google. Read more...

It seems very unlikely to me that this would work well. I'd need to see an awful lot of detailed 3D designs before I'd be comfortable that it wasn't going to end up an ugly mess. Read more...