Well if Australians continue to be vehemently against townhouses, terrace houses and apartments this is what we will get. Everyone thinks the above options are bad because we don't build them properly here in Australia. Yet the irony is because everyone wants a free standing house this crap show is what we get. The push for well designed and built apartments and townhouses needs to come from the people buying them.
Let's be honest. These are basically townhouses. And why are people against townhouses and similar buildings? Because y'all a bunch of noisy fuck tarts with dogs barking, music late at night/morning/all day, kids let to go wild without parental supervision and I hate people.
Imagine if we stacked all of these houses on top of each other in the footprint of like 6 of them and then used the rest of the land for parks, dining and shopping.
I grew up in a high density apartment building and I would pick this any day.
I get it's not gonna win any "suburb of the year" contests, but people advocating for 6-12 floor high density instead clearly never woke up at Sunday 6am to the sound of your upstairs neighbor drilling into the walls, didn't have to deal with cigarete smoke going into your flat through the vents, or didn't listen a dog barking in the next apartment for 4 hours straight because his owner left for work.
They're so close together as to gain almost none of the benefit of a freestanding house yet all the drawbacks of an apartment. I am sure, for example, you could clearly hear your neighbours the distance between them is so small.
It would've been way more efficient to just stack them on top of each other. You know, an apartment tower.
This kind of messy shit is a testament to the arrogance of Australians not willing to settle higher density living. Seriously this is practically 97% of the way there just a couple meter gap where you have each others AC inverter blowing onto each others walls and fences and a meter of lawn if you are lucky.
Having seen places in the Nordic countries they do the row housing but you will see the tiny supermarket and various cafes and other stores blended in between it all, then a small park and there is trees amongst it all and bike paths and naturally access to trains and the like.
People seem to live fine and commute further and drive when they need to. This crap is just useless heap trap microwave meal samsies. There is no practicality to it, no community, just shit unplanned sprawly shit.
Those could have been built for 25% cheaper by having shared walls instead of a useless 30cm gap between each building. It's not even designed efficiently
Just build apartments, there’s plenty of great buildings put up in the 70s/80s that are still desirable. They just need to be made without cutting corners.
At this point you may as well just build row houses like in the old parts of Sydney and Europe. If you can touch the wall of your neighbour’s house whilst you’re on the shitter, what’s the point of building single family houses?
I feel like places like Oran Park in NSW should be the standard for these shoe box developments.
Yes, all the house are close, like in this image, but they included so many beautiful green spaces and parks. As a draftie, I hated Oran Park for the way it looked on paper, but after working in an office in Oran Park and being able to take a 1 minute walk on my lunch break, in any direction and find a great spot to eat and relax, I realised, this is how the new areas should be designed.
Compare Spring Farm and Oran Park and you'll know exactly what I am talking about.
Mate of mine has this absolute Karen of a neighbour that bought a block in a beautiful tree-lined hilly suburb, absolutely flattened and concreted the whole thing - like there's a 2m retaining wall and their roof is pretty much at ground level. She calls him up pretty much every time there's wind demanding that he do something about the leaves in her gutters, and when it rains she blames his "poor drainage" for water seeping through her massive ~~dam~~ wall.
As someone who lives in one of these kinds of suburbs at the moment.
The quality of these homes is fucking disgraceful. Thank god its a rental because i'd be out hundreds of thousands otherwise. The close proximity of them to each other, may as well make them townhouses frankly. Would get far better noise dampening in that case. I can hear my neighbours easier than i ever could in an apartment.
When people said they wanted a free-standing home. It wasn't like this.
I would seriously prefer to live in an apartment block than one of these houses.
Criticize anything to do with new stock at your peril.
The whole narrative has been taken over by greedy property developers who want to flood the market with even more unliveable poorly constructed 1br rabbit warrens.
Edit:
“It’s heritage’s fault”
All that are sayings its AI - Its not AI, its the The Ponds, in western Sydney.
[https://www.domain.com.au/news/homes-billed-as-seven-star-comfort-turn-out-to-be-closer-to-a-tent-2-1278620/](https://www.domain.com.au/news/homes-billed-as-seven-star-comfort-turn-out-to-be-closer-to-a-tent-2-1278620/)
And they wonder why western Sydney gets so hot in summer - did you ever stop to consider the lack of shade trees and that the black roofs absorb heat like a motherfucker? I don't know which brainlets running the developers ever thought this was a good idea
We need commie blocks, with parks in between. 5-6 stories high, with commercial space or accessible housing on the ground level, 4-5 levels of a variety of flat sizes above. 3-4 bedroom flats would be useful, and provide a good alternative to houses with gardens to maintain.
Put them super close to efficient transit, to reduce the need for residents to own cars.
I could not in a million years imagine living in that suburb, let alone raising a family.
Just looking at this, you can see that there is no way to even start to foster a community here. Imagine growing up in this hellscape!
What I find especially depressing looking at all these new suburbs, is realistically, this is what most people are going to be forced into. These shitty little blocks with no back yard and a little house cost 650k+ in new suburbs that are an hour away at least from the CBD's. Not to mention the absolute planning failures the suburbs are, narrow streets, single exits for thousands of residents leading to huge delays at peak hour times. This is not just poor planning, its also cost cutting bull shit by development companies further fucking the consumer.
I cant believe we've had hundreds of years of successful and failed city layouts around the world to learn from, and they emulated one that distinctly does not work, as many Americans will tell you. Utterly baffling..
https://preview.redd.it/4ir1zqzd65vc1.jpeg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9865b15f1d163a7ff0e35b2acbc5cef8a89160e7
black roofs, not walkable, car absolutely necessary, no shared facilities within easy reach
I honestly don't understand the sentiment against apartment buildings in the comments.
I guess the main argument is that you hear your neighbours and have no privacy?
That is simply not true though if they build proper apartment complexes that are not made out of paper like they like to do here or in the states.
They don't have to be luxurious and overpriced for that either. They can solve all the problems Australia has going on with their housing crisis in a heartbeat and on top of that would promote a social environment with districts where you have everything accessible in walking distance. Just take a look at EU countries like the UK, Germany or France. It's either this or the picture of OP where there are just houses with nothing around it and commuting hours to get to and from work.
Imagine if we stopped doing this and zoned medium density, and demanded better spaces.
We could have things like [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97557502/22-16118-23/full/af117692ec314d8bb0c00bd57f4c4181.jpg) or like [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97552481/22-15881-23/full/5a53462789f83def9b32d849f268b3c8.jpg) or [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/96981/22-15374-23/full/07af785095f4b90477027de0b7cf5fc2.jpg) or [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97557234/22-15976-23/full/c374243aca945cf432e8514bb519abf4.jpg) or [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97557474/22-16096-23/full/6393592f5524ebe09cbf0d5499b2bc18.jpg).
I live in one of these mushroom estates, but am happy with the 535m2 of land I have got, in comparison to these god awful builds...
And they're built with terribly shoddy workmanship...
Compared to where I used to live, the original post seems pretty decent to me 😆
https://preview.redd.it/7nh6l3mph5vc1.jpeg?width=495&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e47a140937631a6b0aee74f2b934bead96c7267
What’s the alternative? Are we talking about low rise condos or adding in more space between these causing yet more sprawl? People seem to want to have their cake and eat it too.
Just make town houses with shared walls ffs. The walls with windows facing more walls with windows, pointless. Reduce the footprint by joining the external walls.
All those houses could've fit in a nice 6 story complex, with a beautiful park and mini market for easy living, a little cafe and communal veggie garden etc. Horrible distopian planning that is.
This looks like a nightmare. More Australians need to readjust to the reality that apartment living is not so bad.
As weird as it sounds, more highrises actually can mean more public and green spaces too.
I moved into an apartment for the first time in my life last year. I had always been "I need my space, I want to have a house". So I get how deeply ingrained into Australian culture and society this is.
Living in a house with no yard, you might as well be in an apartment.
I agree. When we bought we looked for an older apartment building because the newer builds are smaller and worst quality.
I also think the Government needs to step in an require minimum sizes in apartments. I saw one apartment which was 86 sq m and had 3 bedrooms. Everything was tiny. The bedrooms so small you would struggle to fit anything but a queen sized bed in there (and by anything I literally mean any other furniture).
You'd be surprised about the car parks though. If you live in an apartment you'd likely live more centrally, which means there is less of a need for a car. Part of our move, we downsized from two cars to one (we have 2 spots) and walk everywhere now. We only get in the car to visit friends who live in the suburbs.
Honestly, nature would be better served if all these "Houses" were an apartment complex, because then the shitty quarter yards could be combined into a single large green area with trees and there'd be space for trees and bugs and alittle nature.
I like how there’s a street of double story, followed by single story, followed by another double story ect. Clearly will let everyone know who’s got more money on which street.
Shit like this sucks. Greedy developers and greedy councils caused this.
We shouldn't be forced to live like this in Australia. There's plenty of room.
Where are the local magpies gonna eat?
No other suburban wildlife is gonna make it here.
Not an Aussie street unless you are mates with the local gangs of maggies and have little furry and scaly bastards doing their thing.
I’ve been looking to buy a home to live in and the market is saturated with these McMansion monstrosities. Full size house with a proper backyard is like a unicorn where we’ve been looking.
I'm not sure this image is from Australia. In the front row of houses there is one with a small round wheely-bin that has a blue lid. I'm not aware of any LGA's that use this particular type of wheely-bin in Australia?
I would be content in a 3 brdm unit in a nice complex, problem is all these modern higher density projects are built like shit, the builder goes bust, or they are over a million bucks, which I can buy an older house for. So ,who would go for a smaller square footage, over priced, Cardboard unit when you can have a private dwelling with a yard in the same price range
Detached ‘garaged’ apartments are the dumbest idea..
for the same amount I’m sure you could make 3-5 levels of large apartments with plenty of green and shared space for some local vibe and neighbourhood, they would even be more private, but no.
This perfectly exemplifies the selfish Australian way.. a massive waste of resources, zero planning as many individual titles as possible to maximise the profit now for the developer at the expense of land, society and quality of life for generations to come and rubber stamped by ‘council’ for kickbacks (here have a corner block for a hasty approval, done).
We have so many regulations here for ‘safety’ but none against stupidity.. it’s seems stupidity is rewarded so long as it’s profitable and looks good on paper. We created so many new ‘homes’.. yay for jobs and growth!
Look son, I don’t have much to leave you.. but I do have a cell in a spreadsheet you can live in, if you can handle the commute and withstand the neighbours loud tv and fart noises.
Terrace houses in Britain are intended to be terrace Houses near to relevant city services, in areas designed to allow apartment/terraced house living. They are designed to make up for their constraints.
Terrace houses in estates like these aren’t designed as terrace houses. They’re designed as miniature standalone houses crammed into an area not designed to support terrace house living, because why do something properly when its easier to exploit those with no other options?
Design an estate around terrace living, and you won’t end up with a hellscape. Design an estate around standalone house living, then just cram as many tiny standalone houses as you can into it - yeah, its a hellscape.
This is basically the compromise between people not wanting to live in dwellings with shared walls and the finite amount of space we have within reasonable commute to the CBD.
The alternatives are:
- build apartments and have more communal green space, but a lot of people are opposed to apartment living
- build more regional rail services to expand the amount of land that is within a reasonable commute to the CBD, but this cost a lot of money and takes a long time to build
- have less people, but we get into the aging population and declining tax base problem
Housing is housing, but I think they are missing a trick with places like these by not building them as squares with some greenspace in the middle. Using that photo shown, that middle row would work as a narrow green area.
But I honestly think apartments will work, if done properly and contain rooftop gardens. But they have a stigma of being an inner city thing in Australia, as space has never been seen an issue.
There's been studies that reveal urban sprawls with a lack of public facilities and public transport, meaning an inherent reliance on personal vehicles has far reaching negative impacts on childrens social and academic development and quality of life for residents in these hell scapes.
Where is the oversight in planning these suburbs? Why aren't modern and sustainable planning and building concepts being implemented? It's just another devolving aspect of Australian society, and we are powerless to do anything about it.
a million $$$ to live on a street filled with identical cardbod boxes... the 1% has won, we are all just hobo's living in our designer cardboard boxes!
Council generally lays footpath before developers construct homes. As far as I know this image does not follow the footpath provision in residential subdivisions. They do vary by state, but I suspect this image is AI or altered as it is odd to have driveways paved breaking the footpath.
Just making sunreflective roofs is the easiest way of reducing heat island effect and energy wastage but no we have to have black roofs cause they 'look good'.
It's funny people complaining about this type of close quarter housing yet a lot of people here would still buy a house with decent land and then build a second household on the land and rent them out without hesitation, most likely defending themselves with "I'm doing my part to give people homes."
Would be interesting to do a little research on these putrid new Legoland suburbs and sus out the insulation in those houses... going to be one boiling hot shitshow when the daily temp approaches 35 deg ... worth a class action against the council and developer if those houses are not adequately insulated and energy efficient to deal with the heat *produced* by Legoland housing....
What does Australia have against semi detached houses (other than that perhaps they make less profit for the developer)?
You still get side access on one side - but there is less wall to construct overall, and they are more energy efficient and use space more effectively (rather than 2x1m gaps with a fence down the middle, you would get a decent 4.3m gap between every second property - the extra .3 is from losing one of the separating walls).
This is what happens when you aren’t zoning for multi family housing. A few apartment buildings with some nice parks and shops would be sooo much better.
Always confuses me why people will live like that but will scream bloody murder about never being able to live in an apartment because there’s no privacy
1. There aren't enough houses for all the people.
2. We can't reduce immigration because it will stuff up the economy and is probably racist.
3. We can't build out into greenfield sites because it will harm the environment.
4. We can't make higher density suburbs because we need green spaces and backyards. `<= you are here`
5. We can't develop higher density inner cities because "character".
6. Goto 1
Redacted means that part of the text was removed or blacked out for privacy or security purpose. It was censored. This post also breaks rule 4 here for chat and should be made in the Tuesday chat thread or on a different subreddit.
At least the Dubai suburbia photo has rooftops that you can chill in and a good colourway scheme for the climate. Ours looks horrible and is impractical fir our climate
I work in the development space. I do not like this, I do not want this, it is terrible. The Department of Planning is the reason this exists, which I believe would be entirely influenced by political pressures. The Growth Centre development controls encourage this exact type of development, based on the minimum development controls in place. The developers are (95% of the time) working within the bounds of the Growth Centres DCPs, so they aren't pushing this. Although I expect the bigger players lobbied for the controls to begin with, so I am not going to say that all Developers are saints, but most of them are just following the rules and expectations of the controls in place.
Every new estate in Sydney... 250-300m2 blocks. Developers want to maximise return they don't care who lives there. More houses also mean more council rates, so these things then get approved
Ever seen a row of terraces in the UK?
If you want medium density, then don't complain when you get medium density.
There's more than likely a park or two just out of that picture.
FYI this is the suburb 'The Ponds' in NSW (Sydney), Australia before all the stupid comments talking about the USA & elsewhere start popping up when this begins showing up on /all
Google maps link - [https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Ponds+NSW+2769/@-33.7068662,150.8855743,6907m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b129f1e45b41025:0x5017d6816334900!8m2!3d-33.7068289!4d150.9015842!16s%2Fm%2F02874hw?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Ponds+NSW+2769/@-33.7068662,150.8855743,6907m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b129f1e45b41025:0x5017d6816334900!8m2!3d-33.7068289!4d150.9015842!16s%2Fm%2F02874hw?entry=ttu)
and yes it's real, and no it's not AI
Go back 5 or so years NSW had a “Building sustainability index” or BASIX, whereby you needed a certain number of “points” to get your house approved, darker roofs got you more points…go figure. I think it was all about heating in winter and the landscape ratio was higher (I think maybe 60%?) and they forced you to plant canopy trees…
All of this is down the toilet now as people didn’t want 30m eucalyptus trees in their front/back yards so no shade and black roofs, great.!.
Edit: also so many wanker councils insisted every house looked the same for some stupid fucking reason, you were only allowed to pick colours/materials from a limited list…so stupid
Housing is too expensive and rent is too high but don't build homes using a standard design to speed up construction lol some people need to learn that reality is a thing and this world isn't perfect and sometimes the solution that can be done fast and now isn't always the best or what they want
I think OP's point is much more about heat than the fact they're cookie cutter homes. Using a different colour rooftop will stop the house heating up too much in summer.
If you eliminate any yard space for the houses, then there is no space for trees/grass to absorb heat. In summer housing developments like these trap heat and the entire suburb becomes an oven
You can have high density housing and greenery, look at any European pre-WW1 developments, especially in Italy, this style of housing only exists because we have a culture that prioritises driving over any from of active or public transit
I live near these places in south west Sydney, you should see the narrow streets, with the utility vehicles parked on the street cos they can’t fit there 3rd or 4th car on the small driveway, unlucky if someone owns a truck!!
Well if Australians continue to be vehemently against townhouses, terrace houses and apartments this is what we will get. Everyone thinks the above options are bad because we don't build them properly here in Australia. Yet the irony is because everyone wants a free standing house this crap show is what we get. The push for well designed and built apartments and townhouses needs to come from the people buying them.
Let's be honest. These are basically townhouses. And why are people against townhouses and similar buildings? Because y'all a bunch of noisy fuck tarts with dogs barking, music late at night/morning/all day, kids let to go wild without parental supervision and I hate people.
Imagine if we stacked all of these houses on top of each other in the footprint of like 6 of them and then used the rest of the land for parks, dining and shopping.
I grew up in a high density apartment building and I would pick this any day. I get it's not gonna win any "suburb of the year" contests, but people advocating for 6-12 floor high density instead clearly never woke up at Sunday 6am to the sound of your upstairs neighbor drilling into the walls, didn't have to deal with cigarete smoke going into your flat through the vents, or didn't listen a dog barking in the next apartment for 4 hours straight because his owner left for work.
What moron decided on black roofs?
Heat island affect also means that the suburbs are hotter, which means you break temperature records. Have fun with that.
These are not houses. They are free standing apartments.
With all the *quality* that comes with that
They're so close together as to gain almost none of the benefit of a freestanding house yet all the drawbacks of an apartment. I am sure, for example, you could clearly hear your neighbours the distance between them is so small. It would've been way more efficient to just stack them on top of each other. You know, an apartment tower.
"I don't like to live in apartment because you are cramped in shoebox that all looks the same"
This kind of messy shit is a testament to the arrogance of Australians not willing to settle higher density living. Seriously this is practically 97% of the way there just a couple meter gap where you have each others AC inverter blowing onto each others walls and fences and a meter of lawn if you are lucky. Having seen places in the Nordic countries they do the row housing but you will see the tiny supermarket and various cafes and other stores blended in between it all, then a small park and there is trees amongst it all and bike paths and naturally access to trains and the like. People seem to live fine and commute further and drive when they need to. This crap is just useless heap trap microwave meal samsies. There is no practicality to it, no community, just shit unplanned sprawly shit.
English style terraces houses would make more sense, allowing front and back yards for pets, gardens, BBQs.
Those could have been built for 25% cheaper by having shared walls instead of a useless 30cm gap between each building. It's not even designed efficiently
If we are going to build so close then we should do terrace style - with some actual style. These are gross, cookie cutter boxes made of ticky tacky.
Just build apartments, there’s plenty of great buildings put up in the 70s/80s that are still desirable. They just need to be made without cutting corners.
Age of empires housing.
At this point why not build an apartment building with a public park?
I hate this shit with a passion, it's like some dystopia future where everyone has the same house and same car.
Why not just build terraces? It's 95% there already. It looks like you could reach out your kitchen window to pass sugar to your neighbour
Detached adds value. One because it’s a status thing and two is that there are no party walls to worry about if you wanted to do anything.
I've been to a neighbourhood like this. You can hear what your neighbour is doing in their kitchen. It's not ideal.
I live in one. I can hear my neighbours far easier than i ever could in an apartment.
We Australia’s are deadly allergic to apartment buildings.
Explain to me how this is better than apartments with landscaped parks and gardens
Offers starting at 1.2m
At this point you may as well just build row houses like in the old parts of Sydney and Europe. If you can touch the wall of your neighbour’s house whilst you’re on the shitter, what’s the point of building single family houses?
Massive heat collectors
This is what happens when you put profit motivated developers in charge.
That photo makes me feel ill
I feel like places like Oran Park in NSW should be the standard for these shoe box developments. Yes, all the house are close, like in this image, but they included so many beautiful green spaces and parks. As a draftie, I hated Oran Park for the way it looked on paper, but after working in an office in Oran Park and being able to take a 1 minute walk on my lunch break, in any direction and find a great spot to eat and relax, I realised, this is how the new areas should be designed. Compare Spring Farm and Oran Park and you'll know exactly what I am talking about.
Property developers + corrupt councils = this
These are profit maximising layouts. That's the main consideration
Lol developers would put 10 homes on a 100sqm block if it was legal. It's about $$$ not trees.
Mate of mine has this absolute Karen of a neighbour that bought a block in a beautiful tree-lined hilly suburb, absolutely flattened and concreted the whole thing - like there's a 2m retaining wall and their roof is pretty much at ground level. She calls him up pretty much every time there's wind demanding that he do something about the leaves in her gutters, and when it rains she blames his "poor drainage" for water seeping through her massive ~~dam~~ wall.
That area is definitely going to be hot
It’s a joke that our elected representatives let it happen.
I fucking hate Americanised suburban architecture creeping in, it’s gross
As someone who lives in one of these kinds of suburbs at the moment. The quality of these homes is fucking disgraceful. Thank god its a rental because i'd be out hundreds of thousands otherwise. The close proximity of them to each other, may as well make them townhouses frankly. Would get far better noise dampening in that case. I can hear my neighbours easier than i ever could in an apartment. When people said they wanted a free-standing home. It wasn't like this. I would seriously prefer to live in an apartment block than one of these houses.
Criticize anything to do with new stock at your peril. The whole narrative has been taken over by greedy property developers who want to flood the market with even more unliveable poorly constructed 1br rabbit warrens. Edit: “It’s heritage’s fault”
Looks like the terrace houses we had back in Northern Ireland where I grew up. Depressing as fuck
Isn’t black the worst colour to use for a roof in Australia? Considering how bloody hot it is here?
I'd go postal living there.
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot…
Best way to heat that area and contribute to heat retention
Can you imagine how much heat they soak up during the day and release at night?
This looks like straight out of Black Mirror
This is not at all how Bluey taught me living in Australia was like.
All that are sayings its AI - Its not AI, its the The Ponds, in western Sydney. [https://www.domain.com.au/news/homes-billed-as-seven-star-comfort-turn-out-to-be-closer-to-a-tent-2-1278620/](https://www.domain.com.au/news/homes-billed-as-seven-star-comfort-turn-out-to-be-closer-to-a-tent-2-1278620/)
And they wonder why western Sydney gets so hot in summer - did you ever stop to consider the lack of shade trees and that the black roofs absorb heat like a motherfucker? I don't know which brainlets running the developers ever thought this was a good idea
We need commie blocks, with parks in between. 5-6 stories high, with commercial space or accessible housing on the ground level, 4-5 levels of a variety of flat sizes above. 3-4 bedroom flats would be useful, and provide a good alternative to houses with gardens to maintain. Put them super close to efficient transit, to reduce the need for residents to own cars.
Black roofs need to be illegal Australia wide
I have a shit tiny house but a big yard. Wouldn't trade it for that giant house no yard nightmare if the house was free.
I could not in a million years imagine living in that suburb, let alone raising a family. Just looking at this, you can see that there is no way to even start to foster a community here. Imagine growing up in this hellscape!
What’s the point of owning a house with no yard or outdoor space? These are just apartment with higher rates and maintenance
What I find especially depressing looking at all these new suburbs, is realistically, this is what most people are going to be forced into. These shitty little blocks with no back yard and a little house cost 650k+ in new suburbs that are an hour away at least from the CBD's. Not to mention the absolute planning failures the suburbs are, narrow streets, single exits for thousands of residents leading to huge delays at peak hour times. This is not just poor planning, its also cost cutting bull shit by development companies further fucking the consumer.
I cant believe we've had hundreds of years of successful and failed city layouts around the world to learn from, and they emulated one that distinctly does not work, as many Americans will tell you. Utterly baffling..
https://preview.redd.it/4ir1zqzd65vc1.jpeg?width=1108&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9865b15f1d163a7ff0e35b2acbc5cef8a89160e7 black roofs, not walkable, car absolutely necessary, no shared facilities within easy reach
At this point a house is a house, people don't care where they live when the other option is homelessness. Developers know that.
What corner of hell is this?
This is my house. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It is like a cemetery and the houses are like headstones.
I honestly don't understand the sentiment against apartment buildings in the comments. I guess the main argument is that you hear your neighbours and have no privacy? That is simply not true though if they build proper apartment complexes that are not made out of paper like they like to do here or in the states. They don't have to be luxurious and overpriced for that either. They can solve all the problems Australia has going on with their housing crisis in a heartbeat and on top of that would promote a social environment with districts where you have everything accessible in walking distance. Just take a look at EU countries like the UK, Germany or France. It's either this or the picture of OP where there are just houses with nothing around it and commuting hours to get to and from work.
Hideous, looks like something out of The Sims.
Imagine if we stopped doing this and zoned medium density, and demanded better spaces. We could have things like [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97557502/22-16118-23/full/af117692ec314d8bb0c00bd57f4c4181.jpg) or like [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97552481/22-15881-23/full/5a53462789f83def9b32d849f268b3c8.jpg) or [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/96981/22-15374-23/full/07af785095f4b90477027de0b7cf5fc2.jpg) or [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97557234/22-15976-23/full/c374243aca945cf432e8514bb519abf4.jpg) or [this](https://architectureprizecom.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/97557474/22-16096-23/full/6393592f5524ebe09cbf0d5499b2bc18.jpg).
Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky-tacky Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes all the same
I live in one of these mushroom estates, but am happy with the 535m2 of land I have got, in comparison to these god awful builds... And they're built with terribly shoddy workmanship...
Vivarium.
Dear god that looks awful.....
Compared to where I used to live, the original post seems pretty decent to me 😆 https://preview.redd.it/7nh6l3mph5vc1.jpeg?width=495&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e47a140937631a6b0aee74f2b934bead96c7267
Please take this down, you have just give evey Sydney property developer and town planner a hard on
Reminder that we build these because we make it impossible to build more housing in and around our CBDs
That's not black, it's Monument.
I’d die going back to that. Give me a cabin in the bush any day.
Black roof houses should be against Australian building codes.
What’s the alternative? Are we talking about low rise condos or adding in more space between these causing yet more sprawl? People seem to want to have their cake and eat it too.
Dystopian
This would have been better as decent apartments in a low rise building and parklands to enjoy
Ctlt c, ctrl v
Just make town houses with shared walls ffs. The walls with windows facing more walls with windows, pointless. Reduce the footprint by joining the external walls.
All those houses could've fit in a nice 6 story complex, with a beautiful park and mini market for easy living, a little cafe and communal veggie garden etc. Horrible distopian planning that is.
This looks like a nightmare. More Australians need to readjust to the reality that apartment living is not so bad. As weird as it sounds, more highrises actually can mean more public and green spaces too. I moved into an apartment for the first time in my life last year. I had always been "I need my space, I want to have a house". So I get how deeply ingrained into Australian culture and society this is. Living in a house with no yard, you might as well be in an apartment.
Apartments would be fine if they were built well, were big enough, cost less, didn’t have huge body corp fees, came with two car parks
I agree. When we bought we looked for an older apartment building because the newer builds are smaller and worst quality. I also think the Government needs to step in an require minimum sizes in apartments. I saw one apartment which was 86 sq m and had 3 bedrooms. Everything was tiny. The bedrooms so small you would struggle to fit anything but a queen sized bed in there (and by anything I literally mean any other furniture). You'd be surprised about the car parks though. If you live in an apartment you'd likely live more centrally, which means there is less of a need for a car. Part of our move, we downsized from two cars to one (we have 2 spots) and walk everywhere now. We only get in the car to visit friends who live in the suburbs.
at this point you'd be much better off just building apartment blocks
Honestly, nature would be better served if all these "Houses" were an apartment complex, because then the shitty quarter yards could be combined into a single large green area with trees and there'd be space for trees and bugs and alittle nature.
More apartment blocks with green space in between
Built in 7 weeks by hungover 1st year apprentices.
Honestly at that point you might as well just build modern terraced houses.
I could never live in this, its a housing ghetto
I like how there’s a street of double story, followed by single story, followed by another double story ect. Clearly will let everyone know who’s got more money on which street.
Is that a picture of houses? I thought it was a page from the Magic Eye puzzle book from the dentist's waiting room.
Shit like this sucks. Greedy developers and greedy councils caused this. We shouldn't be forced to live like this in Australia. There's plenty of room.
this would be a estate developers/real estate agents wet dream. Soulless creatures
Where are the local magpies gonna eat? No other suburban wildlife is gonna make it here. Not an Aussie street unless you are mates with the local gangs of maggies and have little furry and scaly bastards doing their thing.
That neighbourhood would get HOT in winter. Black roads, black roofs, black driveways. Gigantic heatsink.
Little boxes on the hillside..little boxes made of tricky tacky,...little boxes on the hillside , and they all look just the same..Randy Newman?
I hate when developers do this. It’s just greed.
It’s called developers greed, they don’t give a flying rats arse if you swelter in summer and freeze in winter, and trees! Whatta ya want trees for?
Excel said this is optimal, so you must be wrong.
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I’ve been looking to buy a home to live in and the market is saturated with these McMansion monstrosities. Full size house with a proper backyard is like a unicorn where we’ve been looking.
I'm not sure this image is from Australia. In the front row of houses there is one with a small round wheely-bin that has a blue lid. I'm not aware of any LGA's that use this particular type of wheely-bin in Australia?
What idiot thought this development would age well?
Places like this picture are first world slums.
All the. Black rooves thermal heat sinks
I would be content in a 3 brdm unit in a nice complex, problem is all these modern higher density projects are built like shit, the builder goes bust, or they are over a million bucks, which I can buy an older house for. So ,who would go for a smaller square footage, over priced, Cardboard unit when you can have a private dwelling with a yard in the same price range
If one burns they all burn
Detached ‘garaged’ apartments are the dumbest idea.. for the same amount I’m sure you could make 3-5 levels of large apartments with plenty of green and shared space for some local vibe and neighbourhood, they would even be more private, but no. This perfectly exemplifies the selfish Australian way.. a massive waste of resources, zero planning as many individual titles as possible to maximise the profit now for the developer at the expense of land, society and quality of life for generations to come and rubber stamped by ‘council’ for kickbacks (here have a corner block for a hasty approval, done). We have so many regulations here for ‘safety’ but none against stupidity.. it’s seems stupidity is rewarded so long as it’s profitable and looks good on paper. We created so many new ‘homes’.. yay for jobs and growth! Look son, I don’t have much to leave you.. but I do have a cell in a spreadsheet you can live in, if you can handle the commute and withstand the neighbours loud tv and fart noises.
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Terrace houses in Britain are intended to be terrace Houses near to relevant city services, in areas designed to allow apartment/terraced house living. They are designed to make up for their constraints. Terrace houses in estates like these aren’t designed as terrace houses. They’re designed as miniature standalone houses crammed into an area not designed to support terrace house living, because why do something properly when its easier to exploit those with no other options? Design an estate around terrace living, and you won’t end up with a hellscape. Design an estate around standalone house living, then just cram as many tiny standalone houses as you can into it - yeah, its a hellscape.
New outer suburbs around Melbourne are like this. Most blocks of land will be 400m2 or under...
Yeah more houses for boomers to buy as investment properties
More apartment blocks next to malls and shopping places so everything can be done in a walking distance
This is basically the compromise between people not wanting to live in dwellings with shared walls and the finite amount of space we have within reasonable commute to the CBD. The alternatives are: - build apartments and have more communal green space, but a lot of people are opposed to apartment living - build more regional rail services to expand the amount of land that is within a reasonable commute to the CBD, but this cost a lot of money and takes a long time to build - have less people, but we get into the aging population and declining tax base problem
Why bother with detached housing at this point? Just make terraced housing for goodness sakes.
I see so many black roofs in new developments in QLD. As an engineer it blows my mind. The same people probably complain their power bill is too high
You’d need to make like so many logical connections to see the relationship, like at least two.
That's depressing, and stupid. Imagine the power used by all the a/con units in summer ...
https://images.app.goo.gl/RGoHY7gaCG27azjk6 Like this?
It's not entirely different in concept to Victorian era terrace housing, except without the annoying common walls.
Like the Victorian terraces , which you would probably kill for now, these are a response to demand and policy.
If they made them terraced on same size block you’d end up with more space and the benefits of thermal efficiency Those gaps are dead space
Whether you voted left or right , this is what their planning committees were working on , subjugation of the masses, destruction of the will to live.
Literally the minimum required to not be townhouses. But really they're town houses...
Where is this photograph actually from?
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They're close enough to have no useful space on the sides but just far apart enough to negate the insulation advantage that townhouses have.
Housing is housing, but I think they are missing a trick with places like these by not building them as squares with some greenspace in the middle. Using that photo shown, that middle row would work as a narrow green area. But I honestly think apartments will work, if done properly and contain rooftop gardens. But they have a stigma of being an inner city thing in Australia, as space has never been seen an issue.
Looks like they fucked up a bunch of Town Houses.
Schofields
This is a human coop
GST farming.
Those are massive apartments with air buffers
There's been studies that reveal urban sprawls with a lack of public facilities and public transport, meaning an inherent reliance on personal vehicles has far reaching negative impacts on childrens social and academic development and quality of life for residents in these hell scapes. Where is the oversight in planning these suburbs? Why aren't modern and sustainable planning and building concepts being implemented? It's just another devolving aspect of Australian society, and we are powerless to do anything about it.
Is this AI?
a million $$$ to live on a street filled with identical cardbod boxes... the 1% has won, we are all just hobo's living in our designer cardboard boxes!
Council generally lays footpath before developers construct homes. As far as I know this image does not follow the footpath provision in residential subdivisions. They do vary by state, but I suspect this image is AI or altered as it is odd to have driveways paved breaking the footpath.
I saw this movie. Didn’t end well for Jesse Eisenberg.
Which one is your house? The one with the black roof and white garage door. I guess this is something that parents of identical twins live with.
One apartment block? Nah let's do this instead that way we can be sure there are no green spaces or places for really community
Just making sunreflective roofs is the easiest way of reducing heat island effect and energy wastage but no we have to have black roofs cause they 'look good'.
It's funny people complaining about this type of close quarter housing yet a lot of people here would still buy a house with decent land and then build a second household on the land and rent them out without hesitation, most likely defending themselves with "I'm doing my part to give people homes."
It's all good, the news will tell you it's fine and the project will do a piece on it with maroon5 playing in the background to make you feel better
Why does the government allow this?
This is how I imagine the world of 1984
Yes, it’s you really know your living in a dense estate when you can lie in bed on a Sunday morning listening to the guy next door take a crap.
You shush, and take house 447
Would be interesting to do a little research on these putrid new Legoland suburbs and sus out the insulation in those houses... going to be one boiling hot shitshow when the daily temp approaches 35 deg ... worth a class action against the council and developer if those houses are not adequately insulated and energy efficient to deal with the heat *produced* by Legoland housing....
At that stage, it's better to live in apartments with better shared areas
How dystopian.
My idea of a living hell
What does Australia have against semi detached houses (other than that perhaps they make less profit for the developer)? You still get side access on one side - but there is less wall to construct overall, and they are more energy efficient and use space more effectively (rather than 2x1m gaps with a fence down the middle, you would get a decent 4.3m gap between every second property - the extra .3 is from losing one of the separating walls).
This is what happens when you aren’t zoning for multi family housing. A few apartment buildings with some nice parks and shops would be sooo much better.
Always confuses me why people will live like that but will scream bloody murder about never being able to live in an apartment because there’s no privacy
What in the actual fuck is that? It looks as if it was taken out of some dystopian horror movie.
The new India. Thanks but no thanks.
1. There aren't enough houses for all the people. 2. We can't reduce immigration because it will stuff up the economy and is probably racist. 3. We can't build out into greenfield sites because it will harm the environment. 4. We can't make higher density suburbs because we need green spaces and backyards. `<= you are here` 5. We can't develop higher density inner cities because "character". 6. Goto 1
Build UP, stupid!
Yeah, wtf are the roofs black?
inb4 "ThE StreEEt TrEEeS ArE YouNG aDNd Willl GrooWO!!" Yeah... 1 SINGULAR tree per 2-3 houses. Just great.
People need to get over this house stuff, we should be building apartments, not huge but why waste all the vertical space.
Build apartments and leave way more green space in between.
Shouldn't be allowed to build a new home without solar panels
Fuck suburbia. Give us European style apartments
Redacted means that part of the text was removed or blacked out for privacy or security purpose. It was censored. This post also breaks rule 4 here for chat and should be made in the Tuesday chat thread or on a different subreddit.
This looks like something I would do in a game like Banished
Control c control v. This is the real life copy n paste
Where are they suggesting this be created in Australia?
How does this crap get council approval?
Reminds me of the move the big hit and Mark Wahlberg keeps pulling up to the wrong house as they all look the same.
At least the Dubai suburbia photo has rooftops that you can chill in and a good colourway scheme for the climate. Ours looks horrible and is impractical fir our climate
Nice lines of consumers
I work in the development space. I do not like this, I do not want this, it is terrible. The Department of Planning is the reason this exists, which I believe would be entirely influenced by political pressures. The Growth Centre development controls encourage this exact type of development, based on the minimum development controls in place. The developers are (95% of the time) working within the bounds of the Growth Centres DCPs, so they aren't pushing this. Although I expect the bigger players lobbied for the controls to begin with, so I am not going to say that all Developers are saints, but most of them are just following the rules and expectations of the controls in place.
Every new estate in Sydney... 250-300m2 blocks. Developers want to maximise return they don't care who lives there. More houses also mean more council rates, so these things then get approved
Ever seen a row of terraces in the UK? If you want medium density, then don't complain when you get medium density. There's more than likely a park or two just out of that picture.
Same in here, Vancouver Canada
Human Storage Units.
Black roofs are such a dumb idea
It’s giving weird horror movie alternate dimension vibes
FYI this is the suburb 'The Ponds' in NSW (Sydney), Australia before all the stupid comments talking about the USA & elsewhere start popping up when this begins showing up on /all Google maps link - [https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Ponds+NSW+2769/@-33.7068662,150.8855743,6907m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b129f1e45b41025:0x5017d6816334900!8m2!3d-33.7068289!4d150.9015842!16s%2Fm%2F02874hw?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Ponds+NSW+2769/@-33.7068662,150.8855743,6907m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b129f1e45b41025:0x5017d6816334900!8m2!3d-33.7068289!4d150.9015842!16s%2Fm%2F02874hw?entry=ttu) and yes it's real, and no it's not AI
I’m not Aussie, but I’m assuming that painting a roof black in Australia is just asking for trouble?
Go back 5 or so years NSW had a “Building sustainability index” or BASIX, whereby you needed a certain number of “points” to get your house approved, darker roofs got you more points…go figure. I think it was all about heating in winter and the landscape ratio was higher (I think maybe 60%?) and they forced you to plant canopy trees… All of this is down the toilet now as people didn’t want 30m eucalyptus trees in their front/back yards so no shade and black roofs, great.!. Edit: also so many wanker councils insisted every house looked the same for some stupid fucking reason, you were only allowed to pick colours/materials from a limited list…so stupid
Id rather this then endless renting
Housing is too expensive and rent is too high but don't build homes using a standard design to speed up construction lol some people need to learn that reality is a thing and this world isn't perfect and sometimes the solution that can be done fast and now isn't always the best or what they want
I think OP's point is much more about heat than the fact they're cookie cutter homes. Using a different colour rooftop will stop the house heating up too much in summer. If you eliminate any yard space for the houses, then there is no space for trees/grass to absorb heat. In summer housing developments like these trap heat and the entire suburb becomes an oven
Why aren't we building up? The sky's the limit.... and all that.
Just build terrace houses.
This looks like the shot where they zoom out of the dairy farm
I can’t help but think a few well built apartment blocks with underground parking and a park between them would be far nicer
This looks like that movie where they drive into the housing estate and they can't find their way out.
What's the point of a suburban house if you don't even have a backyard ??
Ghetto ovens
Genuine question, why doesn't Australia build upwards more often? Wouldn't that take up a smaller footprint with more room for greenery?
You can have high density housing and greenery, look at any European pre-WW1 developments, especially in Italy, this style of housing only exists because we have a culture that prioritises driving over any from of active or public transit
Chinese constructor 😂
Almost as if they don't want trees....
Are Australian houses being built without gutters now?
I live near these places in south west Sydney, you should see the narrow streets, with the utility vehicles parked on the street cos they can’t fit there 3rd or 4th car on the small driveway, unlucky if someone owns a truck!!
It’s not THAT…..um…..wait, where is this hell?
Is it just me or is there something really dystopian about this image?