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As Melbourne grows taller and increasingly dense, more residents are losing their view and even access to light and fresh air. Who wants to live in an overpriced dogbox looking right into someone else's dogbox anyway. Late last year developer Michael Yates took legal action to protect the ''million-dollar'' river views of his Claremont development in South Yarra after trying to buy the ''air rights'' of a neighbouring building. The developer had offered $250,000 to residents of 19 Yarra Street, a two-storey building next to Melbourne High School, for the ''airspace lot'' above their roof on the condition that they did not object to his development next door. They declined, saying their objections were not over the price of air rights, but because his proposed development would remove their own ''right'' to redevelop their block. The space above Ms Ong's art-deco neighbour is the sole source of light and fresh air for her apartment and the apartments of 48 other residents in her building. Ong knew the art deco building might be redeveloped one day and accepted it as a part of life in the CBD. It has embroiled them in a dispute with the developer that has cost them $25,000 so far. City of Melbourne planners, worried it would set a precedent, have rejected the draft plans. ''Sunlight is the very basic thing for all of us,'' she says. As Melbourne grows and grows. One day I'll move back there to enjoy it myself, . Greed, greed and more greed. ''Who would want to be staring at a neighbour 10 metres away and not have another room to go to, to look out at something else?'' the marketing executive says. ''You cannot guarantee property prices or views but ence of inner city living, accept its limitations. A inflated sense of entitlement doesn't actually mean you can have it both ways in the real world. Despite guidelines recommending a height of only 160 metres, Smolders' new neighbour will soar 276 metres to become Australia's third tallest building, only 21 metres shorter than the nearby Eureka Tower. Losing his view is upsetting, but that isn't what concerns him most. As for Matthew Guy - he just wants to get into the history books as the one who planned for a "big Melbourne. Bigger is not better, particularly in this case. "Who wants to live in an overpriced dog box?" The very people which are filling Melbourne. Only the rich have views. I agree. It is so ridiculous! We have the land as big as China, yet we only have 25 million people, why do we need those tall ugly buildings? who is going to buy those appartments i wonder. But a sweeping city or river vista will make or break a project and that's why some developers are not leaving the security of that view to chance. It's the older-age people who have invested their life savings in Freshwater Place which are going to be the ones who suffer because they will have no privacy and no access to sunlight or daylight. Renner says Guy has treated the planning system and Freshwater Place residents with disdain by approving the Queensbridge skyscraper. It really does sound like people buying into the inner city high rise market are incredibly naive. The freshwater place stories are particularly ironic, given that it is there own building that extends to within 4 metres of the property line, and the proposed development is looking to do the same. Great. World revolve around you much?. He then subdivided that apartment into two lots: one with a horizontal boundary to the roof and the other to include all the airspace above the roof as well as an easement - or property right - for ''light and air'' that was in favour of the owners of his new development next door. ''There's only one buyer for the airspace rights and that's the adjoining owner,'' Yates says. The local council eventually approved the 26-storey Claremont apartment block. But experts say the battle for, and use of, air rights is likely to become more common as Melbourne continues to grow upwards and outwards. In Fitzroy, developers Neometro are building and selling a $15 million three-storey addition on top of the heritage-listed Panama House in Smith Street. Melbourne University planning expert Dr Alan March says Australia's planning system has long been subservient to individual property rights, but as development intensifies, planners will have to regulate decisions - such as air rights or rights to a view - that affect large numbers of people. As it stands, it's a case of buyer beware. But Melbourne Council planning committee member Ken Ong says residents do not have any ''right'' to a view. ''The capital city zone isn't an oversight, it's a deliberate intent - the designers of that zone didn't want objectors getting in the way of development,'' he says. ''They [developers] argue, of course, that people had the right to object when the zone was brought in, but the problem with that was that happened in the late '90s. Some city dwellers are now fighting back, and have launched a website campaign called residentswithoutrights. ''If you've got developers coming in and riding roughshod over the existing and planned guidelines, it's going to make residents and investors think twice about what might happen to the block next door to them,'' says Peter Renner. Architect Callum Fraser says that while tension aroundviews is difficult, the unfortunate reality is that people are relying on a view over somebody else's land. South of her one-bedroom unit is the roof of a two-storey art deco building, which is hemmed in on its other side by another high-rise. Many buildings have passages which receive no sunlight, and fresh air, which means electrical equipments and electricity are needed to supply artificial lighting and recirculate the air twenty four hours a day. But as the city mushrooms, the high-rise boom is pitting residents against developers in a system that residents say is skewed against them. Michelle Ong (no relation to Ken Ong) will not only lose ''borrowed'' views, but light and air too. If you buy in the city that says height limits are discretionary, you take the risk. He says the city council is about to finalise a 20-year plan setting out what varieties of buildings can be built where and how high they can go. The question many residents and planners are asking is how close can skyscrapers be to each other? Melbourne architect Callum Fraser says the key is how the neighbouring buildings are designed. ''There are many ways of achieving that sharing of light, views and ventilation and not necessarilyhaving 25-metre spaces between the buildings,'' Fraser says. He says the trend towards taller, narrower buildings on smaller blocks will make Melbourne more like an Asian city, which will require the government to be more flexible with planning controls. But Michael Smolders says he did all of the necessary research and that based on the present planning guidelines he knew any development of the neighbouring Queensbridge tower site couldn't be higher than 160 metres. ''Inevitably we're going to find as Melbourne builds up and we have these high-rise areas that people are going to be very disappointed to find their apartment now looks inside somebody's bedroom,'' says Michael Buxton, a planning expert at RMIT University. bring in some more people so we can further stretch the infrastructure and humans' ability to live shoulder to shoulder. Oh! How dare a brand new high-rise inner city block for the overprivileged and self absorbed impede the views that another high-rise inner city block for the overprivileged blocked from someone else! Outrageous! Boo-hoo: welcome to the reality of living in a city CBD, and count how lucky you are to have those 'rights' to light and views. |
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
No room for a view
