Friday, April 29, 2016

Week 8-1 Limiting Melbourne's Skyscrapers


After learning about urban heat island effect and that the urban fabric includes walls, which can be 50% of total surface area and 3 times the aerial surface area. Hence, taller buildings take a lot more time to cool down at night due to less exposure to the cool sky, resulting in higher temperatures in urban areas compared to rural areas.

Surprisingly to me, Melbourne CBD is that it is denser than some dense Asian cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Therefore, it is proposing for buildings higher than Government height limits to prove that it provides special value to the city to ensure the sustainable development.

Building industry groups argued that lead developers will invest elsewhere so it will be harder to create innovative ground-breaking projects and property value will decrease with restrictions, which will impact state and local government budget. They added that Melbourne continued to become less attractive due to planning decisions without consultation with the industry.

Melbourne is referring back to Sydney and doubting the industry groups' fears would happen. "[T]he proposal would be up for public discussion, which would be assessed by an independent panel and the Government would make a decision in September."

It would be interesting to see the regulations in a few months. The government seem to be taking in consideration of the industry, having public opinions heard and I hope the building industry's "innovative ground-breaking projects" can prove to be of special value to the city to go over height limits. The biggest problems would be turning away of investors and drop in land prices, which hopefully will not occur. I hope the government account for this so even if the worst case scenario occurs, it can bounce back.

Resources
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-26/proposal-to-limiting-size-of-melbourne-skyscrapers/7357102

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