Get your houses in order - The classier, cheaper alternatives that could address our housing shortage

Originally published 25 Aug, 2024 in the NZ Listener

New Zealand we have a problem. We’re building bland and barely liveable townhouses.

Take a look at the new units listed on TradeMe. The pages of soulless grey faced misery-boxes make for grim viewing. Cramped layouts, tiny astroturfed backyards, blank facades staring unblinkingly at concrete driveways. Nothing’s facing the street. An aimless mishmash of shapes, styles, colours and materials. One could almost excuse the cheapness of it all if only it were reflected in the price, but more often than not these units are being sold at a premium, attempting to generate the highest profit obtainable in a market short on supply.

Housing in Aotearoa is changing. We’ve realised, rightly enough, that our endless suburban sprawl isn’t sustainable and is resulting in poor outcomes and high costs for our communities. We need to build better, more affordable and more livable urban neighbourhoods, which requires embracing alternative housing typologies.

Shifts in local and central government policy, such as the Medium Density Residential Standard (MDRS), have resulted in a boom in townhouse construction— up from just 6% of new building consents in 2012 to around 45% now. And while in theory we should welcome this increase in housing diversity, the principles of good design and construction haven’t yet caught up with a market hungry to increase supply. We seem to have forgotten about those qualities that create great neighbourhoods and can turn a house into a home. Things such as liveability, quality, character, greenspace and attractive streetscapes. Even the importance of aesthetics.

Townhouses should exist as desirable alternatives to our traditional standalone homes. Think of the beautiful terrace housing in Melbourne or Sydney— neat rows of brick and wrought iron lacework amongst leafy green streets, close to the city centre or public transport, parks and corner shops all within walking distance. They are attractive, comfortable and highly sought after. To be fair, these homes have been renovated over time to include modern servicing, insulation and better sunlight, but the fact remains that these neighbourhoods were built over 150 years ago and are thriving.

Not to say there aren’t examples of well designed townhouses in Aotearoa, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. The reason comes down to one fundamental, inescapable issue: a developer aiming for maximum profit has an incentive to build quickly and cheaply, with scant regard for livability, design quality or neighbourhood amenity.

So how do we address this?

We need to make the construction of well designed townhouses an easier, faster and cheaper approach for developers than any of the less desirable alternatives.

This is where a national scheme offering a 'pattern book' of townhouse designs could come into play.

A pattern book is a series of high quality, standardised plans that are made available for developers and landowners to use under licence, with all of the difficulty and costs associated with designing and documenting these plans already taken care of.

These plans would be affordable, sustainable, easy to construct and highly livable. They’d include adaptation guidelines to suit different site orientations, topographies, and climates across the country. Developed to meet MDRS requirements and with multiproof certification, they would streamline the consenting process, save hundreds of thousands in consultant fees and cut down the months or years needed to prepare the required documentation. Standardised designs would enable mass production of key components like windows, kitchens and bathrooms to further reduce costs and speed up construction. Faced with the choice between licensing a high-quality design or investing time and money into something subpar, developers would likely opt for the easy approach.

This idea isn’t new. Much of Australia’s historic terrace housing was built from pattern books. More recently Melbourne has developed the ‘Future Homes’ scheme, which licences designs for high-quality apartment buildings. The state government subsidises the initiative so developers pay just $150 to access the documentation needed to obtain resource consent. The planning process is streamlined, making signoff quick and easy, plus the scheme offers advice and adaptation manuals to tweak designs for specific sites. The result is highly livable, quality homes for the new owners, better neighbourhoods, plus a significant reduction in the time, costs and risks for the developer. A similar scheme has been launched in New South Wales, aiming to provide licensed designs for terrace housing and mid-rise apartments.

Developing such a pattern book in New Zealand could be straightforward. A collaboration between entities such as Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects and MBIE, the costs associated with creating such designs would be relatively low and easily recouped through licensing fees. Yet the potential impact of such a scheme is huge.

We are faced with a housing crisis. There is a real need to build affordable, sustainable new dwellings, but if we want to do so in a manner that makes urban living truly desirable then we need to rethink our approach. An Aotearoa Townhouse Pattern Book might just be the answer.