Our work facilitating and assessing infill development can be contentious at times. Neighbours are often worried about the impact of such development on their amenity, whether it be changing character, loss of sunlight, or more traffic and less parking availability. We acknowledge these apprehensions and work hard to ensure that impacts are mitigated in all of the development projects we are involved in.
At the same time, we believe that we are playing an important role in helping to deliver on the ambitions of the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide, South Australia’s road map for future development.
Infill development helps meet the targets of the 30 Year Plan including:
Target 1 – Containing our urban footprint and protecting our resources
Progressively changing Adelaide’s urban form by containing the outward growth of the metropolitan area and avoiding the ongoing consumption of highly productive agricultural and horticultural land on the urban fringe.
Target 2 – More ways to get around
Facilitating more housing close to activity centres, jobs and services and public transport will provide more opportunities for people to change the way they travel for short daily trips (less than two km for walking and five km for cycling).
Target 6 – Greater housing choice
Facilitating the supply of a diverse and well-designed range of housing types to cater for all ages and lifestyles, also making the best use of land and infrastructure.
At URPS, we strongly believe in the broad environmental, social and economic objectives that underpin these targets. So, our starting position with infill development is that it is generally desirable subject to design detail informed by rigorous site analysis and planning policy support.
Our latest approval is for a 6 storey building on Jetty Road, Glenelg. The building provides high quality office accommodation within the growing Jetty Road precinct. While challenging the rear setback interface guidelines, the commercial land use at the rear means there is no loss of residential amenity for neighbours. While we understand that change is difficult for many neighbourhoods, we believe that the environmental, social and economic benefits will be shared throughout the community.
