Building height restrictions under review

Oh no a little bit of wind, have a cry! That is everyones excuse, wind tunnels this wind tunnels that.

Yeah – we need more permanently shaded out wind tunnels like the area around Lovett (MLC) Tower.

Rasing these height limits is practical. Companies/public sector environments prefer all accomodation to be housed within the 1 building. This is a perfect solution. This will also allieviate such huge dependants on the car if we can live and work in the city which will allow walking to work.

Obesity crisis-SOLVED
Environmental crisis-SOLVED
Parking crisis-SOLVED
greater CBD investment and ACT goverment revenvues-SOLVED
People who complain about height limits in CBD who never actually ever go to the city anyway-NOT SOLVED

If someone creates a petition against relaxing the height limits, I will probs create a petition for relaxing height limits. It’s the 21st century, we need to evolve. Hell, even paris is building higher (New 317 metre tower)

Well said Josh1231!

Canberra IS a capital city. Canberra IS also the nation’s capital.

Jemmy, we don’t need a clone of the other capital cities. But having been to most of them, I’d say that they’re all pretty distinct, and that should be celebrated. Brisbane is definitely very different to Sydney, and Sydney to Melbourne etc.

We’ve got a great opportunity here to create the sort of city we all want to live in. Increasing density and height in the CBD will help define it. We CAN have a liveable city. But we can also continue to enjoy the bush capital, in our suburbs and rural areas.

We certainly don’t need to be Dubai. But the point’s valid. We can be ourselves. I say, go for it.

Hey Jemmy we live in the ‘real world’ where population grows and also many new offices are opening up in the city, I don’t understand this ‘Green city’ crap, when 90% of people use cars to get everywhere. We need more density in the city, and with the land shortages, the only way is to build higher, do you really think a 100m building is that bad?

Lets get with the times. This has to happen. This is a brilliant opportunity for all of us to get behind these ideas and support them. Canberra has the opportunity to be a premier city.

Canberra needs density which includes height.

Canberra has a 93 meter skyscraper in suburban Woden way higher anything in the city. So I find it hard to justify restricting height limit in the CBD to under that.

Lets rally behind this and encourage Canberra to grow. As it stands Canberra has a poorly defined city a beautiful sskyline of decent height 120-150 meters would look spectacular.

Stuff the Griffen Legacy. This guy wasn’t even Australian, who cares, lets do what WE want. Lets encourage adjustments to this legacy. Make it a kick ass mordern legacy.

Hence the reason why cities such as Dubai are so successful. People that say we can do it often do. Dubai started at nothing, now look at it. I wonder what would have happened if a city like Dubai said “oh we better not”. or “thats too risky”. they would probably still living in third world conditions.

Queanbeyan has a more defined Central area than Canberra does, and you know what thats depressing. Lets make a change starting from today and have a city to be proud of. As it stands we are not proud of ur city centre, evidence of this is the desterted, dirty state of our CBD today!

NCA I applaud you! You have finally grown some guts over the past 12 months.

Mass urban sprawl, give me a break. You have no idea what mass urban sprawl is. I can drive from Gungahlin to Tugerranong (one end of Canberra to the other) in 30 min. Try that in Melbourne!

Here’s a clue: remove the restriction on building on hill sides, and double the available land! Sure, it’s not egalitarian, but it reduces the urban sprawl.

The reason public transport doesn’t work here is because of the insistence on building in enclaves, so going within an enclave is easy, going between non-adjoining enclaves is hard.

Anyway, back on topic, why do you want a CBD? Why the assumption it’s needed or wanted? Canberra will never, ever have a “business” centre, it’s just not needed, nor will be until the population gets to around the 1M mark. So the rest of “old fashion views” and “revitalise” smacks of Sydney/Melb envy to me. If you really want that, you move there, instead of telling me to move to Braidwood.

For fark’s sake, we have six perfectly good capital cites that are all clones of each other. You people who want that, move there! I really like Canberra’s difference and will fight to preserve it.

I don’t know where all this “DON’T BUILD HIGHER THAN THE WAR MEMORIAL” crap came about. Utter illogical rubbish. We live in a REAL WORLD. Some people have a problem realising that particular fact.

Relaxing to Height limits to lets say 150m would be excellent, I’m just wondering about the people that complain, do they even go to civic and how frequent? The only people that should be complaining is the people that live in the city, If you live in Kambah or the suburbs, what’s the point of constantly whinging.

This is the capital city of Australia. Most non-canberran people I have talked to don’t even realise we have a CBD or ‘downtown’

Eventually restrictions need to be relaxed, people are blind if they can’t see the problems that we have now with mass urban sprawl and transport problems. I have no idea how this could effect the war memorial. I also hope a larger CBD would take the spotlight from that ugly ass parliament house.
People need to leave their old fashion views, and if they don’t like change, they should move to a country town like Braidwood.

Canberra has to re-vatilise itself with a proper CBD, and yes it should include taller buildings so people can actually realise they are in the downtown.

Pandy, this is a decent topic. Turning it into pure drivel is to be discouraged…too late in your case I spose.

Wee need penis like buildigs 500m high to complement the vagina like building that reduck wants.

Well, I think that relaxing the height restriction more would be good. Public transport options like Light Rail would be even more feasible for a start.

If you want to live in Cooma, don’t live in Canberra !

We should be making deeper buildings.

There’s near infinite real-estate underground and temperature is controlled by the core of the earth!

jemmy – how do we sack the ACT Govt? Who’s there as an alternative?

At least the NCA has access to federal funds to spend on the nation’s capital.

Spot on Gungahlin Al and Miz. “Surfers bloody Paradise in the country”. One for the pool room.

Ephemerac, at least we can sack the ACT Govt if we don’t agree with them.

One of the reasons Canberra is so ‘liveable’ is that you can see the horizon. If higher buildings get the go-ahead it will impinge on this, and only a select few will benefit (eg, look at the way the formerly gorgeous Kingston Foreshore public views have been eaten up by exclusive swanky ‘waterside apartments’.

Canberra was designed to be egalitarian, and it would be a pity to whore that away.

What’s the problem with Catherine Carter, Gungahlin Al? She makes more sense to me that most of the no-hopers we’ve got in the current local government.

But I digress. I’m all for higher buildings, some higher buildings, in the right locations ie. Civic. Look at some of the recent fiascos where huge bulky government department buildings are too small, even before public servants have moved into them! I’ve worked in one such “purpose built” building, and we had people flung across five different buildings because there wasn’t enough room in the “purpose built” one. If additional height was allowed in certain areas, that could stop that problem.

Personally, I’m terrified of the prospect of the ACT planning mob being given more power than they’ve got now. Its the only thing that makes me hope the libs win federally, so more responsibility isn’t handed over entirely to incompetent local agencies.

VY Berlina – reading the article again, I don’t think it was proposed that relaxing height limits would be for residential. It looks like it would be for office buildings too. Bring it on I say.

I couldn’t believe this article.

That’s all Canberra needs – Surfers bloody Paradise in the country. Has anyone stopped to considr just how much additional development is currently allowable under existing planning, particularly around London Circuit and Catherine Carter’s much-bleated about City West? The density of Civic could probably be tripled without adding a single storey to height limits.

The NCA is straying way beyond their brief now, and clearly under undue influence from the PCA, for whom no building could be too high, no profit to obscene.

Bob McMullan at the Gungahlin Community Council recently promised to rein in the NCA influence so the ACT Government can get on with the planning in this city, and a good thing it would be too, I think.

I think the height restrictions need to be kept in Civic so buildings won’t tower over the War Memorial etc. Tall buildings create wind tunnels and is one of the many things that is unpleasant about Sydney. If they want to build skyscrapers, put them in Woden where there are already towering eye sores.

IKEA is to be built at the airport

Canberra wont be a city until theres an IKEA here.

As a long term local, and local property investor, I think that having lots of tall buildings would be a disaster, for several reasons:
1) Initially, developers will only build premium style accommodation, and prices will be very, very high (New Acton in the City STARTS at 520k…).
2) The open airy character will be lost, leading to the same sanitised character of inner city Sydney (the reason lots of Canberrans choose not to live there) – I think is one of those aspects of Canberra people won’t miss until it’s gone.
3) Stuffing so many more people into a smaller area leads to traffic problems like larger cities (except we only have buses for public transport).

I’d much rather see more medium density housing, ranging from basic to premium, spread through existing and new suburbs. This is ensures a nice spread of housing options, will a resulting range of prices (so people can still buy a home to live in). Coupled with this needs to be more ‘satellite’ infrastructure, so there are options for people as far as work and entertainment goes outside the city. As Canberra grows, the city will still be considered premium location, and prices have a LOT further to run before running into resistance. Drawing heaps more people into the city as a policy will simply swamp what’s there (or could be built there), and makes satellite infrastructure hard to justify, when in reality families in the suburbs are who really need this infrastructure.

I plan to ditch Canberra for Canada and Vancouver following Uni.

Yeah I lived in Vancouver in 04. Its an awesome awesome city.

Higher density building, and as a consequence high rise buildings are I believe an inevitability in Canberra. The whole concept of decentralization may appear fine on paper but it is IMHO one of the driving reasons behind the long held opinion of many that Canberra while picture post card pretty on the outside, is a city without a soul. The manner in which areas like Civic become virtual ghost towns outside of business hours is eerily reminiscent of some Sci-Fi film, it can be quite off putting to visitors. Granted with the current redevelopment of Civic with an emphasis on high density apartment living this phenomenon that so many people unfortunately identify with Canberra may well change for the better.

I think we could have higher buildings, provided the “apparent” height of the building wasn’t excessive. So in low lying areas, you could have pretty high buildings, whereas on higher rigelines, etc you would be limited by the current laws.

Maybe then canberra will lost its country town status…

I personally think it would be great to have greater density in some part of Canberra, Civic is an obvious choice. I grew up in Canberra, then left straight after uni because I thought Canberra “was a hole” and am now back again with my family. It seems to me we could have the best of both worlds here – the city atmosphere that so many people enjoy (and I’ll count myself as one of them) together with easy living in the suburbs. Plus, if we had higher density in Civic it might solve some of the problems with buses etc. A few higher buildings? Yep, I’d vote for that.

Yes, apparently we have to be like Sydney to be a “real” city. OK, let’s not be a city! We’ll be something else.

I don’t understand this constant push to turn Canberra into a mini-Sydney or Melbourne. I like the open spaces, the sense of breadth, the airy view to the mountains, the lack of crowds.

Someone made a comment the other day about development being part of Canberra “growing up”. I would prefer Canberra to think of itself as already grown and mature, and to relish it.

But that block of flats near the Lakeside, and that awful yellow thing in Woden are pretty high. And the MLC building! They want things taller than that? I think they are quite tall enough.