Affordable places

Abstract

What is it about home-making that it should touch us when it's lowly and repel us when it is sumptuous? A simple, cosy cottage may be a potent image of home, but when it comes to the design and construction of affordable suburban housing, homeliness and place-making are often far from the agenda. Affordable housing developments tend to be cheaply built, isolated, lacking in infrastructure and services, and designed with little attempt to listen to community needs or foster senses of place. The establishment of pressing sustainability concerns in the 1987 Bruntland Report for the United Nations and more recently the 2007 Stern Review" for the United Kingdom Treasury has put pressure on governments to take action. Sustainability guidelines, however, have tended to focus on quantifiable environmental assessment criteria, and to give little consideration to place-making activities. Focusing on affordable housing in Australian suburbs, we will argue that the notion of sustainability should be broadened beyond environmental concerns, to incorporate the everyday practices of people - the livable, lived-in dimension of space.