HOW SUBURBIA FAILED
Written by Tone Wheeler

“I'm just a Suburban Boy, just a Suburban Boy / And I know what it's like / To be rejected every night / And I'm sure it must be, easier for boys from the city” Song from the album Mug’s Game, by Dave Warner’s from the Suburbs, Perth 1978.

I grew up in suburban Melbourne and Sydney in the 1960s. I was lucky. You could walk or cycle to schools and shops, lots of places to explore; modest bungalows on large blocks with backyards for play, and sport with local children; birthday parties under the Hills Hoist tents; the beach was close by bus or tram.

It’s a world away from contemporary suburbia: located far from the city centre and water, without public transport, schools or shops; tiny blocks of land with huge, sealed-up two-storey houses; no backyards or gardens, no trees, and five degrees hotter than the inner suburbs.

How did we traduce the great idea of suburbia? In the last sixty years every critical characteristic of suburban houses has changed by a factor of two: sometimes doubled, sometimes halved, but the net effect has been the loss of all the good qualities of suburbia. It’s 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2.

Land is so expensive at the edge of the city that subdivisions are half the size of the 1960s quarter acre (1000 sqm) block, often smaller at 350 - 400 sqm. The sites are skinny to minimise the length along the street and sites so small that the houses are oriented to the boundaries, not the sun. The houses are so crowded on the sites that passive solar is not possible, and cross ventilation breeds a loss of privacy, so air conditioning is the norm.

Meanwhile, the house area doubled from about 120 to 240 sqm, prompted by both a reduction in the quality of construction materials and the demand by purchasers for houses as large as possible. Children may have shared a bedroom and one bathroom in the past (I did), now they have a bedroom and ensuite each; one living room for the whole family has given way to separate family areas just for the children.

When a house, twice the size, goes on a block half the size, it can no longer be a bungalow. It doubles to two storeys, and even then, it has a tiny garden, with no room for trees. The two storeys built to the boundaries overshadows the neighbours and invades their privacy. The increased bulk and absence of trees creates dominant forms in the street where once street trees hid the single storey bungalows.

The narrow fronts, with much of the frontage occupied by a huge garage door, tells of another doubling. In 1960s the family had one car, Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon, (my family were anarchic separatists with an AP6 Valiant), now the family has two or more cars, bought as soon as you can drive. Parked on the front driveway, the front lawn, the nature strip (weird term), cars are necessitated by the lack of public transport in the outer suburbs: no trams, no trains, and privatised bus services that are hopelessly inadequate.

The houses are now doubled in glazing area. Project homes of the 60s had glazed areas 10- 15% of the floor area, as dictated by Ordinance 70 and the like. Not only has the area doubled, but the glazing ratio has also increased to upwards of 30%. To pass NatHERS, it should be double glazed, but often isn't.

Where once one refrigerator in the kitchen was sufficient, now there are two or more refrigerators in the family room or garage to store booze, soft drinks, bait, fish and the like. The second fridge is often older, more inefficient, with polluting refrigerants. After hot water, refrigerators are the biggest consumer of electricity; their doubling in size in number and size has increased demand for electricity.

Where one TV in the house once sufficed, now it's one in every room. Many other appliances have doubled or proliferated: ovens, microwaves, blenders, computers, heated tower rails, hair dryers, fish tanks, along with many more lights. All doubling electricity usage in the house. You can buy refrigerators and appliances from bigbox stores, but not a good water heater (solar or heat pump), which is the best way to offset the increased energy demand.

But the sustainability killer is the number of people living in the house. In the 60s, the average occupancy was more than five persons. Now it's less than half at 2.5. In the 60s, the majority was families, parents and children, sometimes multi-generational, and maybe board and lodging for a student (in every house we lived in). Now singles and couples outnumber families. Large houses on small blocks may only have a couple of people in it.

Not that all 60s suburbs were great. There were failures, such as the ‘Radburn’ experiments in Curtin, Charnwood, Cartwright and Crestwood. But nothing failed on the scale of the vast, dark-roofed, treeless overheated suburbs that have recently been built at the edges of our cities. This change didn't take place overnight; it took 60 years to destroy the high quality of the original suburbs.

• How Suburbia Failed is an opinion piece written by AAA President and Architect Tone Wheeler for Architecture & Design - published 7/02/2023.
• Image: Melbourne, VIC Australia  (Source: Pexels - Geometric Photography)

The first @home for 2023 takes place this month on Sunday 26 March.  We will be visiting Govetts Leap Bach designed by Anderson Architecture, in the Blue Mountains village Blackheath. 

This is a small house project for a New Zealand couple built to Flame Zone construction. Govetts Leap Bach is the latest in a string of bushfire resistant design homes and a benchmark in bushfire resistant design.

The AAA invites you to join a special walking tour on Saturday 25 February. Discover some of the architecture in the idyllic northern beaches suburb - Palm Beach.

Planning a visit to Singapore between the 16 February and 8 March 2023? The National University of Singapore (NUS) is hosting the travelling exhibition 'Harry Seidler: Painting Toward Architecture'.