Home Property Australia Designing female-friendly cities

Designing female-friendly cities

  • August 08, 2017

The highest compliment that can be made about a suburb or a community is that it’s ‘a great place to raise a family’.

Three in four of all Australians live with family – and under increasing pressures from rising house prices, even more people are doing so in our biggest cities.

Our communities and their proximity to our work as well as to services, play a vital role in making our personal lives and our family life easier.

This week, the Greater Sydney Commission’s Lucy Turnbull looks at our cities through the lens of being ‘female-friendly’. The Chief Commissioner asks some great questions and reflects on her own experiences raising two children.

As she points out, as our cities grow and evolve, we should take time to pause and think about what they are like through the eyes of the young, the old, the disabled, disadvantaged and the culturally diverse.

It is only by trying to see our communities through the eyes of others that we can make them more liveable for everyone.

That’s why when we speak of the need for greater densities and more housing supply, you will also hear us speak of parks, open spaces and infrastructure like schools and transport – because all of this contributes to creating liveable, productive and enjoyable communities.

This week, we also look at the emergence of ‘build-to-rent’ as a new asset class for Australia.

Unlike traditional models where apartments are built and sold to individuals, ‘build-to-rent’ sees an apartment complex designed specifically for the needs of tenants, held by a single institutional owner and professionally managed, with the apartments rented out on long-term leases. 

This can provide a much better experience for the tenant, respond to a growing need in our cities and establish a new property asset class in Australia.

The liveability and affordability of our cities are vital debates for our times and our work is to develop and offer the solutions to these big questions.