Height Limits leaving Adelaide behind

[Ben]

I was just having a look at the tallest buildings in Australia.

Adelaide is Australia's 5th largest city (was once 3rd) and is heading to be taken over by Gold Coast in 2100 under current forecasts.

Adelaide does not have 1 building in the top 100 tallest in Australia. Infact, our tallest building, Westpac sits at number 135 and then is not represented until 235 and 242.

Effectively Adelaide only 3 buildings in Australia's top 250.

When including proposed towers Adelaide is first mentioned at 178.

When looking at the other cities in Australia they are first mentioned on the list at positions:

Gold Coast - 1
Sydney - 2
Melbourne - 3
Brisbane - 6
Perth - 9
Adelaide - 135

I know height is not the only stat to look at when assesing how well a city is doing but compared to our 5 competitors we are seriously different whether that is bad or good I'm not qualified to say, but just how far behind the other cities we are, is staggering.

I feel the governement needs to do more to unlock the cities development potential and stop the 16 level buildings taking over our CBD.

http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/create. ... list_year=

[monotonehell]

Quite the opposite if you want a tallie, Ben.

Let all the spare space be taken up with mid-rise development. Then available development space will be more scarce. Then there will be more need to build higher buildings to meet demand.

Sadly (or happily) Adelaide is blessed with a lot of mostly level, inexpensive land. The impetus for high rise does not exist.

[zippySA]

I don't subscribe to the "taller is better" theory as any form of measure of a city's success.

It should all be about quality and creating the best place to live, work and play. There is plenty of tall crap around the world - and whilst impossibly expensive, have you seen some of the under-ground concepts floating around which turns the whole height issue on its head (literally). All a bit of fun but perhaps one day?

[Ben]

Let all the spare space be taken up with mid-rise development. Then available development space will be more scarce. Then there will be more need to build higher buildings to meet demand.

That is true but there is so much development land in our CBD. Maybe that is the reason, because land is so available for development, whereas other CBD's are much smaller (land size wise).

[cruel_world00]

Meh. Height means nothing in the grand scheme of things. You can have the highest buildings but nothing at ground level and end up with down town LA or Dubai or to a lesser extent Perth.

Look at Paris. Or even London (considering its size, they've only JUST got on board having a few more tall buildings.)

Sure it's nice to have an instantly recognisable skyline, but I'm happy with ours for the time being if we keep investing in decent activated ground level developments.

[Nathan]

Meh. Height means nothing in the grand scheme of things. You can have the highest buildings but nothing at ground level and end up with down town LA or Dubai or to a lesser extent Perth.

Look at Paris. Or even London (considering its size, they've only JUST got on board having a few more tall buildings.)

Sure it's nice to have an instantly recognisable skyline, but I'm happy with ours for the time being if we keep investing in decent activated ground level developments.

This. I'd rather ground level activation and better quality architecture over shear height any day. (Although that's not to say any of those are mutually exclusive, or that Adelaide's 16 level boxes constitute quality architecture)

[Phantom]

I think Monotone is right, in some aspects height breeds height. The good thing about Adelaide is the large areas that the CBD can expand both south and east. This is already somewhat evident with precincts like Rundle Mall (spilling onto Grenfell St), North Tce (both over the trainlines and on Hindley St {ie. the UniSA building}) and to a lesser extent Pirie St (both onto Waymouth and Flinders Sts).

Once these relatively high areas physically connect to one another, the next areas I can see growing are the areas directly around these. Currie St, Wakefield St and Grote St hopefully will follow suit. Perhaps even if more one-off tall buildings are placed here and there (like the Optus building on South Tce), then this will help these areas grow into precincts in their own right.

As for the heights of these buildings, again reaffirming my point, I think Monotone is on the ball. As much as I'd like to see a unique, tall building in the heart of Adelaide, I don't mind seeing it slowly happen over the next... Say 30 years? I think at this rate of development (looking at the umpteen cranes in the CBD at the moment) that the skyline of Adelaide will be vastly different by 2040, both in height and depth.

[Aidan]

I was just having a look at the tallest buildings in Australia.

Adelaide is Australia's 5th largest city (was once 3rd) and is heading to be taken over by Gold Coast in 2100 under current forecasts.

Adelaide does not have 1 building in the top 100 tallest in Australia. Infact, our tallest building, Westpac sits at number 135 and then is not represented until 235 and 242.

Effectively Adelaide only 3 buildings in Australia's top 250.

When including proposed towers Adelaide is first mentioned at 178.

When looking at the other cities in Australia they are first mentioned on the list at positions:

Gold Coast - 1
Sydney - 2
Melbourne - 3
Brisbane - 6
Perth - 9
Adelaide - 135

I know height is not the only stat to look at when assesing how well a city is doing but compared to our 5 competitors we are seriously different whether that is bad or good I'm not qualified to say, but just how far behind the other cities we are, is staggering.

The Gold Coast only tops the list because of its residential skyscrapers - and at the moment, most people would prefer to live in a house rather than a skyscraper.

Ignore the silly long term population projections based on past trends - the Gold Coast is really more of a tourist town than a serious competitor. Our real fifth competitor is Canberra, which doesn't even have a building in the top 250 at the moment. But they'll get high speed rail before we do - and when they get it, their population is set to surge.

[Will]

I feel the governement needs to do more to unlock the cities development potential and stop the 16 level buildings taking over our CBD.

=

The government has removed planning powers from the ACC. Then they liberalised height restrictions in the CBD.

The government has essentially done all it can do.

With the exception of commissioning a new tallest themselves, there is little else the government can do.

The blame has to be placed on the private sector.

[Waewick]

by 2100 I will be shocked in Adelaide is the top 10 biggest "cities"

[claybro]

by 2100 I will be shocked in Adelaide is the top 10 biggest "cities"

And it may be just as likely that in the next 50 years that some of the precious metals that lie in our states North lead Adelaide to leapfrog Perth or Brisbane again. We are literally sitting on a Gold Mine, and with Adelaide only 700km away, it will eventually be impossible for Australia, indeed the world to ignore us. Once this happens, we will be complaining of all the buildings stuck at the 30 storey level. What one would question is if Melbourne, the furthest mainland capital from Asia, with the furthest seaport from Asia, and the longest flights from Asia, with a stagnating manufacturing industrial base and ageing state resources, a highly speculative real estate market and very questionable weather, will continue its unrealistic growth. That place was built on gold, grew through cheap coal and immigration, and is now just a shiny house of cards waiting to implode.

[rhino]

What one would question is if Melbourne, the furthest mainland capital from Asia, with the furthest seaport from Asia, and the longest flights from Asia, with a stagnating manufacturing industrial base and ageing state resources, a highly speculative real estate market and very questionable weather, will continue its unrealistic growth. That place was built on gold, grew through cheap coal and immigration, and is now just a shiny house of cards waiting to implode.

Actually I would argue that Adelaide is the furthest mainland seaport from Asia, but the rest of your statement rings pretty true.

[Dog]

by 2100 I will be shocked in Adelaide is the top 10 biggest "cities"

And it may be just as likely that in the next 50 years that some of the precious metals that lie in our states North lead Adelaide to leapfrog Perth or Brisbane again. We are literally sitting on a Gold Mine, and with Adelaide only 700km away, it will eventually be impossible for Australia, indeed the world to ignore us. Once this happens, we will be complaining of all the buildings stuck at the 30 storey level. What one would question is if Melbourne, the furthest mainland capital from Asia, with the furthest seaport from Asia, and the longest flights from Asia, with a stagnating manufacturing industrial base and ageing state resources, a highly speculative real estate market and very questionable weather, will continue its unrealistic growth. That place was built on gold, grew through cheap coal and immigration, and is now just a shiny house of cards waiting to implode.

Claybro, don't know what's happened finding my self in total agreement. We have the potential!

[Aidan]

What one would question is if Melbourne, the furthest mainland capital from Asia, with the furthest seaport from Asia, and the longest flights from Asia, with a stagnating manufacturing industrial base and ageing state resources, a highly speculative real estate market and very questionable weather, will continue its unrealistic growth. That place was built on gold, grew through cheap coal and immigration, and is now just a shiny house of cards waiting to implode.

Actually I would argue that Adelaide is the furthest mainland seaport from Asia, but the rest of your statement rings pretty true.

And for much of Asia, Sydney has longer flights. The manufacturing base may be stagnating at the moment, but there's no reason why it should continue to stagnate (and the same is true for Adelaide). It's big enough to attract people because that's where the jobs are, and it's big enough to attract businesses because that's where the people are.

[claybro]

And for much of Asia, Sydney has longer flights. The manufacturing base may be stagnating at the moment, but there's no reason why it should continue to stagnate (and the same is true for Adelaide). It's big enough to attract people because that's where the jobs are, and it's big enough to attract businesses because that's where the people are.

There was a time in the '80's before the State Bank collapse, that the Victorian economy was in freefall, and SA was booming. Victoria had the highest unemployment rate on the mainland. This was due in large part to the Pyramid Building Society collapse, but also rorts and inefficiencies in the building industry, and docks. Their large population was no protection against an almost complete collapse of their economy, in fact in some ways it made things worse.
Their booming retail industry has been propped up for years by out of control house price increases, allowing people to access equity and spend up big on borrowed money. They are now on a tight rope. They somehow have to reign in house prices, without putting people in to negative equity, and therefore cutting off the money fountain of a couple of million mortgage holders. All of this in a background of shrinking manufacturing, finance industry back office functions moving off shore, their cheap dirty brown coal power generation about to be priced out of the market. I would not like to be the holder in Melbourne of a $500K mortgage for an average house living 30km from the CBD with rising petrol prices, falling property value and a manufacturing job. As I said, that whole place is a house of cards.