Melbourne - 19 November 2004 - The town planning
community must increasingly accept and plan for different
communities with different values. And sometimes these values
will not always align with what is "officially preferred"
at the metropolitan planning level, argues Bernard Salt
one of Australia's leading futurists.
Bernard Salt at Sandhurst Club
Speaking at a briefing at Sandhurst Club golfing residential
project, author of The Big Shift, Mr Salt says, ageing
baby boomers will organise their lives around their interests
and their stage in the life cycle.
As young adults they populated the burbs; now as seachanging
lifestylers they are either off to the coast for a seachange,
or off to the hills for a tree-change or, for some, off
on a tee-change within the city to a golf course residential
estate.
These estates concentrate large tracts of urban land to
a selected community. This is great for investors in a limited
property market where the very concept of new supply is
constrained by planning principles designed to encourage
urban consolidation.
Many city-based baby boomers who have the financial capacity
will increasingly want to live in urban areas where there
is plenty of space, a maintained environment, a range of
passive sporting and leisure activities, and some form of
formal security.
There is a compelling logic behind golf course residential
estates from a market viewpoint. Here is an opportunity
for aging boomers to remain in the city, to maintain social
and work linkages, to downsize out of that rambling suburban
dwelling, and to achieve what many are now calling a portfolio
lifestyle: leisure, work, family and social interests all
blended within a locale that could not be as easily achieved
from a remote beach or hill cabin.
And as the current planning regime tightens around the
political correctness of urban consolidation, and relentless
water restrictions, where do you think a green recycled-water
fed and manicured residential environment will be positioned
within the hearts and minds of the average Melburnian in
20 years time?
Golf course residential estates within commuting distance
of capital city workplaces, offering lifestyle- and-the-city,
can only be more highly prized in the future as complementary
and even competitive offerings are relegated to edges of
civilization - the peninsulas.
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