r/AskAnAustralian • u/fantabas28 • 1d ago
What’s stopping people/communities from building small village-style communes instead of the suburban model?
Suburbs by their nature are more car-centric and separate people by geography. This eventually leads to isolation of people from communities and increases loneliness.
There are countless examples from our history, fiction( I’m thinking hobbit villages and stardew valley), famous overseas landmarks( cotswalds etc) with amenities, services and vendors all within walking distances. I’ve never lived in a village, but even by vicariously experiencing them through media, I feel a strong sense of community and warmth.
I know there are many village-style suburbs in Australia, but these seem to be associated with higher socioeconomic status areas. Another close enough example are retirement villages. Being older and/or wealthy shouldn’t be the only way to access village-style living.
To some extent, I feel like most people yearn for a return to village style living indirectly. For example, many people are advocating for car-less cities, prefer shopping at family businesses or farmers markets, and substituting the loss of neighbourly relationships by joining clubs and gyms.
Why can’t this village model be adopted, even if at a smaller scale in Australia? I know property developers and greed are the most obvious answers. Are there other reasons why a small group of people who collectively own land can’t build their own village?
Interested to hear from urban planners and others with experience in this area
Edit- thanks for all the great responses! Understand now that while the village life may be internally cohesive, it can lead to insular thinking and lifestyles which can isolate people from the broader community. Also, these places would have to have a high level of trust and cooperation to help maintain the place and spread the costs of living. Additionally, might not be efficient way to build a broader society. Seems the way forward is apartments/ mixed models with the village vibe.
14
u/ShootingPains 1d ago
It has been tried, but by the mid-70s the profitability of suburban retail was pretty much destroyed by a combination of increased car ownership and the large supermarkets.
China is trying a model where high density apartments - basically medium and large tower blocks - have small convenience stores and food outlets on the ground floor, as well as resident-only multi-use gardens. The stores capture foot traffic from the high density apartment block as well as passing footpath traffic from neighbouring blocks. That system is more viable than the old Australian system because high density + excellent public transport encourages foot traffic rather than car ownership.
Russia (or rather, the old Soviet Union) had a few experimental urban villages. Parking was all underground so the street scape was for people rather than machines. Apartment buildings were inter-connected rather than islands, and each had convenience stores on the ground floor. Interestingly, some used a ring-road system with convenience stores within 5-min from your door, larger retail within a 10-minute walk and malls within 20 minutes. All reports are that people loved them, but obviously they wouldn’t last a year in a capitalist system.
The system I like is the five floor conjoined residential apartment framing a city block with some convenience stores on the ground floor, and the whole lot enclosing a communal courtyard. You’ll see those in Paris for instance. The communal areas are beautiful green spaces for kids to play and people to sit. But you’ll also see plenty of instances where the courtyard has been concreted over for car parking. Probably too low a density for convenience stores in a car-based Australian culture.
What I’d like to see is the co-op apartment building. All of the apartments in the building are owned by the co-op, and rent is only for maintenance. No absentee landlords or subletting - if your name is on the lease then you live there. The big advantage is that because it’s a co-op, the building or apartments aren’t caught up in a cycle of being sold and resold. As time goes on, the rent increases much more slowly than traditional apartments which invariably have in-it-for-the-money landlords squeezing every cent to pay for their investment loan. That also allows for long term tenants who will do their own customisation by planting gardens etc.
10
u/Senior_Term 1d ago
There are vertical villages in Melbourne in the form of the nightingale apartment developments. I think it's a bit different to what you're imagining but the vibe is right
3
u/UncagedKestrel Straya 1d ago
The term for these types of developments is "co-housing". And the co-housing model is starting to show up more often around the place, but even on small scales it's apparently proving difficult to get council approval.
"Co-operative housing" is another term that'll usually yield results in a search engine; and co-op owned holiday places were a thing when I was younger too. A group of families owned a piece of land (with a eg a couple of cabins) in a Desirable Location, and they'd all get to go holiday there, or friends/family could go too, and it'd mostly be covering costs (inc maintenance). Meaning that even poorer peeps could actually GO ON DAMN HOLIDAY. And it had the same village feel, where you'd see the same people, in the same place, at the same times, year after year.
Unlike now, with everything short term rental, or vacant second home, or just plain unaffordable at all ever because remote work drove the rental prices up beyond the point of ridiculous (or more realistically, the market saw an opportunity and took off with it like the opportunistic parasites they are).
Some things have gotten better. Some things... have not.
10
u/PantieFan76 1d ago
Probably because they’re generally called cults.
2
u/UncagedKestrel Straya 1d ago
There were a few cults that did collective land ownership back in the day (mostly 60s/70s), but afaik the majority died out.
The current cults tend to do the "charismatic leader" thing, and concentrate the wealth in the hands of their Special Magic Spirit Teacher Guide Fraud Person, whilst everyone else gets the privilege of owning fuck all.
Co-housing, non-cultic, re-emerged somewhere in Scandinavia about 50 odd years ago, and spread from there. It's jointly owned, each place decides it's own rules/norms and so there's no universal guidebook. As far as I can tell the main things seem to be "respect", "communication", and "take your turn doing the [admin] jobs". And residents say it's worth it, not that it's necessarily easy. 🤷♀️
10
u/Powerful-Respond-605 1d ago
Exclusionary zoning approaches that came out of post war America (at the behest of Automotive manufacturers) meant that the settlement patterns around key growth areas kept employment and recreational areas away from residential areas.
Post WW2 residential areas grew on a mixed use basis, with shops and businesses interspersed with dwellings.
Even now most developers of greenfield areas (new subdivisions) will push back against any attempt for a commercial core because there's the perception that returns aren't as good. And a lot of councils will give in to that.
So, the situation now is under the current planning framework there is actually very few areas where such a development types could ve undertaken. In a NSW context one of the few all purpose zones is the RU5 village zone, but these are generally in small rural communities under 1000 people.
3
u/KahnaKuhl 1d ago
People/communities don't build housing developments; usually commercial developers do. And they focus on maximising profit by building vast swathes of suburban sprawl or massive apartment blocks wherever they can. Departing from this model triggers all kinds of difficulties with planning approval and finance.
8
u/daamsie 1d ago
It's no surprise that people yearn for this, because that's how we evolved. We're all prisoners in castles of our own making.
I go to a community garden every Saturday because it's the closest thing I can find to the village life I want.
But it's not that popular. This is the kind of thing people need I think but they don't really want to put the effort in that's required.
1
u/PauL__McShARtneY 1d ago
The British sent us here to suffer and be punished, trust in the plan. All is going according to schedule.
I got your 'breakout space' right here son.
2
u/Ape_With_Clothes_On 1d ago
"I know there are many village-style suburbs in Australia, but these seem to be associated with higher socioeconomic status areas."
I've known a number of people who have lived alternative/commune off grid/get away from it lifestyles.
It takes a lot of serious money to live this way for any extended period of time.
Think Mummy and Daddy live in a harbour-side mansion money.
2
u/MidorriMeltdown 1d ago
Zoning and planning approval are usually the things that stop such concepts from happening.
But occasionally things happen
Adelaide has this thing being built https://southwarkgrounds.com.au/
The plan looks like a bunch of midrise buildings in a neighbourhood with a village vibe, right on the edge of the parklands, and thus the CDB. It might be a "best of both worlds" type scenario.
2
u/big-red-aus 1d ago edited 1d ago
To add to the other comments here, a major factor is the requirements of being an advanced industrial society.
In reality, the fictional version of a village your presenting is incompatible with many of the needs/desires of many/most modern people. You can't have a cottage industry build a processor for a computer, you can't artisanally make advance biologics for medication. These all require the immense concentration of resources, both human and material, that so far has only been accomplished by urbanisation. Unless people are willing to give them up, there isn't a lot of evidence to suggest a viable option to replace urban industrial society.
You can suggest that those that don't work/interact with the sausage making of being an advanced industrial society should live in these villages, but that is then your point about higher socioeconomic status areas.
There are, and since the onset on modern urbanisation various policies to improve conditions (including some mentioned in the comments here), and frankly the suburbs were also in part an idea of how to improve this situation (up to you to decide how effective of an idea it was).
It is important though not to cling too closely to fictional representations of lifestyles, they are by necessity of the format inauthentic. Stardew valley isn't a real example of living in a small regional community and neither are most other stories.
3
u/dav_oid 16h ago
There are 'intentional communities' around Australia if you are interested.
Moora Moora near Healesville is one that's been going since the 1970s.
There's a lot of villages in the UK/Eire that are pretty cool.
They usually have shops and a pub in walking distance.
Some smaller country towns in Australia come closest to this.
5
u/AnonymousEngineer_ 1d ago
Many urban planners, and the urbanists on reddit in particular seem to have developed this massive hard-on for dense urban living and have a special hatred for cars in particular. I suspect you've come across a bunch of comments/posts along those lines yourself.
The thing is... despite what the planners and technocrats might think, many people don't actually want to live like that - in fact I'd go as far as saying I think a significant majority of people don't.
There's a reason why people, once the car became more affordable to the everyday citizen, moved away from the inner city Victorian terraces (they weren't always trendy like they are now, and anyone who's ever spent time in one will tell you that living in one is not nearly as glamorous as they're made out to be) and into suburbia.
The car freed them from the shackles of being tied to the closest railway station out of necessity, and people sought out space. They could have their own patch where they could call home where they weren't living on top of other people, have a yard and shed and general space to breathe. They could get from home to the shops and bring back a large quantity of goods without being limited by what they could carry with their own hands or push in a cart/trolley. They could go places without being tied down to a timetabled service, nor remain hostage to when the railways went on strike.
Governments didn't deliberately build sprawl to force people into suburbia in some kind of grand conspiracy from the big automotive and oil lobbies. No, suburbia was created due to a pent up demand from the general citizen for that kind of living.
And let's be honest here. Take affordability out of the equation and most of us would take a house over an apartment in the same suburb.
2
u/Famous-Print-6767 1d ago
Suburbs are the best form of housing ever invented.
That's not controversial it's indisputable fact. People vote with their wallets and they choose detached housing further from everything, but still in the city.
Suburbs of course have downsides. But people weigh up the trade off and still choose suburbs over every other option.
2
u/Grouchy_Arm1065 1d ago
Village style communities would still isolate people from the rest of the community though?
4
u/Elegant-Flight-9190 1d ago
Humans didn't really evolve to interact with much more than their immediate local community. It has only been since railways came about that we started forming ideas about nationalism and state citizenship. Before than your state was basically your nation and even then you only worried as far as the next town over.
So no, it's probably a benefit.
2
u/cruiserman_80 1d ago
You mean the way that civilisation started out and evolved into what we have today?
2
u/scotteh_yah 20h ago
“I’ve never lived in a village but DAE the hobbit or stardew valley???”
I don’t think you are mature enough to talk about housing when you think life is a video game
2
u/Other-Storage-1911 1d ago
What's stopping them is:
- Cost of land, property, infrastructure, farming equipment, land taxes, approvals.
- Being called a "cooker" the moment they want to live anywhere outside of an established city or town.
- The overwhelming majority of people prefer the comfort and dependency of their modern lives over literally anything else, including long-term fulfilment. They'd rather continue having access to endless vices, dopamine black holes, and feeling "safe".
Small communes do exist, but a lot of them are comprised of people with very alternative viewpoints and ideas on life and reality.
1
u/Some_Troll_Shaman Melbourne 1d ago
Bluntly, money.
Developers profit most by selling as man of the smallest blocks of land they possibly can.
They have zero interest in anything else.
Any amenity they promise is entirely a marketing stunt.
Also,
Councils have inflexible zoning rules meaning that even if you can get the land, getting DA for a village or commune type setup is quite difficult.
1
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
We have been getting a large volume of spam from throwaway accounts and so posts from brand new accounts will no longer be allowed. Your post has been removed because your account is too new. This has been implemented as an Anti-Spam feature. Please wait until your account is at least 12 hours old and then try again or message the mods and we'll validate your post. Thanks!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/Ornery-Practice9772 NSW 23h ago
You need to have money to buy land and buy materials to build. Council needs to zone/rezone for build to be approved and they dont. 🤷♀️
If you were rich enough to do this you wouldnt be interested in doing this because youre doing fine as you are
0
u/No-Listen-1907 23h ago
Our council has a large minimum build size. Can’t build anything smaller. I suppose they get more rates..
1
u/11015h4d0wR34lm 17h ago
It used to be like this in the 70's and 80's when we had family owned corner shops people would go to for basics and have a chat with neighbours they saw there. Then big corporations moved in and the corner shops had no chance of matching prices and they all went out of business and here we are today.
-1
0
19
u/floraldepths 1d ago
A small group of people who collectively own land is (in the ‘village type setting’ you’re implying) does exist and it’s called a multi occupancy and they’re great until they’re not.
The nice thing about non collective land ownership? When your neighbour is being a dick you can call council or police or go to civil court. These things are significantly less available when it’s an MO. Noise complaints from an MO member about another MO member- sorry, all our legislation is regarding seperate properties, so we can’t help. Your neighbour is directing storm water towards your house? Sorry, can’t help, regulations apply only to different lots.
Also collective land ownership means- collective decisions regarding things like stormwater, wastewater, waste management (rubbish/recycling), street lights, water, internal roads, fire safety etc.
Have you ever tried to get 40+ people to agree on something in a meeting? Especially when it’s a complicated thing?
As a person who works for a council that just approved a large MO (over 40 homes) and was doing work on the approval- it was an 18 month long process to get the approval. They had 3 full time professionals putting together this proposal.
There’s also issues with building- banks are not very fond of lending money to people who technically don’t own the land they are living on (MO is set up as a company with shareholders), so it’s difficult to even get funding to build a house, or any of the infrastructure you need.