Re-designing the Australian dream: Homeness imaginaries in emerging residential typologies

Dahl, Caroline; Dahl, Per-Johan; Aranda-Mena, Guillermo

Conference paper2024Peer reviewed

Re-designing the Australian dream: Homeness imaginaries in emerging residential typologies

Dahl, Caroline; Dahl, Per-Johan; Aranda-Mena, Guillermo;

Abstract

Housing provisions in the Western world, Australia included, are characterised by several
challenges. New residential typologies are needed to cope with, for example, environmental and
economic considerations of land use, escalating construction cost, and the lack of affordable housing.
Urban form determines measures of density. It also spurs our common imaginaries of urban life. Hence,
to calibrate urban form with new residential typologies, we need to upgrade the prevailing homeness
imaginaries. This paper explores new narratives of housing density generated through contemporary
transformations of the urban fabric, and draws on cultural implications when increasing density.
Proposing Melbourne as object of inquiry, it takes Ian H. Thompson’s scholarship on imaginaries in
landscape architecture as a theoretical framework to extrapolate means of upgrading the Australian
Dream of homeness. While these planning operations bring together disparate imaginaries – the
convention of cosmopolitan urban lifestyle in the inner city versus the family-oriented lifestyle in the
wider outer suburbs – they also tell a story about the coexistence of multiple imaginaries in contemporary
global cities, such as Melbourne. This paper will discuss findings from studies on Swedish waterfronts and
American suburbs to draft a research proposal concerning emerging residential typologies feasible to be
applied to Australian cities.

Keywords

Imaginaries; waterfront liveability; suburban transformation; densification cultures

Published in

Title: Harmony in Architectural Science and Design: Sustaining the Future,
Publisher: The Architectural Science Association (ANZAScA)

Conference

ASA 2024 Harmony in Architectural Science and Design: Sustaining the Future. 57th International Conference of the The Architectural Science Association (ANZAScA) 26 – 29 Nov 2024, Gold Coast, Australia

SLU Authors

Dahl, Caroline
- Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

UKÄ Subject classification

Landscape Architecture

Publication identifier

ISBN: 978-1-7637399-0-1

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/140912