Mean streets: residential intensification strategies for the sprawled city

[Truncated abstract] 'Residential intensification' or 'urban consolidation' broadly describes the accommodation of additional population within an existing urban area. 'Sprawled Cities' are metropolitan areas which have predominantly grown, and continue to grow, through the reproduction of a diffuse (suburban) pattern of urbanisation which in its origins successfully coalesced the ideals and expectations of existing and potential citizens. Governments in Sprawled Cities have typically sought to implement a partially consolidated pattern of urban development, at least since the inception of contemporary metropolitan planning in the latter half of the 20th century. In more recent times there has been an increased emphasis on residential intensification as a desirable urban form as environmental degradation, the prospect of climate change, rising energy and transport costs, changes to household structure and the cost of suburban expansion and traffic congestion accumulate into demands and instructions for alternative patterns of settlement. Perth, in Western Australia, is an exemplary case study of the Sprawled City, and is poised on the threshold of accelerated population growth with clear policy directives toward residential intensification. Current design regulation appears inadequate in addressing the intermediate scale of the residential environment – the neighbourhood and this is a critical role domain scale in realising the possibility of successful residential intensification schemes.