Promise the earth then deliver the middle ground: Reverse innovation in planning for suburban growth

Abstract

Innovation is easy to claim but more difficult to deliver. Planning for urban growth is no exception. Although residential subdivisions are often regarded as bland and repetitive, developers go to great lengths to convince prospective buyers, local authorities and politicians that their development has a new innovative. These claims need to be treated with cautions. The likelihood is that the bigger the project and the longer it takes it roll out the more likely it is that innovation will be clawed back. This paper aims to show how innovation can work in reverse over time by use of a single case study of a development currently underway near Christchurch, New Zealand. Utilising publicly available information we show how the golden mean of the slightly less than one quarter acre sized section tends to emerge as the principal feature that endures when other factors change. Since we focus on a relatively typical element of the urban and suburban growth pattern, the master planned subdivision, it should follow that what is identified here as a reverse trend is likely to be the case in other contexts and hence should be of interest to planning students in particular