Abstract:
Urban lifestyles are undergoing demographic changes and these changes play a vital role in the transition of housing patterns due to wider household formations occurring at different life cycle stages. The dynamics of demographics are resulting in changes to the housing needs and preferences and therefore there is a demand for more housing alternatives and combinations in future. Particularly, the growing share of smaller households are looking for opportunities to trade-off between existing housing types with attached or compact typologies to aspire more desirable locations and urban amenities for a convenient living. Over the time as population increases, this can significantly impact on the existing detached housing stock and require the construction of more compact housing to meet future demands. Today, new world cities such as Auckland are facing radical urbanisation focussed on the expansion of city limits in the name of sprawl. However, such growth is a challenge to address inefficiency of services, infrastructure and at the same time comes at an expense of higher taxation, absence of community, loss of natural land and critical housing demand. Therefore, urban intensification aims to address these economic, social, and environmental losses and further calls the need for denser and compact living environments known as 'Compact Developments'. Although the rate of population projections and housing demands within the city boundaries clearly suggest compact housing forms to meet the future housing demands. However, this can be reinforced by the forecasted demographic changes, as compact housing is also seen as contemporary housing trends in changing lifestyles needs of emerging demographics in Auckland. This thesis aims to investigate how the changing demographic structures of the urban population in Auckland might reflect needs and desires for more compact housing forms, which in turn supports The Auckland Plan's aim for compact development.