Niche work if you can get it

It’s not often I get the chance to praise developers but I’m happy to take my hat off to Nectar Efkarpidis who reckons it’s time to rethink our one-style-fits–all approach to apartments.
Mr Efkarpidis has been speaking sensibly about building communities with “niche” appeal rather than constantly catering for the “homogenous lowest common denominator.”
Ideas being floated include single-parent floors with crèches, student levels with broadband access, pet exercise areas as well as somewhat fanciful notions of gay-only blocks with cocktail bars.
The idea of attracting a certain type of people with a specific set of needs and values to a building is absolutely sound although a little honesty in advertising would have much the same effect.
But we never see units advertised as “cheap because the walls are paper thin – would suit young people who wear iPods all day.”
Or an ad that said an apartment block was more expensive because it had independent professional management, 20 percent better sound insulation and guarantees to fix all defects without quibble. People who want a hassle-free, quiet life would be queueing up for miles.
Instead we get estate agent speak like “affordable luxury” – two terms that are both so subjective you might as well say  “with added flim and extra flam”.  And you only find out whether you are welcome or not once you’ve paid your money and moved in.
Needless to say there are nay-sayers to the idea of niche developments. One University of Sydney urban planning academic has warned darkly about “resident committees socially screening people”.
Resident committees?  Social screening? What planet are you planning? Out here in the real world, executive committees (for that’s what they are called) have enough trouble getting rid of hookers, drug dealers, illegal short-term lets and antisocial scumbags, never mind the non-existent power to pick and choose who gets in.
It would be a good idea if some of these people who are making plans for apartment blocks – whether they are academics, developers or politicians – not only lived in them for a while, but joined executive committees to see what it’s really like.
At least Nectar Efkarpidis, it seems, has done his research.

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