Publisher's Synopsis
In times of explosive metropolitan growth and inflationary investment, Building Mixity! challenges the status quo of expansive and unequal urban development in Melbourne, Australia. The idiosyncratic and often forgotten post-industrial precinct of inner-city Cremorne serves as a blueprint for a new vision and an alternative approach to robust and productive city-making. Building Mixity! uniquely examines the potentials of combining adaptive re-use tactics with new densities as a holistic and tangible urban transformation strategy for professionals, academics and contributors to urban discourse. Especially relevant is its reflection upon the effects of rapid growth on urban development within the Asian-Pacific context. Building on the existing rich atmospheres and assets of the place, strategies and practical steps to cultivate mixity are discussed from a design perspective, alongside contributions from economic, historic, legal, and social angles. How can designers, planners and crucial decision-makers sustain and further encourage mixity in a critical stage of extreme investment pressure: not only fostering the coexistence of different building types, eras and character, but also enhancing the variety of public spaces and the diversity of inhabitants, activities and economies, programs and architectures? Building Mixity! collects and combines mutually-informing research strategies: Design approaches are interspersed with historical investigations, discussion of community engagement and self-conducted interviews, critiquing Melbourne's current urban climate and development as part of a post-Global Financial Crisis phenomenon.
