Cunning Planz: Cunning Plan Number Four

There is general agreement that to bring life to the central city, we need to bring everything to the central city. Retail, commercial and residential.

All over Australia are apartment complexes encompassing entire city blocks. Around the outside are residential blocks, with secure gates to green areas inside, along with other residential towers. Car-parking is underground, and covers the entire complex. Elevators from the carpark are located to come up into each tower block, and only residents can operate the elevator in their tower. Ver efficient and very secure.

I don't know if this idea has come to New Zealand at all. There is a block of land on Madras St in Christchurch that has remained vacant since an electrical line company abandoned it. I have always thought that this block was big enough to build one of those gated apartment complexes.

But this is about rebuilding the inner city. Here's my thought.

There will be enough city blocks laid waste to build one of these apartment blocks, but lets add a twist. At the moment, low-rise is what people want, so lets set a limit of say, 5 stories.

Street frontages around the entire block will be retail. All the shops and restaurants we want in our neighbourhood. Some buildings could be all small retail, some could have a department store, and one or two could house a cinema. If you can't find what you want in your own building, try the one across the road.
The next level up will be commercial. Office space.
Above that will be residential. Between 2 and 4 stories of apartments.

We know that basement carparks did not fair well in the earthquake, so we won't go there. Imagine the entire area inside this block is car parking. Private and public. All views from the retail, commercial and residential are out into the street. Hidden from sight in behind this facade will be car parking, on all floors.

On the ground floor, all parking would be for the retail. If necessary, this could spread upstairs. On the commercial floor, carparks would be assigned to each office, right outside the door. Remember the access to the upper spaces are all internal, from either elevator, or from the attached car-park space. If the building is wide enough, then there will be spare parks on this and higher floors for additional public parking. All parks that face the outer office or residential spaces will be allocated to those tenants, but anything inside will be spare for guests or public parking.

Same goes for the residential floors. The resident's car can be parked right outside their doors, just like their internal access garage they left in the suburbs. These could be lockable private areas, or simply assigned parks. Excess parks on each floor would be available for public parking for neighbouring areas, so as to minimise the requirement for street parking.

As has been mentioned in the draft city plan, rooftop gardens could easily be incorporated into these buildings, for either public or residential use. Perhaps allotments, in the old English style, just 5 stories up.
Also on the roof, can be some power generation equipment, to help the building generate some of it's own electricity. There can be the facility to add solar cells when they become viable and cost-effective, but right now there can be a series of VAWT (vertical Axis Wind Turbines), as mentioned in a previous post. There can be quite a few of these scattered across the roof. Because of the extra uses of the roof space, there will need to be lighting up there. The VAWT and lighting can share the same posts.

So, what do we have with this?