Is high-rise housing innovative? Developers' contradictory narratives of high-rise housing in Melbourne

Abstract

The appearance in inner Melbourne in the past decade of high-rise residential buildings for middle- and upper-income households has been contrasted with previous periods when such buildings were for public housing tenants. Drawing on the narratives of high-rise developers and planners about these new buildings, the paper demonstrates an inconsistency between their claims that the housing is socially innovative and their expectations that the choices of housing consumers to live in high-rise housing will conform to longstanding stereotypes. Whilst they claim to be identifying a new group of housing consumers—'empty nesters'-and to be satisfying their needs, in fact the high-rise developers' views of this group are premised on conventional and taken-for-granted views of the relationship between certain life-stages and certain housing forms.