It isn’t revolutionary anymore but zero-lot housing is still a great idea.
The term zero-lot comes from the USA in the 1970’s and refers to a “zero-lot line” which is a side setback line. In other words, a house with one windowless side wall built on the boundary. It was all the rage in the USA and meant that a house only had one side setback which was more efficient land use.
MPS founding director, Greg Perlman, brought the idea to Queensland and encased it with a set of principles that would add value to residents in masterplanned communities. Each lot would have a zero-lot boundary on one side and each lot would need to conform to a plan of development noted on each land title.
The advantages of living in a zero-lot home were guaranteed privacy, optimal solar aspect, an indoor-outdoor value space, useable backyards, an articulated front façade and potential individuality as each house was set back from the house next door.
When we started on the Gold Coast in 1991 we had perfected the idea and it took off attracting a degree of publicity and awards as we did a string of projects ranging from 10 to 300 homes in separate masterplanned developments in Queensland and northern NSW.
The idea was so well-received by the development community that the new amalgamated Gold Coast City Council in its inaugural planning scheme (2003) created a zero-lot housing component.
In the broader sense zero-lot housing maintains the detached housing character of suburban housing as opposed to townhouse developments and delivers a density of 24 dwellings per hectare which improves housing affordability.
This model has many manifestations. It can be a relatively small infill of 5 to 15 homes on an existing residential lot. Or it could be as big as 300 homes combined with a resident’s club and recreational facilities.
We even used it as the basis for active retirement living projects which struck a chord with residents moving from their detached family home to a detached zero-lot home in a fully-optioned over-50’s residential community. Most lauded of this genre is the Halcyon Over-50’s development model which we created in 2003.
Many siting regulations around the nation have now made it easier to do zero-lot housing in terms of siting one side wall on a boundary. So what? The real value is not in the idea…it is how to create spaces to guarantee the principles that make it intrinsically valuable to the resident in daily life.
We have ideas, we create spaces.
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