URBAN CHARACTER Case Study: Caroline Springs
“Everyone who moves in … has to be willing and wanting to be community-minded.”
Beginning in 1995, a flat and featureless plain of thistles on the suburban fringe commenced a rapid transformation into a burgeoning suburb comprising a series of 'villages' surrounding parks and lakes, projected eventually to house 25,000 residents. With their keynote slogan of 'creating special places' the developers, Delfin, have marketed and created a vision for the future in which residents invest their faith. Yet this is also a place of individual aspirations with an ethos of self-reliance, self-creation and hierarchies of status; climbing the ladder of opportunity involves moving from house to house and village to village. Caroline Springs is strongly market-led and privately controlled; a consistency of character within each of the 'villages' is a key to marketability and is strictly controlled through detailed covenants. Consistency of housing type and bulk is coupled with a broad range of housing styles within selected streetscapes. This mix of different characters under a common covenant reflects a market of social and ethnic differences.