URBAN CHARACTER Case Study: Hedgeley Dene
“It was actually about that ‘character’ aspect of the neighbourhood … being single dwellings on large blocks … family homes as opposed to multi-unit developments with a transient population”
Hedgeley Dene is an upper middle-class neighbourhood with a narrow linear park laced through it, where the character of both the park and surrounding streets are seen as threatened by multi-unit development. In 2003 it became Victoria’s first case of a legislated 'Neighbourhood Character Overlay', however, there was no clear agreement on either the nature of this 'character' or its boundaries. The park is experienced in the English landscape tradition of the arcadian prospect, yet protection extends to surrounding streets where regulations attempt to enforce the preferred style of ‘Californian Bungalow’ through control of housing style, roof pitch, fence type, materials, colours and vegetation. The legislated 'protection' of character became a way of 'constructing' a new kind of place with an architectural consistency that never previously existed, based on a social ideal of 'family housing' that is long past.