Living High / Chapel Street Precinct
reprinted from a feature article written by Sarah Wilcox for Chapel Street Precinct
Urban sprawl is so five minutes ago. The Australian dream of a house on a quarter acre block is dead. Skyscrapers are moving to the suburbs. This progress is a double-edged sword that leaves us wondering: how might our future selves live?
Back to the Future
To figure out where Melburnians might be headed, it helps to look at from where we have come. It’s the job of futurist Morris Miselowski to predict (with research and evidence rather than some kind of psychic vision) social and business trends.
He’s tickled by the idea that we have come full-circle with our desires since our parents’ generations, “when my parents came as ethnics in the 40s we lived on top of the shop and that was a bad thing to do. The first thing you did to prove yourself was to get out of there. Now it’s the exact opposite. To live in a trendy shopping centre is actually seen as a sign of prosperity, people aspire to it.”
He explains that prior to the 60’s, homes were traditionally the female bastion. Men came and went using the home as a transport hub. Strip shopping centres were built to accommodate women walking to them.
In the 70s women began to work out of the home more, it became more ordinary for people to share chores. People began to be at home for longer periods of time, “we stopped covering up the couch in plastic and having beautiful pristine rooms that only the priest was invited to once a year and everybody else whispered in.”
In the 80s and 90s that we were still working nine to five, shopping nine to five and we owned two cars.
Society still required us to have that house and backyard to prove that we’d made it. Says Morris, “I have the mortgage, it’s choking me, but I have the mortgage! Part of my retirement is that home and if you really wanted to show off you’d have a two storey home on the quarter acre block.” This era, of a mere decade ago, is almost forgotten.
Morris says the last ten years have made Melburnians “less comfortable, we’ve seen lots of issues around employment, money, bank rates, and the pragmatist in us has come out…we have to give up on that dream if we want quality of life”. We now work when and where it’s appropriate, shop when we wish, “and we want to be close to entertainment, close to family or just close to something that bring us comfort and joy”.
The trophy home is no longer important. Sharing things rather than possessing things has lost its stigma. We now share cars, dwellings, leisure spaces, amenities and holiday homes happily…even pets!
So how are these social pressures going to sculpt where we live? Morris envisions a trend for four to six storey apartment blocks inspired by the Asian style of living. While it seems we’ll work from home more often, we’ll actually live many of our waking hours out on the street.
“We will have self-driving cars in the next 10 years.”
Moving with the Times
Globally, inventors are seriously toying with the idea of Futurama-style transportation tubes. Until then, transport – and parking – is a major cause of objection to dense residential plans. Morris believes we will have self-driving cars in the next 10 years, “one in four cars sold in 2020 will be capable.
Volvo, VW, Merc and a few others already have apps that will theoretically allow the car to park itself, the technology exists, laws just need to catch up”. The car could park itself kilometres away, saving time and valuable space within the building.
“The car will know you want it because you’ve started moving out of the house so it will call itself up and be ready for you,” he says. Expect to be riding around in vehicles akin to KITT from Knight Rider sometime soon.
On the Inside
Morris looks to Japan, “they have apartments that are basically a square box. In the middle it has another large-ish box and that box rotates with four sides. Every side is different; one side is a kitchen, one side’s a bedroom, one’s an office, one is a loungeroom. Sounds kitschy but it actually works beautifully!”
Morris says we will demand more from internal architecture. No more pushing buttons on the lift. The elevator will recognise you personally and take you home.
Your apartment will let you in, dim the lights when you lie down, play the song you were vibing to on the train home.
Walls may move or disappear. Furniture, the room and even the mood of the space will reconfigure themselves depending on what you’ve got planned on your digital calendar.
Sound like sci-fi? Welcome to the “Internet of Things”.
Morris says the real beginning of this trend is only five to ten years away.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the most significant signals about vertical living and its impact on urban communities?
The vertical living signals include: the rapid high-rise residential development in Australian inner-city precincts has introduced density without necessarily creating the community infrastructure (parks, schools, community spaces, street-level activation) that makes density liveable; the design quality of Australian high-rise apartment buildings has improved significantly from the early 2000s wave but still lags the best international examples in terms of apartment sizing, shared amenity, and ground-level activation; the demographic shift in high-rise living — from predominantly single professionals and investors to genuine family living including young children — is creating demand for school places, playground space, and family services that planning frameworks have been slow to anticipate; and the building defect crisis (Opal Tower, Mascot Towers, and numerous smaller defect issues) has damaged consumer confidence in new apartment stock and raised serious questions about the regulatory oversight of building quality.
Q: What does Chapel Street Precinct’s evolution reveal about the relationship between density and street-level retail vitality?
Chapel Street’s evolution is a case study in the complex relationship between density and retail vitality: the arrival of high-density residential development brings more residents within walking distance of the precinct — in theory supporting retail and hospitality businesses; but the demographics of high-rise living (often younger, more digitally native consumers) are different from the traditional Chapel Street customer base, creating a transition challenge for established retailers; the retail format question — whether the ground-floor activation in new developments is designed for the retail needs of a dense residential population (supermarkets, health services, convenience) or for the experiential retail and hospitality that makes the precinct a destination — determines whether density enhances or dilutes precinct character; and the competition from online retail continues to restructure what kinds of physical retail can survive in any urban precinct regardless of residential density.
Q: What does the future of precincts like Chapel Street look like as vertical living and digital commerce continue to evolve?
The future of lifestyle precincts in a high-density, high-digital-commerce environment requires reinvention around the dimensions of value that cannot be delivered digitally: experience (the restaurant meal, the live music, the craft market), community (the third place where regulars gather and relationships form), discovery (the unexpected encounter with a product, a person, or an idea that is not served by algorithmic recommendation), and physical engagement with product (the clothing tried on, the book browsed, the food tasted before purchase). The precincts that successfully navigate the digital commerce disruption are those that have invested in the experiential, community, and discovery dimensions rather than trying to compete on product range or price. Chapel Street’s food and hospitality offer is its strongest differentiator — building around that axis rather than trying to maintain retail breadth is the strategic direction the evidence supports.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for an urban futures, retail industry, or precinct strategy keynote?
Contact the booking team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
reprinted from a feature article written by Sarah Wilcox for Chapel Street Precinct Urban sprawl is so five minutes ago. The Australian dream of a house on a quarter acre block is dead. Skyscrapers are moving to the suburbs. This progress is a double-edged sword that leaves us w.
When signals like Living High / Chapel Street Precinct emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Living High / Chapel Street Precinct will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
