When a Sydney couple ditched their back fence, they got more than a nice view

Rob d’Apice and his husband, Ivan Muniz Reed, fell in love with the tall trees in the open parkland at the back of their 1918 home – nicknamed Alien Jellyfish – on Whites Creek in Sydney’s inner west.

“We bought because of the view,” said d’Apice. Neighbouring homes block the outlook with garages or what the couple’s architect Hannah Tribe called “stupid” 1.8-metre high fences.

An award-winning renovation in this year’s NSW Architecture awards by Tribe Studio to transform the tiny house removed anything inside or out, upstairs and down, that impeded the outlook.

The meadow now appears to be an extension of the home – and the family’s social life. Dogs race in, leaving paw prints on pale polished concrete floors, walkers stop to say hello and children come into play with the couple’s daughters. At night, rippling privacy curtains surround the illuminated living areas that glow like a see-through marine creature.

A report this month on “breathable density” by the Committee for Sydney’s Estelle Grech, director of planning, fairness and equity, calls for more homes to have access to green spaces.

The committee’s report says the blue and green spaces of Greater Sydney’s waterways are “one of the most powerful health interventions a city can make”. In contrast, treeless development and streets lacking green spaces were “lonelygenic”.

In Erskineville, a small reserve has become what resident Eric Rivers called an urban miracle. About 20 terraces’ back gates open to a pocket park that is big enough to throw a Frisbee, have neighbourhood drinks and the occasional long-table dinners.

Architect Melissa Rivers said the meadow, as some call it, “gives people a place to gather, and a green, breathing space”.

Neighbour Tom Harden started off renting nearby, but he didn’t want to lose the community so he bought a house. “It makes me socially lazy. I just open the back gate.”

The report calls on developers to stop turning their backs on these spaces with fences, and do more to use them.

Creeks and rivers run through most of Greater Sydney, creating a blue and green belt. About 85 per cent of the population lives within 800 metres of mangroves, creeks, wetlands, the harbour or the ocean.

Breathable density may be access to a window that catches an afternoon breeze, a verge garden, a courtyard, a leftover industrial site gone wild or a strip of land near a creek.

Architect Angelo Korsanos who lives near Croydon’s Wangal Park, a former brick pit, says reserves, parks and riverine corridors are “all over Sydney when you start looking for them”.

In a presentation with architect Peter McGregor to the Urban Design Association NSW, he argued for more medium density development along these green spots. More eyes made them safer, too.

McGregor and Korsanos say recent development had resulted in high-rise towers without trees in suburbs like Burwood, Liverpool, Parramatta, Chatswood, Ashfield and Hurstville.

“We ring-fence density to just a couple of blocks of a railway station,” Korsanos said. “And on the suburban periphery, we get horizontal sprawl in the form of paddocks to black roofs and bitumen.”

Korsanos, who is a lecturer of practice in architecture at Western Sydney University, said his master’s students were fascinated by the potential of these green and blue spaces.

“They’re everywhere, in Toongabbie, Rooty Hill, and Auburn. This year we’re looking at Harris Park. Each one of those has got these riverine corridors … Toongabbie has kilometres and kilometres of back fences on what used to be creeks.”

These areas could accommodate greater density. “It’s like a reversal of TOD [transport-oriented development], of building towers around railway stations.”

Grech said: “Maybe we should move from TOD to GOD – green-oriented development.”

McGregor and Korsanos have found such development sites near green spaces within an easy walk of public transport, including in Hurstville, that would suit six to eight storeys, the scale necessary to make these projects viable.

Korsanos said Auburn, Harris Park and Fairfield, were also full of riparian corridors lined by the back fences of single dwellings.

He cycles once a week along the 20-kilometre-long Cooks River trail. “There are all these back fences,” he said.

This green trail alone could open the door to 40 kilometres of homes and apartments facing a large green space.

Upzoning just 5 to 6 per cent of this land could result in a 25-35 per cent increase in overall dwelling capacity across an LGA, he said.

With only single homes running along these fence lines, developments could face less opposition. There were fewer neighbours to object than a suburban block which can have six or more neighbours, depending on block size.

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