Canberra the collaboration capital

Canberra – the collaboration capital?Walk around the Canberra city centre on any given day, and you can see what happens when everyone works in isolation. Tired buildings, empty streets and small pockets of vitality swimming in a sea of grey.It’s time for a different approach – one in which the community, local businesses, building owners and the ACT Government collaborate to find solutions and revitalise the heart and soul of our city.Charles Landry, known in planning circles as the ‘city whisperer’, developed a paper last year which explored what he called our “rare opportunity” to make Canberra “more liveable, more competitive and to create more presence on the world stage”. Landry believes collaboration is a “major under-exploited asset and a competitive tool”, and that we must focus on fostering a “culture of collaboration”.Landry argues that we can’t create the city we want without buy-in from the community. Canberrans must begin “broad-ranging conversations about the issues that really matter,” he says.Many would agree. It could be said that one of the reasons our city centre is failing is because we don’t have the organisational arrangements or capacity, and we don’t have the kind of ‘joined up thinking’ needed to tackle some of the problems. Clearly, having these conversations without including the community just won’t work.Revitalising our city centre is essential for Canberra to remain competitive and attractive in the 21st century, which is why the Property Council of Australia and Canberra CBD Limited have launched a new discussion paper, Transforming Canberra’s City Centre.The discussion paper builds on a workshop we hosted late last year, which brought together everyone from planners and public servants to retailers, restaurateurs, building owners and designers, to explore how we create new landmark addresses, attract residents into the city and rejuvenate the city’s tired buildings. Any visitor to the city centre can see that our buildings are tired – and many are lying vacant. The Property Council’s latest Office Market Report reveals a record high office vacancy rate of 14.7 per cent. Similarly, Canberra CBD Limited’s latest Street Level Activity Report registers a vacancy rate of 15.9 per cent across the city centre.While the response from some quarters may be that it’s the responsibility of building owners to lower their rents and upgrade their assets, the reality is not so cut-and-dry. We already have some of the lowest commercial rent rates in the country – and have done so for many years. It is virtually impossible for building owners to invest in upgrades when so much is stacked against them – from rising rates to barriers such as the Lease Variation Charge (LVC). Put simply, taxes such as the LVC affect our ability to revitalise our city centre, because it makes the conversion of existing office buildings into new residential apartments, for example, prohibitively expensive.We can’t keep saying this is an issue for building owners, when clearly it’s an issue for everyone who wants to enjoy a vibrant and vital city centre.It’s time to embrace the power of partnerships. We all have a common problem, and that it the failure of the city as a place of commerce and a place for people. Collectively, we need to take corrective action. Such was the case in Melbourne in the 1990s when action was taken to stem the economic haemorrhage and cultural decline of central city.A new partnership strategy was embodied in the Melbourne ‘Postcode 3000’ program, which kicked off in 1992. The goal was to have 3,000 people living in the central city postcode within a decade. A handful of property owners were prepared to take a risk on pilot schemes, re-lifing old office buildings into new apartments. Melburnians flocked to open days to visit these apartments and imagine their own lives in the city, with culture, jobs and a convenient transport network on their doorsteps. Fast forward to 2014 and the CBD is now home to around 30,000 residents. At the same time, a cultural strategy engaged artists and entrepreneurs, supported live music and events, and brought laneways and hole-in-the-wall bars to life. What happened in Melbourne was a ‘can do’ attitude that turned Melbourne from dead to delightful – but it required collective action.Everyone was involved in the process – and everyone understood that only through collective effort and advocacy a common goal could be achieved. Yes, we face many challenges. The size of our city centre alone is similar to that of Sydney or Melbourne – cities with much larger populations. But we can’t just shrug our shoulders and give up. What can we do to support the arts scene in Canberra? How do we breathe new life into our old buildings? What can we do attract entrepreneurs? We have a high proportion of clever and creative people in Canberra – we need to give them the space and opportunity to thrive.The bottom line is clear. Canberra will only become the place we want it to be through genuine partnership. It can’t be one part of the community doing it alone – whether it’s building owners and investors, great ideas from the community and creative types, daring retailers or government. We can’t do it alone, but together we can create a city centre that is the jewel in the crown of the nation’s capital.Catherine Carter is ACT Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia.