Open city an option for Bays Precinct

Open city an option for Bays PrecinctThe possibility of applying the ‘open city’ concept to the Sydney Harbour foreshore’s Bays Precinct development will be examined at an event at The University of Sydney’s Festival of Urbanism.The keynote speaker for the event is architect and urban planner Professor Stephen Cairns, who is known for his work on the successful HafenCity urban regeneration project in Hamburg, Germany.In his talk on the future of the Bays Precinct, Cairns will reference the planning and delivery of HafenCity, which saw old port warehouses replaced with residential areas, offices and shops, and outline how it could apply to the Bays Precinct project.The Bays Precinct in Sydney’s inner west covers 80 hectares of foreshore land incorporating Glebe Island, White Bay, Rozelle Bay, Blackwattle Bay and Sydney Fish Market.The talk will be presented by the City of Sydney in partnership with The University of Sydney as part of the Festival of Urbanism.Associate Professor Roderick Simpson, director of the Urbanism Program at The University of Sydney, says Cairns, who is the scientific director of the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, will discuss the nature of ‘open city’ design.The ‘open city’ concept refers to the planning and design of large precincts to facilitate equitable access, recognising their continual evolution. Effectively, they are never completed, so planning and design is open-ended. ‘Open city’ techniques merge social, architectural and city planning concepts and techniques.Simpson says major urban renewal projects currently underway in Sydney could have benefitted from the application of ‘open city’ techniques used to great effect at HafenCity. “One of the problems we have in Australia is there is a legal [and] financial constriction which doesn’t make it easy to innovate” when delivering large masterplanned projects in inner-city areas, he says.With urban renewal projects becoming larger and more complex, there is a requirement for their planning to become more sophisticated and holistic to improve outcomes.Simpson, who is program director for The University of Sydney’s Master of Urbanism program, says the course recognises the need for future planners to better comprehend space and architecture, and to understand the pressures that property developers face. The postgraduate course exposes planning students to broader concepts involving design, community engagement and heritage conservation – all of which were successfully addressed in the HafenCity project.At the ‘Future of the Bays Precinct’ event Cairns will be joined by a panel of local urban planning experts and community representatives, who will discuss how the HafenCity model could apply to the Bays Precinct project.The free event will be held from 6pm on 5 November at Lower Town Hall, 483 George Street, Sydney.To register for the event, click here.For more information, click here, or contact Rod Simpson at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can follow the festival on Twitter by following @FestUrbanism