Putting the smarts back into city planning

Putting the smarts back into city planningAdding a million people to Australia’s population every four years presents enormous challenges for governments struggling to balance the books, says Australia’s Assistant Minister for Cities Angus Taylor.”Every three or four years we are adding about a million people to the population of Australia – and most of those are living in cities,” the Minister told the audience at the Australian Smart Cities and Infrastructure Conference in Sydney recently.That means building a new city for a million people every three to four years.This is an “enormous challenge for governments with budgets that are struggling and with balance sheets that are stretched,” he said.While employment is centralising, the footprints of our cities are expanding, putting at risk not only our prized quality of life but our human capital.Taylor says future entrepreneurs and innovators will “live where the opportunities are greatest and where the liveability is most attractive” and that competition between cities is intensifying in the great global war for talent.”If people don’t have a sustainable, liveable city they are more and more inclined to go somewhere else. And that mobility is a real issue for us,” he explained.Taylor said the government’s cities policy centred on three policy levers: smart technology, smart investment and smart policy.Taylor said harnessing smart technology to support more liveable cities hinged on open data and analytics. “Our cities produce an enormous amount of data each day and yet not all of that data is made accessible to service providers,” he explained. The Turnbull Government will soon release more non-sensitive public data for private sector innovation, including real-time petrol, traffic and parking data.Taylor also reconfirmed the Turnbull Government’s promise to end its days as an automatic teller machine for infrastructure projects. Instead, “we want to act much more as investors, not just grant givers,” he said.”Grants fail to create incentive for innovative financing, long-term planning or consideration of reforms that are likely to drive productivity and make our cities more liveable.”The government’s new approach was about “looking beyond short-term horizons to give long-term returns to the asset’s owners, which are ultimately the Australian taxpayers. That’s smart investment.”Once again signalling the government’s intention to use the UK-tested City Deal model, Taylor said smart investment could deliver “better outcomes, better planning, coordinated governments and city based reform”.”City Deals will be and are the centrepiece of our policies for driving change, reform and the betterment of our cities.”The Property Council has consistently promoted City Deals as a solution to encourage all tiers of government to work to an agenda that lifts growth, productivity and sustainability.