Great cities don’t arrive by accident. They are the result of countless careful decisions. But how do we decide well? The audience at Australia’s first Future Cities Summit pondered this question.
More than 350 people poured into Sydney’s Hilton for a packed program of ideas, inspiration and provocation last week. And this provocation came in many forms.
Dr Tim Moonen, managing director of The Business of Cities and co-author of the Creating Great Australian Cities report, argued that “place is now recognised as a key ingredient of city competitiveness”. But, alarmingly, not one place in Australia makes the top 20 of the world’s most memorable.
Where once our cities grew haphazardly as a result of luck and the layering of human history, today, organic growth must give way to careful curation, the audience heard.
The high-tech materials and sensor networks, artificial intelligence and big data underpinning our future cities will help us to build smarter. And this comes not a moment too soon – by 2050 three quarters of the planet’s people will live in big cities.
“One of the great myths of placemaking is that [places] arrive by ‘happy accident’,” Moonen said. Great places demand “deliberate and intention steps” at different points of the city-building cycle – and this is especially true for young cities like those in Australia. Leaving place to chance risks a “slide to low-liveability, low amenity cities,” Moonen warned.
Kate Meyrick, chief executive officer and managing director of Studio THI, agreed. She has been “inadvertently running a great places lab” for the last decade. During this time, Studio THI, better known as The Hornery Institute, has asked more than 10,000 people to identify the features that make a great place. People are looking for “distinctive” places with “unique brands” that “make them stand out,” Meyrick said. In other words, people want places with a unique personality.
Both Moonen and Meyrick have been commissioned by the Property Council to develop a new report on the building blocks and dividends of great places.
Towards good, managed growth
Hot on the heels of the Morrison Government’s re-election victory, Alan Tudge, the Minister for Cities Urban Infrastructure and Population took to the stage to share his thoughts on the issues that matter most to city residents. Australians aren’t naturally anti-growth; instead “people support managed growth,” he argued.
But what does managed growth look like? The Minister talked about investment in infrastructure, the “fast rail” agenda, population decentralisation, and City Deals that bring three tiers of government together in a collaborative process with private industry to build better cities and places for people.
The city-building conundrum is not unique to Australia. Stephen Conry, CEO of JLL Australia & NZ and the Property Council’s new national president, urged the audience to look beyond our own shores, pointing to Portland, Berlin, Copenhagen and Chicago as exemplars. “I’m not convinced we are investigating [excellence in city building] enough and indeed copying it”.
“Don’t think iconic buildings – think iconic places,” urged Henriette Vamberg, partner and managing Director of GEHL. The urban design practice Vamberg leads in Copenhagen was founded on the principle of “life, then space, and then the buildings” – never the other way around. The most beautiful streets and spaces – whether New York’s Times Square or the Champs-Élysées in Paris – are always “the result of design not chance” and put people at their heart. “Don’t ask what your city can do for the building, but what the building can do for your city,” Vamberg said.
John Tabart, meanwhile, explored the potential of anchor projects – whether an airport, hospital or university – to “disrupt” and drive new opportunities. Tabart oversaw the development of Australia’s two largest new city precincts – Barangaroo South and Docklands – and is now leading the $31 billion Australian Education City bid. He’s spent his career unpicking the ingredients in place, and said getting the mix right demands judicious planning, careful monitoring and a touch of magic.
Our future cities are limited only by the imaginations of our innovators – and we heard from a host of them. We unpacked proptech platforms, sifted through the smart cities jargon, reimagined resilience and considered the consequences for cities when the tech titan philosophy of “move smart and break things” takes hold.
From NIMBY to YIMBY
Lord mayors and our “power panel” alike were pre-occupied by the task of turning Australia into a nation of YIMBYs who say ‘yes in my back yard’. Mirvac’s Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz said the antidote to anti-development was to listen. “No one wakes up and thinks I want more density,” she said. But they might say they want a library, a swimming pool or other amenity that only arrives with more people. But each community’s definition of “good amenity” differs. To understand, start with a “whole new level of community engagement for a much longer time,” Lloyd-Hurwitz said.
People aren’t frightened of density, Lord Mayor of the City of Parramatta Andrew Wilson said later. But they are frightened of losing their prized quality of life. Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore suggested sharing the story of what good density brings – amenity, convenience, lifestyle, connection and more – is the secret. Melbourne’s Sally Capp acknowledged that the community fear is real, but when you can “show coordinated and well-managed intervention them people will start to relax”.
Futurist Steve Sammartino painted pictures of high-tech cities – of drone landing pads and city farms, digital twins and self-powered buildings. Cities of the future won’t be built from concrete and steel, but from silicon, glass and lithium – the same materials we find in our smartphones. This technological “metastructure” will overlay the physical city and will be malleable. We will no longer “build once” but instead create and recreate our cities as the citizenry changes.
How do we invent the future? “One year at a time,” Sammartino suggested. Because behind every brick and building, every steel beam and silicon chip, are countless decisions. And we must decide well.