Home Property Australia ‘Each city needs to be unique and loveable’ to succeed

‘Each city needs to be unique and loveable’ to succeed

  • April 17, 2024
  • by Property Australia
Professor Greg Clark

With around 10,000 cities worldwide, there is a need for each one to cultivate its own distinct and endearing character, Professor Gerg Clark told CBRE’s Talking Property podcast after his appearance at the Future Cities Summit.

Mr Clark said “we’re in a phase now in global urban development where actually it really matters to all of us that every city succeeds”.

“So, I talk about 10 billion people living in 10,000 cities by 2100. We can’t afford really, for any of those cities to fail because every time any city fails, there are going to be big implications for the global economy, for our environment, for our air quality, for our health, for our resilience.”

Mr Clark said we need to reduce competition between cities and work collaboratively. 

He also said that there is a risk that cities become increasingly similar.

“The accumulation of traits, characteristics, physical features, cultural instincts, behavioural types, the vernacular of the built environment, each city’s got a unique endowment. 

“And if you like, we want each of those 10,000 cities to figure out who it is and to be the city they can be rather than to be like other cities. So, we don’t want copycats, we want each of those cities to be unique.

“And if they are unique, it’s going to provide a much richer experience for everyone. And if you’re a visitor, then of course you’re going to get a very distinctive experience in each place.”

Mr Clark said Australian cities can use our unique cultural heritage to become unique cities. 

“In each Australian city there is this unique cultural endowment of 50, 60, 70,000 years of First Nations.

“And it seems to me that the thing that is critical, not just for the way Australian cities look and feel in the future, but also the way Australian cities think and act and are intentional, is really the grasping of this very unique history that no other group of cities in the world share. 

“And the more Australian cities can be oriented towards the cultural, intellectual, and the philosophical endowment of First Nations, the more they will be distinctive and different.

“And the more, the wonderful sort of loveability to use that phrase, that Australian cities have acquired in the last 50 years of having this great sense of freedom and fun and outdoors and climate, the more that’s combined with something that is wiser and deeper, and in particular this very long multi-thousand year heritage, the more Australian cities are just going be the best places in the world, and the more people will want to come and live here, and the more proud Australians will feel of being here in the first place.”