Australian cities - failure to plan means planning to fail

With a growing, and ageing population, an evaporating tax base, and the need for new, smart & green infrastructure expanding exponentially, it’s more important than ever that we grab hold of the future before it gets hold of us. At the heart of the cities debate is the widely held view that the late 20th century left us a legacy we should learn from, not mimic.

Our cities still bear the imprint of a chaotic, mercantile and unplanned 19thC heritage, surrounded by struggling suburbs increasingly activated by the big box wasteland of grumbling retail giants. This is where our puck ‘is’ currently.

But as an architect, I know the act of design can play a role here; because design is about predicting where we want the ‘puck’ to be. US inventor, architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller put it best when he said; “the best way to predict the future is to design it”. Positive. Hopeful. Appealing. Sentiments we need now.

We see evidence of a systemic failure of ‘strategy’ in every Australian city. Writing in the SMH on 25 September, Environment writer Tim Barlass forecast the demise of Manly’s penguin population in his piece “Unhappy feet: is the harbour a fairytale ending?”. But why, with local and state requirements for ‘Species Impact Assessments’ and ‘environmental management plans’ in place for decades, has the Fairy Penguin colony declined? Wasn’t that the precise outcome the assessments, plans and policies were meant to prevent?

Now, management plans are an essential part of governance. Monitoring and maintenance of the ‘now’ is just one part of the roles we ask of our leaders in stewardship of our present and future. But management works when ‘status quo’ is the goal. And when ‘risk’ is the thing you fear most.

Ever since Treasury released its Intergenerational report in 2007, and population forecasts revealed a need to build four Melbourne’s (or sixteen Adelaide’s) within the next 4 decades, our leaders, rightly, have realised status quo is not an option. And risk is inevitable. Needed, in fact.

COAG’s national criteria for cities, work by the Reform Council Expert Panel, Major Cities Unit and the Australian Urban Design Protocol are pushing the puck along. But there are still notable gaps in the toolbox. And the old ‘urban management plan’ doesn’t cut it anymore.

We need new, more active strategies that predict the future by means that a. rely on an evidence base (instead of base political tactics subject to cycles, partisanship & influence), b. engages the community through a constructive design vision - performance measures that are about what we can ‘gain’, not ‘sacrifice’ c. works beyond current silos, land titles and legacy issues inherited from a different time. And if this seems like a tall order, it’s encouraging to know this is how Australia’s design, planning and development sector works every day.

Unprepared to accept the puck where it is; architects, creative planners and urban designers, landscape architects and forward thinking invester-developers ‘play it forward’ using a visual language to communicate principles of good urban design applied to a place. New connections where there were barriers.

New open space activated by commerce and cultural programming. New city infrastructure, like substations and transit stops integrated into podiums, squares or streets. Cafes where there were skip bins. Safety where there was threat. All things that a ‘management’ approach generally hinder, not help. Let alone promote. Management, as we know it in our cities, has regarded change as a risk.

COAG’s first priority in its communique is for better integration across functions of government. Particularly land use & transport planning. After 200 years you’d think we would have this one cracked. Not so.

When it comes to developing our cities, we expect our governments to work as one. But when an individual development provides, say, on site carparking for employees (often as a requirement of local government policy), you’d be horrified to know this information is not fed into state transport agency modeling to forecast traffic management in the area. Meaning that while an extra, say, 300 employees start to plan for a carpark at work, it also means 300 more cars jockeying at each intersection to get there. 300 more cars cramming school gates on the way. 300 more crawling back home at night. We’re yet to see any major urban centre in Australia share project-specific land use data with transport agencies. And, for that matter, yet to see any state transport agency have the tools or inclination to do anything meaningful with it.

So while all of us experience the effects of worsening traffic congestion (I mean, beyond inconvenience; the rise in kids experiencing asthma along transit corridors, a cost burden expected to reach $20bn by 2020), our efforts to walk, cycle, bus it to work/school/shopping are the urban equivalent of bucketing out the titanic as the iceberg tears at the hull. Good thing we have those transport management plans then, hey?

We need to value vision and boldness once again. We need to reset the levers we’ve been working from. A generation of management plans may need to be binned. And new action-focused strategies to deliver on the design ingenuity of our most creative minds should be a shared obsession.

So next time Council, or your local MP drops a brochure in your mailbox, and seeks your input in a new Management Plan, make sure you give it. But also satisfy yourself that, along with management of the puck in its current position, your leaders are doing something visionary, imaginative and strategic to ‘play it forward’ and plan for where we want the puck to be.