Beyond the reach of regulation are accidents. Long may they live.

Cities have become a cause celebre among urbanists the world over, scaling ever new heights of hyperbole in industry and political adulation. The management and planning of cities – once left largely to market forces – is now recognised as a field of specialist expertise, requiring extensive regulatory intervention. This has spawned the global careers of any number of speakers whose main job, it seems, is to lecture rapturous audiences of city planners, developers, political and policy leaders on the best ways to manage and grow their cities for sustainability, liveability and resilience, among other things.

The language of cities and their management has similarly evolved in recent history. No longer does city management mean a local government focus primarily on “rates, roads, and rubbish” – cities are now described as “complex ecosystems” or “living organisms” with a “metabolism” all of their own. Some of them are “smart” and “intelligent” and all of them we are told – like a collection of fine arts – need to be carefully “curated.”

Urban design and city management is accordingly becoming more meticulously studied, planned and stage-managed than ever before. Spurred on by forecasts that half the world’s population will soon be living in cities (mostly - as it turns out - in the suburbs of those cities) the pressure is on for city planners to deliver growth without sacrificing amenity or delivering lower standards of living or quality of life than previous generations. This is a challenge of Sisyphean proportions.

Ironically however, many of the qualities of cities and the celebrated places within them now enjoyed by many were not the result of carefully managed or planned urban development, but accidents of history. 18^th and 19^th Century urban growth in the US, Europe and Australia revolved around industry – well described in Eric Hobsbawn’s classic “Industry and Empire.” Rivers were for the transport of goods to cities where wharves were constructed and where factories sprung up. Rail was mainly (in many centres) for freight. Power stations, goods yards and industrial lands were developed around these transport connections. Workers lived in cramped and unhealthy conditions close to these places of industrial employment because their form of commuting was mostly walking or - if lucky - by austere and perfunctory public transport.

While no city experienced the same patterns of growth or the same economic drivers, many did enter the 20th century with legacies of their past in the form of housing, industrial, administrative and transport systems which were largely developed without the careful supervision of today’s modern urban planner. Post-war prosperity in the mid-20th Century heralded for many the move away from cramped inner-city housing to new, expansive and healthier suburban domains. Older style industries and work practices changed, many moving to newer transport facilities such as modern seaports, airports and intermodals, or to other more convenient locations. Some shut down altogether: the collateral damage of industrial and technological change.

Both residents and businesses left behind a legacy of mostly accidental urban development. And ironically, it’s that very accidental quality of urban development and built form heritage which many cities now seek to protect - through various preservation laws, via support of adaptive re-use (finding new ways to use old buildings designed for a different purpose altogether), or via attempts to emulate that accidental quality in prescribed regulation.

There is a paradox in this. It was the very lack of regulation that helped make many places or buildings or urban features worthy of preservation.  Think of the inner-city terrace houses of Sydney, Australia, once home to the working poor. Or the timber and tin workers’ cottages of Brisbane, Australia – built from the only readily available (and low cost) materials at the time. These are now highly prized – not just for their location but also their typology and heritage qualities.

A similar story can be told in many cities which now celebrate converted warehouses, factories, hospitals, ports, and even power stations. These structures weren’t the result of careful planning but originally designed and located out of necessity and opportunity. Many are now prized community assets, accommodating entirely different activities to their original design.

Similarly, in modern cities there are places that are praised as clusters of cultural, ethnic, social, artistic or community value. Places where people gather willingly, but in way that wasn’t planned - it just ‘happened.’ Think of the haphazard laneways of Melbourne’s inner city or the many cultural, food or entertainment centres which have sprung up not because they were planned, nor were they encouraged, but because they escaped the watchful eye of regulators or over-zealous inspectors. Having secured their place in the life of the city (by virtue of their popularity), their “accidental” existence isn’t just condoned but celebrated. The same can’t be said for the carefully managed environments of the modern shopping mall which - although commercially successful - are unlikely to ever reach the same levels of community adulation or sentiment.

Could a rule book of building codes, access, regulatory and other permissions foster planned urban creativity in the same way as the accidental outcomes? Perhaps not. The work of the artist Banksy isn’t legal or officially sanctioned. But his works are highly prized. They are accidents of urban life incapable of official emulation of recreation. There’s only one Banksy.

None of this is to suggest that a well-managed urban environment can’t be “curated” to support a range of positive urban outcomes. Modern urban planning is fast evolving and many technologies in particular are giving urban planners and city managers new, highly advanced tools to understand how the community uses their urban spaces, and how to design places for even more positive outcomes. Nor does it suggest that the absence of regulation is the answer to anything. Unregulated urban development in the manner that early cities developed would invariably lead to regrettable outcomes – environmentally, socially and economically.

But we need to remind ourselves of the limits of regulation and prescription. There are forces at work which in the evolution of cities that can still be left to accident, by ensuring we don’t become overly prescriptive.

“Accidental cities” is used in some quarters as a derogatory term or as a tale of caution. Failing to meticulously plan every detail, we are warned, leads to inefficiencies and to cities not performing at their peak. But leaving room for accidents is also important. The surprise start-up hub. The surprise retail success story working from a location no one thought credible. The artists, foodies, businesses and industries adapting faster to new technologies than any set of planning regulations could possibly keep pace with.

There is a difference between the real and the reconstituted. We can tell the difference, without really thinking about it. For cities to remain real, it could be wise to recognise the limits of their “curation” at the hands of experts. There are places beyond the reach of regulatory control where accidents could – and should – be encouraged to continue to happen.

Making the suburbs cool again

This month, Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner announced that he has asked me to Chair a new “Better Suburbs Initiative” on behalf of the City. This is a significant honour and I am very humbled to be asked, but many of you will be asking ‘what does it mean?’ and ‘why do we need it?’ So here goes with something of an explanation. 

The “Building Better Cities” Program in Australia ran from around 1991 to 1996. It was aimed at preventing the hollowing out of inner-city areas – loss of jobs, empty schools, run down housing, underutilized infrastructure. The program was an initiative of the Federal Hawke-Keating Government and entrusted to Minister Brian Howe to deliver. In Brisbane, it led to a Federal Grant of some $24m which then Lord Mayor Jim Soorley applied to an upgrade of the main sewer (a very non-glamourous but essential piece of infrastructure) through New Farm – an inner-city area then at risk of decay. At around the same time he set up an “Urban Renewal Taskforce” led by the respected industry leader Trevor Reddacliff (after whom Reddacliff Place in the CBD is named) to continue the renewal efforts aimed at the inner city. 

It’s important to understand that Building Better Cities was aimed at the renewal of run- down inner-city areas. It could have been called “Building Better Inner Cities” given its specific geographic focus. It was announced after several decades of new suburban expansion across Australian cities: families settled into new homes in more amenable – and highly affordable - suburban environments, spawning new shopping centres, new libraries, new schools, new council swimming pools and host of other infrastructure related to that growth. 

From the 1950s through to the 1990s, the burbs were new and aspirational – and they grew rapidly. They were seen as preferable to the ‘old’ housing districts of inner-city areas, with smaller land sizes, older less family friendly housing forms and many of which were still jostling with heavy industry for space. 

Better Cities sought to enhance the amenity of inner-city areas and restore their appeal to a cross section of the community. Using the existing infrastructure of the inner city would also be cheaper than creating new infrastructure for continued suburban growth, and would be environmentally more sustainable into the bargain – or so the arguments went (usually without much evidence to support them). 

The focus on the inner city was more than a national initiative – it was global, spurred on by ‘Smart Growth’ movements and their like from (predominantly) the USA where inner urban cores had hollowed out, with regrettable economic and social results for many cities. In Brisbane, the work of Trevor Reddacliff’s Urban Renewal Taskforce began to visibly transform parts of New Farm, Teneriffe and the Valley. By leveraging developer capital and with an eye fixed firmly fixed on creating quality urban environments, the inner city began to witness old warehouses converted into slick inner urban pads, revitalized open spaces, new business enterprises, and new recreational infrastructure. 

This proved enormously popular with a range of people from what were back then called “yuppies” (young upwardly mobile professional person in employment). Money flowed into these areas which has seen places like New Farm go from derelict to now having some of the most expensive housing in Brisbane. 

Without a doubt, this process of urban (inner city) renewal has been a stunning success over a 30 year period. It is no longer confined to one particular area of the inner city either – anywhere within spitting distance of the CBD has benefitted from ongoing infrastructure investment, policy attention, and private and public capital investment on an almost incalculable scale. The standards of inner urban amenity on offer in Brisbane, as well as in Sydney, Melbourne and other capitals, are now high by global standards. If you are lucky enough to live and work in the inner city of a major Australian capital city, you are indeed part of a privileged minority.

But at the same time, many of the suburban centres that formed part of the growth story of Australia in the lead up to the Better Cities program, were largely (with few exceptions) left to their own devices. The burbs had become unfashionable in the eyes of many who had followed the money trail to the inner city. Many in the process became inner urban snobs, adopting fashionable political and social views which in many cases were the antithesis of the values that shaped suburban Australia. Many derided the burbs as places of low culture, poor education, poor health, as car loving, consumptive, reactionary, and as generally inferior in all respects to their chosen inner urban enclaves. Why bother investing in them?

Chief snob, Elizabeth Farrelly (urban affairs writer for the Sydney Morning Herald) famously wrote:

“I like excitement and energy and that to me is what (inner) cities are about… I actually like that there's drug dealers and poor people and a whole mix. I like differences.” (Yeah right, until the drug dealer sells to your own kids). 

She went on, celebrating her own privilege: “I can visit four different swimming pools, more than 200 cafes, three universities, the heart of Chinatown, the opera and the cinema, all without getting in a car.” Or having to step over the poor people outside the Opera one presumes?

And when it came to her view of the suburbs? “The suburbs are about boredom, and obviously some people like being bored and plain and predictable, I'm happy for them … even if their suburbs are destroying the world.”

Farrelly’s sense or moral and material superiority is palpable. And she isn’t alone. It’s becoming more noticeable as a potential divide opens up between inner city workers and residents, and the rest. Demographer Bernard Salt called it “the Goat cheese curtain”:

“There’s a tribe emerging in the inner city. It’s doesn’t have to be young, it’s often highly educated and well remunerated, often green-voting, an articulate knowledge worker, less likely to have children and much less likely to believe in God, dominated by people in their 20s and 30s,” said Salt. A reasonably accurate summation. 

If this one-sided approach to urban renewal were to continue unchecked, it could create its own class divide between inner city and suburban residents. This would be doubly inequitable, given that the proportion of metropolitan wide jobs found in the inner city is only around 10% to 15% at most. The proportion of residents who live inside Bernard Salt’s “Goat Cheese curtain”? Roughly ten percent. 

This is, I think, what Lord Mayor Schrinner recognized as fundamentally unfair. He could also see the economic wisdom of rejuvenating suburban business hubs and restoring their jobs: creating more suburban employment hubs creates more opportunities for people to live closer to work. The alternative of centralising jobs in to the city centre would render suburbs as little more than dormitories from which people would have to ensure lengthy and costly commutes. The community could not afford the transport infrastructure needed for this to happen. This is neither good planning nor good economics. 

Hence, the Lord Mayor’s Better Suburbs Initiative, with its nod to the history of the Better Cities initiative. The same lessons that we learned about inner urban renewal, similar public-private partnerships, similar investments into placemaking and supporting a range of mixed uses – all the ingredients of successful inner urban renewal can also be applied to suburban renewal. 

“Brisbane was a leader in urban renewal, now I want us to be a leader in suburban renewal,” the Lord Mayor said in announcing the Better Suburbs initiative. 

Like the process of urban renewal that began over 30 years ago, suburban renewal will be no instant fix. Every suburban business centre will present different opportunities and require different types of support. Some will be very unglamorous (like the New Farm sewer), some will require tripartite Government support for significant infrastructure investment, some could simply require regulatory measures to leverage private capital in the renewal process. Suburban renewal won’t mean 20 storey apartment towers popping up in suburban centres, and has in my view nothing to do with housing in suburban streets but will focus instead on the opportunities to enhance the employment and community value of a range of suburban villages and business hubs. The opportunities are widespread and by developing better suburbs, we create better cities – for all. 

This is going to be interesting, and exciting. And not before its time.