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.
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