Back to the drawing board?

The global response to the impact of the Coronavirus seems consistent in at least one respect: everything we previously took for granted is now up for grabs. Long held truisms, established patterns of corporate and individual behaviour, doctrinal teachings, professional articles of faith – nothing is immune from Covid-19 induced change.

The immediate and long terms impacts are potentially going to reshape cities and the behaviours of the people who inhabit and work in them. Nothing seems untouched: from the nature of work and where it’s conducted, to urban mobility, immigration and population growth, housing preferences, retail spending and personal consumption. A more comprehensive shake up could not have been imagined only 6 months ago. 

Many Australian cities and regions adopted regional planning policies built on some common themes around the mid to late 1990s – the curb of rapid outward expansion, policies of urban consolidation and infrastructure strategies designed to support these principles. Regional plans have been reviewed and updated since then but the general principles haven’t fundamentally changed. Then along came a virus, and it potentially changes everything. Persisting with the assumptions that underpin these regional plans, as if nothing has changed, now makes little sense. They need a root and branch rethink. 

Central to many of these assumptions was a frenetic rate of population growth. In South East Queensland for example, the population was predicted to rise from 3.5 million in 2016 to 5.3 million by 2041 – a 50% increase in just 25 years. It took nearly 160 years to grow by 3.5 million but the next 2 million was forecast to come in 25 years. Melbourne and Sydney planned for similarly meteoric rates of growth. Those predicted rates of growth owe themselves entirely to Australia’s international immigration policies, which until Covid were running hot. That tap is now turned firmly off, and according to many is unlikely to be opened anywhere near as wide again. 

Even traditionally woke pro-immigration Labor Party spokepeople like Kristina Keneally are now calling for curbs to protect Australian workers. “The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this: when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis? Our answer should be no,” she wrote in an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald. Many Labor colleagues refuted her suggestion but it is clear that on both sides of politics, the idea of rapid immigration driving population growth is off the table for some time. As this underpinned many of the key assumptions and forecasts of regional plans, this aspect at least needs a completely fresh look at the implications. 

That will also impact on assumptions around housing, deeply embedded in most regional plans; where it will be needed and what it will look. If patterns of settlement are going to change, and if housing preferences also change (as many seem to suggest) that will impact on everything from planning for schools, hospitals, and civil infrastructure. Demand for rural and semi-rural living could also change, as the attractions of ‘splendid isolation’ are not lost on people. The prospects for high density housing around high intensity transit nodes – transit-oriented development – is yet another dimension of the prevailing orthodoxy that Covid-19 could dramatically impact. Just shutting our eyes and pretending it won’t is not good strategy.

Other regional planning assumptions may also now be redundant. The assumption that ‘knowledge workers’ would willingly crowd into highly dense inner-city workspaces, commuting via crowded mass transit, was a sort of ‘Manhattan meets London’ aspiration of some planners. The Planning Institute of Australia indicated as much when in 2018 it responded to an ABC News report warning of overcrowding in Sydney and Melbourne through excessive population growth by suggesting: “We want Tokyos, Parises, and New Yorks – and we can do that by planning well.” Those once celebrated urban models are now looking less praise worthy, at least for the time being. (It’s fair to question how many average Australians ever shared those ambitions in the first place). Very high-density mass transit dependence by cities like Manhattan will be watched closely – how will workers, commuters and companies react and what does this mean for Manhattan’s future? Already there are multiple examples coming from Manhattan of corporations looking to decamp to more suburban or regional centres as a direct response to the perceived lasting impacts of Covid-19, accelerating a pre-Covid which saw millennials and businesses priced out. Regional planning schemes are all about the future and the future of Gotham - and cities like it - now looks quite different. It remains to be seen whether they will continue to aspirational city models for all but the most ardent urbanists.

The likely lasting effects of work from home are another consideration. This has gone from an interesting point of conjecture and discussion pre-Covid to a workday reality for many. So far, there seem to be both positives and negatives, depending on the person, the employer and the occupation. At this stage, significant proportions of those working from home may continue to do so by choice, or by edict (some employers taking advantage of the considerable cost savings). The city-wide impacts in the longer term are hard to gauge but they should be given some careful consideration for their impact on regional plans. Another reason for root and branch revision. 

While some employers will support work from home options for some of the workforce, others may seek lower cost suburban collaboration hubs. Can the assumptions about suburban employment hubs embedded in existing regional plans (what little there is) any longer apply? Do existing zoning mandates and prescriptive tables of permitted uses adequately provide for the quick pivots on land use from, for example, retail to professional services to cottage industry? And when it comes to assumptions about industrial land uses, are the rapid rise of logistics and distribution, the advent of ‘dark kitchens’ or the acceleration of delivery systems to support internet retailing adequately catered for in regional plans which predate these changes? It’s unlikely. The entire notion of industrial activity has changed markedly with more future needs around distribution hubs on very large sites near fast flowing transit corridors. Covid-19 has accelerated changes in industrial land uses – meaning more large format sites on urban fringes while older style industrial lands in inner or middle rings need a new life and future. Plans should reflect that new reailty.

Planning for regional growth, coordinating infrastructure delivery and maintaining quality of life is something that makes enormous sense. Clinging to plans which cataclysmic events have rendered redundant, does not. 

I can think of no business who plans to use their pre-Covid business strategy and assumptions as the basis for moving forward in a post Covi-19 era. The same logic should apply to planning. 

Are Australia's suburbs ready for post COVID-19 opportunities?

There’s no shortage of speculation about how the global Coronavirus pandemic, which has seen cities the world over in partial or full lockdown, might impact city planning and development in years to come. Much of that speculation falls into the category of what USA President John F Kennedy once described as “the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” 

Whatever your opinions and however well thought through, it does seem likely that sufficient sections of the community will have developed a lasting aversion to crowding and will have formed a renewed attachment to the suburbs in which they live. This won’t apply to everyone, but it will only take a proportion of the populace to change their behaviours to have city wide implications. If that happens, it looks as if the winds of opportunity may blow more strongly in a suburban direction than before. Hopefully, public policy will follow the people and their preferences will be supported where possible. 

This would mark a turning point in many decades of urban policy which have favoured the inner city over middle and outer suburbs. But one of the questions that needs to be asked is: “Are the suburbs ready?” 

If what may be about to happen is a drift of jobs and opportunity to suburban and regional business centres in response to the Coronavirus impacts on society and business, the answer in many cases would be “no.” It is hard to turn around 30 years of focus on the inner city and suddenly flick a suburban or regional light switch on. You might find the cabling lacking, the bulb blown and the switch no longer compliant. Our suburban business centres across Australia have largely been overlooked and their needs underfunded for a long time. Our love affair with all things inner city permitted a distorted approach to planning and to the funding of city-wide infrastructure – much of which was concentrated within a couple of kilometres of various CBDs. Inner city amenity has improved no end, while many of Australia’s suburban centres resemble their unfashionable and now daggy 1980s (or worse, 1970s) selves. 

To be attractive as potential suburban collaboration hubs for some former CBD office workers, or to support revitalised high street retail, or growth in professional services, the sciences, technology, or to facilitate the inevitable expansion of health and education opportunities, suburban centres need the very things that the inner cities now take for granted. In simple terms, the once run-down inner-city areas were renewed with a combination of public and private capital to make them attractive places to live, to work, and to play. That investment was initially led by public policy and public capital, but private capital quickly followed, ultimately dwarfing the initial public stimulus. It worked. We have created a lasting legacy of inner urban renewal across many of Australia’s major cities such that it’s world class, without question. 

The same can happen to suburban centres. High on the priority list must be transport connectivity. Rail level crossings, highly congested suburban road arteries, pedestrian-unfriendly intersections or high streets – remedying these are initiatives that public investment needs to lead because they are public assets and public issues. Often, they are State or Federal Government responsibilities. Additional investment in the public domain with streetscaping, landscaping, pedestrianisation, the addition of cycling friendly routes, enhanced parklands and open space are also public responsibilities needed to enhance the appeal of suburban business centres across the country. The private sector’s role will follow as demand returns – with the creation of new or improved suburban commercial buildings, improved cafes, shops, and upgraded buildings – all of which support future jobs growth in suburban centres. 

The Suburban Alliance recently ran a community survey via Facebook and 400 people responded. The questions asked what they most wanted to see happen in their suburban centres. Without giving the results away too much, the responses read like a checklist of what the inner city already enjoys: quality infrastructure, quality buildings, quality places and ample parking (the latter more a required feature of suburban centres which unlike the inner city are not well served by public transport). 

The benefits of supporting the appeal and infrastructure capacity of suburban business centres are many:

• They can support multiple work options for different occupations, closer to where people actually live
• Being closer, they can lead to less congestion and more active local commuters (such as walking or cycling to work)
• Being closer, they can save commuting time (and costs) meaning more family or personal time
• Middle or outer suburban areas of our major cities offer typically more affordable housing than inner areas
• They encourage and nurture a sense of local community and neighbourhood
• They can be more affordable for multiple business types with lower cost rents, lower regulatory fees and charges, and cheaper more accessible parking
• They can mean more health, education and community services closer to the communities that require them
• By encouraging a more dispersed economic model, we gift ourselves a more resilient urban model – one that is potentially less prone to localised natural disasters (like floods or severe storms) that can have big impacts if they occur in highly concentrated economies
• They deliver a lot more bang for the buck: $100 million spent in a suburban precinct goes a long way and has a major impact, with much of the value going to local professionals and contractors or suppliers. 

As Governments around the country crunch their numbers on post Coronavirus recovery measures, we can only hope that we are wise enough to recognise an opportunity when we see one. Renewal of the suburban and regional centres of Australia is that opportunity. While much of this responsibility has traditionally fallen to local government shoulders, we can also hope that State Governments – and the Federal Government – are alert to their capacity to help shape our cities for the benefit of the wider community, and to the more prosperous suburban future that quite possibly beckons.