Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes.

For decades we’ve lived with a range of accepted truisms around city planning, urban development and infrastructure planning. Then along came a virus. Some suggest the long-term impacts of the current pandemic will turn fundamentals on their head. Others – myself included – are more sanguine. But changes there will be and, as Bowie sang, we need to face them.

This article tries to sum up some thoughts of my own and distil a good amount of reading over recent weeks. Nothing here is a given, but simply offered to encourage us to think carefully about what lies ahead. The first thing to keep in mind is what Indeed.com’s global Chief Economist Jed Kolko pointed out to me a few weeks ago: "Many of the post-pandemic predictions are really just statements of how the prediction-maker has always wanted the world to change. The virus doesn't kill cognitive biases!" I will try avoid that trap.

Population growth:

Australia’s population growth has been driven by direct overseas migration, and much of that has concentrated itself into three capitals, each of which was predicted to grow by close to a third in the 2016 to 2030 period. That rate of growth was ahead of many world cities. Would we have managed, without falling further behind on infrastructure? Growth has taken a short term hit thanks to closed borders. It remains to be seen if those growth rates will slow over the longer term. A slower rate of growth may not be a bad thing: it could allow us to catch up with infrastructure, hence improving quality of life, rather than being in constant lag mode. This in turn could support property values by making places more desirable – as opposed to just crowded. Remember,  some of the most highly prized property markets around the world are actually in low growth areas. It is their desirability, environment and placemaking qualities that makes them so.

If growth is to slow, would that change a wide range of urban policy settings, with the dial turning from volume to quality?

Housing:

Predictions that housing demand will change quickly from inner city apartments to suburban housing are I think wrong. For starters, inner city apartment demand for much of recent history was driven mostly by speculators who had no intention of actually living in the one-bedroom, low cost apartment they were buying off the plan. That frenetic level of speculator activity created a false impression about the extent of real demand for inner city apartments. There are now more two and three bedroom inner city units being designed which are more likely to meet with owner occupier needs. But being larger, they will also be more expensive.

Suburban housing has tended to dominate urban settlement in Australia and while the pandemic may remind us that the burbs may not be so bad a place for a lockdown, those who live there now do so by choice, and because 8 in 10 of us actually work in suburban locations. The same applies to inner city apartment dwellers who choose where to live for work or other reasons. There may be some changes in preference if more people seek out suburban work locations (as opposed to densely populated inner-city ones) but I can’t see wholesale change here.

Neither can I see prices collapsing in the long term. The cost of new supply – land plus building costs plus taxes – tends to be fixed. Unless there is a major change in those supply side drivers, any movements in house prices will reflect shorter term economic circumstances (more owners needing to sell than buyers able to buy).

Finally, the argument that housing design will change to better facilitate home offices for work from home needs to be kept in context. This may happen on some new product but as this only affects new supply (and renovations to existing supply) we aren’t likely to see a wholesale change of our housing stock to accommodate work from home (which only works for some occupations anyway). There is also speculation that home isolation will mean a move to larger balconies in townhouses and apartments, as we appreciate the importance of space more. You could counter that this was always the case, but larger balconies and home offices mean larger floorspaces and townhouses and apartments are expensive to begin with. This prediction, if it eventuates, will simply make new product significantly more expensive. Will there be a sufficiently large market to pay?

Work from home?

No doubt the future will see more people working from home, either on occasion or routinely, than in the past. Some companies may direct that this change happens in pursuit of cost savings, and some individuals will request it for lifestyle or other reasons. But for the vast majority, my thoughts are that once a return to the workplace is allowed, many will return with enthusiasm. Productivity, creative engagement and the social value of work are genuine positives for that proportion of the workforce who do work in offices (and for whom work from home is possible).  As this article in Bloomberg wryly observed, the whole work from home thing has soured quickly for many:

“Many mapped out plans to fill time they would’ve spent commuting to take up new hobbies, like learning a foreign language, baking or getting into the best shape of their lives. It looked like the beginnings of a telecommuting revolution… A month and a half later, people are overworked, stressed, and eager to get back to the office. “

Offices: 

The office market could be in for some changes but these may take time. Markets like this will tend to be quite ‘sticky’ because of things like long term leases and fixed fitouts, which make quick adaptation difficult. However, it does seem likely that things like an 8 square metre per person benchmark - which was becoming common - could reverse and the trend head in the direction of more space per person. 

Imagine a company of 100 staff ready to lease new premises. Where once they would have needed 800m2 they may soon be thinking more like 1500m2 (15 or even 20 square metres per person were more typical in the 1990s through to early 2000s). Will they actually lease that 1500m2 or instead reduce their workforce for those premises to around 53 people for the 800m2 tenancy and instead send staff for whom a CBD location is non-essential to suburban collaboration hubs, or have some of them work from home? 

Less density of workers in expensive CBD offices makes them more expensive, per worker. Suburban business centres may benefit from this. How this change plays out will have a long-term impact on office space demand.

Retail: 

Hard hit even in the lead up to the spread of the Coronavirus by flat wage growth and online competition, shopping centres and retailers have been frontline victims of the viral shutdown. As we emerge from our burrows into a post viral world, industry consensus is that there are big changes for this sector going forward. Tenants may have taught themselves that the value of paying to be close to centre-generated foot traffic can be traded off against more aggressive online strategies with a neighbourhood shop front presence. And a proportion of consumers may equally have adapted to sourcing their immediate retail needs more locally, rather than travelling to major centres. There are potential lasting changes too in the types of consumption habits of consumers.

Major mall owners have survived multiple predictions of the end of bricks and mortar retail in the past, and I have no doubt they will innovate and survive again – but as in the past, it will likely mean significant changes to tenancy profiles and to the nature of the centre itself. Typically very well located, with public and private transport connections, these assets will always find a market. My money is on more health, education and community service functions increasingly making their presence felt.

For the suburban strip or neighbourhood centre though, the changes in retail could be a positive – provided they can provide a high standard of amenity (placemaking appeal) and convenience (eg ample parking) and affordable rentals. Given that many have received little government investment in their improvement for decades (governments were too preoccupied with the inner cities) and given that many landowners have likewise invested little in some of their assets, many centres may miss their opportunity for renewal. How governments and private owners might work together to avoid that happening will be interesting.

Public transport:

What happens with public transport in the future will be fascinating. Having already faced flat or falling mode shares, will a post-viral world see more commuters recoil at the idea of joining fellow travellers in crowded trains or buses, coughing and sneezing in close proximity? 

How could this affect demand, and will public transport providers respond with less passenger density (as some airlines already seem to be proposing)? And will this in turn mean even higher costs for PT given lower passenger density? And will more people drive instead, leading to a spike in congestion? Or will the whole idea of commuting en-masse to centralised workplaces served by public transport start to pale in favour of local commutes – including by walking or cycling - to suburban business hubs for collaboration and the social aspects of work? This is city changing stuff. Watch with interest for the short term response once the economy opens up again, and for long term changes.

Health:

Health was already predicted to the fastest growing industry in Australia prior to the pandemic. I can only see this accelerating. Health services are typically not centralised so this growth is likely to benefit suburban and regional centres – not just in the capital value of the infrastructure but also the jobs that come with it. Australia’s investment in health is good by world standards but not (I was surprised to learn) world leading. The graph below shows the number of hospital beds per 1000 of population, as just one metric. Will we move to lift this level of provision? How will we fund it if we do? (And from the graph, you can see in part why the UK and USA have struggled, and why India is so worried).

Education:

Education – especially tertiary – became one of our leading export industries in recent years. It was also a ‘clean’ industry and ticked a lot of boxes in terms of international relationships. There is no question that education sectors heavily reliant on foreign fee-paying students have hit a virtual brick wall – the question really is to what extent this will recover and how long it might take if it does?

Failure to quickly recover could jeopardise billions of dollars in proposed capital expansion and improvement plans, plus put pressure on fees for domestic students. It would also mean we would need to find a replacement source of foreign income. More coal anyone?

Manufacturing and industry:

A possible beneficiary of changed international trade arrangements could be the local manufacturing and industrial sector. Employing 20% of Australian workers, this sector has been in slow decline over the long term but can rapidly retool to replace a wide range of imported products. Skilled and affordable labour isn’t the issue it once was – the issue now is the high cost of energy. Australia’s energy costs have hurtled ahead of inflation to become some of the most expensive in the world. Given we have a small domestic market and international markets are a long way away, lower prices for longer is what this sector needs from the energy market, and a subsidised and expensive renewables market just isn’t ready to provide that yet. Again, more coal anymore? Or nuclear? Hmmm.

Finally, to end with something from a mate who was once head of planning for Brisbane City Council, ran his own business, later becoming a key part of the ULI growth story into Europe and Asia and who now teaches planning and real estate development at Texas A&M University – Professor Geoffrey Booth. As Geoff said to me in a recent note, changes from this pandemic are inevitable because our patterns of human interaction will change:

“Never forget that all real estate is place and it is people that create the enduring value of real estate – take out the people and there is no market, no demand, and no one to buy it or pay in one way or another to use it, and as a consequence, you the real estate developer, left with no raison d'être, starves to death. There will be a world after Covid-19 but as our patterns of repeat visitation have been severely disrupted, as a consequence, the real estate market will be forever changed.”

If only we knew how, and where, and when this will happen.

Studying the wrong cities will lead to repeating their mistakes

The junket factor must be the only logical criteria by which various industry “study tours” overseas are planned. How else to explain how entirely inappropriate the choices are? The list of cities identified for “study” by Australian development and planning industry bodies reads like the pages of a glossy weekend travel magazine: we’ve seen study tours to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Copenhagen, London, Vancouver and (of course) Portland. The purpose? One recent blurb promises it is “to expand our horizons and bring new ideas back to Aussie shores.”

Well please don’t. Leave their failed ideas there, please. Maybe learn from their failures and decide the things not to do in Australia? Enjoy the sights and the tastes of these often magical cities but invariably the cities chosen for “study” are not the ones we want to replicate, surely?

I once criticised a former civic leader who returned from a planning inspired tour to Vancouver, only to proclaim “we (Brisbane) should be more like Vancouver.” In fairness, the Vancouverites dishing out their own brand of kool-aid (it even has a name: “Vancouverism”) to our captive civic mission would not have mentioned Vancouver’s ignominious status as the world’s least affordable housing market at the time – something causing the Reserve Bank of Canada no end of worry. Nor would they have touched on the homelessness, nor the wide gulf between the haves (a select few inhabiting prestige precincts, including of late ex Royals Harry & Meaghan) and the have nots (basically the rest of Vancouver, which sprawls well beyond the downtown in a rigid grid of suburbia which the boosters do their best to ignore).

The same applies to the much-celebrated Portland, Oregon – something of a poster child for new urbanists but a city whose own residents don’t quite agree. Said one: “Portland is one of the dirtiest, trashiest, most litter-strewn cities I’ve ever seen. The city government is weak by design and totally ineffective and non-responsive. The schools are laughably bad. The police are ineffective - largely due to the mayor, and the state has insolvent pension funds despite the strongest economy most of us have ever experienced. Add a dose of “we’re better than anywhere” pretension and “we’re all so woke” self-satisfaction and you have one of the most irredeemable cities in the US.”

San Francisco likewise enjoys a reputation at odds with the reality: a city where housing is unaffordable for all but the most well paid tech and finance barons, and where homelessness and crime are rampant according to many. The problem is so bad that an online “poop map” has been launched to record human faeces in the streets. Millennials are being priced out and even a number of tech giants and investment houses are moving away from the gilded city.

New York is likewise experiencing an exodus of people – estimated at 300 people per day. Gotham’s exorbitant housing costs, crime, poor schools, crumbling infrastructure and limited opportunity for working- and middle-class families are amongst the many reasons suggested. Famously in 2019, Amazon ditched New York as a base for its $2.5Bn “HQ2” for some 25,000 workers in a torrid war of words but at the core of which seemed to be the problem that few people on Amazon’s wages could afford to live there.

As for places like London or Copenhagen, which were laid out in the middle ages, could we possibly identify cities any less like Australia? Their geography, climate, social, economic, political and cultural traditions and norms are what makes them great places to visit, but hardly ones we would look to “for new ideas for Australia.”

So if these tourist destinations or boostered cities aren’t the places worth looking into (my opinion only of course), which ones are? For starters, I’ve suggested (many times) to one of the larger industry groups that they should look more closely at some of the US cities whose scale, governance and economic characteristics have more in common with us, but who (unlike us) are performing well on a range of metrics. Let’s learn from the cities that have maintained housing affordability while at the same time growing their economy, especially in the STEM and professional sectors. What are they doing to prove so attractive to people and companies currently fleeing California or parts of the east coast? How are they keeping congestion in check (if indeed they are)? How are they maintaining the level of service in health and education?

Here we’re talking cities like Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio (all in Texas), Salt Lake City (Utah), Nashville (one of the fastest growing tech centres in the US), Boulder (Colorado), Raleigh (North Carolina), and more. None are really what you’d call tourist magnets but they are magnets for both talent and capital in the fiercely competitive US economy. How are their planning schemes handling growth while preserving affordability? What do their metropolitan governance structures tell us about attracting business investment and skilled workers? Do State Governments play a role and if so, what are they doing right? And what would we make of their liveability and quality of life?

Having visited Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston on this list, I can say they have much in common with Australian cities, on the surface at least. Their downtowns are the equal or better of ours. Some of their urban spaces are inspiring and while there is also much not to admire, at least we’re not talking a “poop map.”

But it seems my suggestions have been falling on deaf ears and will likely continue to do so. Which means we will continue to feed at the same kool-aid filled trough, being backslapped by urban boosters who conveniently turn our attention away from glaring inequities or social dysfunction, pointing our gaze instead at the latest shiny, new and invariably very expensive example of “model” urban development or planning. 

No wonder we’re in such strife.

The new jobography

We’re all pretty much familiar with demography as the study of human populations, their characteristics and where (and how) they live. But does demography go far enough? Do we need a new discipline to bring more focus to the changing nature of work: the types of jobs we’ll see more of in the future, where they’ll likely be located, and their other characteristics? 

I suggest there is. And I propose we call this discipline job-ography! 

A person who studies jobography is a jobographer. This is different to an economist (though they may share a number of professional interests). The economist tends typically to focus on economic systems and how they function. The jobographer will focus on how industry and employment changes impact on locational behaviour of where people work, and all else that arises from the job. 

Different jobs need to be in different types of places. They require different types of buildings with different services. Different jobs require different transport arrangements. They require different ‘clusters’ of related industries  to thrive. Different jobs have different training requirements, they pay differently, they offer different career paths, they generate different by products and have different social impacts (noise, smells, waste etc) … it’s a long list. 

It’s also bleeding obvious, which begs the question: “Why is so little urban planning focussed on understanding how changing jobs will change cities?” In my opinion (which is all this is) our city planning, design and associated “urban” professions have been overly focussed on where people live now and into the future, and on how to accommodate future housing needs. Think about “the brawl over sprawl” – which sought to limit the outward growth of housing. It rarely if ever touched on “sprawling” employment. And “density” as an urban concept is more frequently discussed on the basis of housing density; less often is it used on the basis of considering the different employment densities across various industries. Regional and city plans across the country have typically been more preoccupied with managing population growth and housing choice (and location) than managing employment centres or changing job markets and their needs. Comparatively less attention has, it seems to me, been devoted to understanding how the nature of work has been changing where we work - and how this ongoing evolution will have a significant impact on how we set about planning for the future. 

Case in point are the raging debates around congestion, public transport and the private car. Those who advocate a punitive approach to private vehicle use (such as congestion taxes, high fuel taxes, cordon tolls) to drive greater public transport use forget one very important thing: public transport typically serves a highly centralised workforce (those in or near CBDs) with regulated work hours. As the proportion of a region’s jobs located in city centres decreases, the proportion of people for whom public transport can work also decreases. And the arrival of flexible work practices is the enemy of the regulated “9 to 5” job, which makes scheduling PT a greater challenge. The private car is used because it offers convenience and is often the only option to commute from home to work if the place of that work is not in the city centre. 

It has been changes to the nature, type and location of jobs that’s driven changes to the way we get around, as much as anything else. But rarely is the nature or location of work given much airtime in debates around managing or alleviating congestion. It’s as if the wider presumption is that mostly everyone works in a 9 to 5 office job in the inner city and that life in terms of the commute routine is pretty much as it was in the 1970s. Sadly (or happily depending on your point of view) it ain’t so. 

The changing nature of work and the different industries that will provide us with jobs in the future is going to have a growing impact on our cities and regions going forward. Two of the biggest employers in the foreseeable future (many economists predict) will be health and education. Unlike office or administrative jobs of the past, these are invariably more suburban in their nature than they will ever be inner urban. Are we spending enough time thinking about how these and other future employers are going to need cities that can accommodate their suburban workplace needs? Are we prepared for how future urban growth industries are going to have very different location and infrastructure requirements to those which have shaped us so far? I don’t think so. 

So in order to be prepared, we will need jobographers. And lots of them.

Look out for it on seek.com anytime soon: “Jobographer wanted.”

You heard it here first! (And yes, I even checked Google. This could be the first time you heard of jobography to describe the study of jobs). 

Public transport: cheap or expensive?

As the year 2020 gets underway, there will be the usual changes to various government fees, charges and taxes. It’s nearly always up and public transport is no exception. This nearly always leads to gripes that “public transport is too expensive” and that to “solve congestion” we need more people to use public transport, so it should be cheaper. Whether it’s expensive or cheap depends on who’s paying. The numbers on this are interesting.

From January 7 in Queensland, public transport fares will rise by the CPI – around 2%. A typical two zone trip will now cost $4.03 – which is actually cheaper than in 2014 when the same trip would have cost $5.96. A one zone trip will be $3.31 and a four zone (the furthest) will cost $8.11 each way. Then there are various discounts for seniors, students and people with various special needs. (And then of course there is substantial fare evasion which, given fines are rarely enforced, means “free” travel for the naughty ones).

None of this will mean much to 85% of you because only 15% of us use public transport regularly. But almost 100% of us believe that more – and cheaper – public transport is a key to solving congestion. Which we hope will mean we can all get around more conveniently in our cars.

Few people however appreciate the extent to which every single public transport trip is subsidised by the taxpayer. According to Translink’s own reports: “the average fare trip paid by customers was $1.88 and the average Queensland Government (ie Queensland taxpayer) subsidy was $7.12.”  Their report notes that revenue from fares makes up only 21% of funding.

So for every time the average fare paying passenger swipes a nearly $2 fare off their Go Card, the taxpayer silently tips in over $7. Each way. Per person. Per day.

“The… subsidy was based on network funding from the Queensland Government (ie taxpayer) of $342.86 million less fare revenue of $90.57 million for the quarter” the report says. Which means (roughly) an annual taxpayer subsidy of around $1.009 billion.

Many public transport advocates will argue that fare increases are discriminatory in that they negatively impact lower income workers, and I for one would be in hearty agreement with that sentiment, if only it were true. Apart from the student and seniors concessions, the average public transport user favours PT because they work in the inner city – which is where most public transport routes head to, or come from. And for the average person, this means they earn a substantially higher income than their suburban worker counterparts, for whom PT is rarely a workable option.

Further, the average PT user does not commute from outlier suburbs but a higher proportion get onboard within a roughly 5 or 10 kilometre radius of the CBD. This also happens to correlate with higher average housing prices. As noted in this article in The Conversation: “the distribution of high-quality public transport typically favours wealthier households within Australian cities.” You can find loads more evidence about who actually uses PT and their demographic and geographic characters on this excellent site: https://chartingtransport.com/)

Of course, if you are a lower income CBD worker using PT to get to your inner city job, public transport could seem expensive. A two zone trip - $4 each way – is $40 a week. On the median annual income of somewhere around $60,000 per annum, that can mean a lot. But at the same time let’s keep in mind that’s only 20% of what it costs – the taxpayer is funding that person’s travel to the tune of around $140 per week.

Another argument often raised in the context of public transport costs is the suggestion that we should bite the bullet and just make it free (which means the taxpayer pays the lot). If my numbers are correct, that would mean an additional $1.009 billion per annum (being the annual taxpayer subsidy via Translink). There could be merit in this if it meant a vastly higher usage of public transport leading in turn to much reduced congestion and significant reductions in road and other network costs. The problem with this would be if the PT network was suddenly overloaded, requiring vast increases in capital investment to bring the network up to scale. And of course vastly more people using PT would mean vastly more tax payer subsidies.

This is, however, unlikely in my view for the simple reason that public transport only suits a finite proportion of the population. Typically, it works for those with CBD or inner city jobs (only around 15% of the regional population); those with regular clockwork-like hours (increasingly few of us); those who do not have mixed journeys to work (for example no school drop offs or pick ups); and so on. Making PT free could mean only a marginal increase in patronage, but at a very substantial cost. The rest of us would be cursing everyone else for not availing themselves of free public transport, while we continue to stew in congested roads in our cars. I mean, it’s not our fault – we need our cars. Not everyone else does, do they?

(In Peter Seamer’s recent book ‘Breaking Point: The Future of Australian Cities’ he recounts the story of the decision to make Melbourne’s CBD trams “free.” All that happened is that the wealthy CBD workers took up the offer, crowding the trams to the point of overcrowding and leading to far fewer people actually walking. There was no net community gain). 

So if you are among the nearly 15% of people who do make regular use of the public transport network, please don’t begrudge the taxpayer the fare increase and please don’t attack the politicians who have to announce it. Significant and overdue improvements are being made to public transport networks which users are not being asked to pay for. It’s a good deal and worth keeping in mind that for every dollar of the fare you are paying, the taxpayer is tipping in an extra four dollars. And they’re not complaining. 

The density dilemma

A recent decision by Brisbane City Council to restrict townhouse and similar ‘missing middle’ housing product to areas actually zoned for it has been met with hostility from some parts of the urban planning community. It has been exaggerated as a “total ban” and labelled variously as “terrible news,” a “huge mistake” and “a disgraceful decision.” Setting aside the emotions that this decision has triggered, the decision highlights a potentially widening gap between the views and aspirations of residents and the preferred planning solutions of urban designers and planners. Is there a solution, other than duelling pistols at 50 paces?

...

Brisbane, along with Sydney and Melbourne, is a city dealing with the pressures of a rapidly growing urban population. Federal Minister for Cities & Population last week (19 Nov 2019) declared at a Committee for Brisbane event that he believed Melbourne – his home city – was probably 20 years behind in the infrastructure needed to keep pace with its growth. Similar observations could apply elsewhere.

It’s not just our inability to fund and deliver infrastructure at the speed required that’s seen us fall behind, it’s also the speed of growth itself. Australia’s major cities have set themselves a blistering pace in terms of urban growth, as illustrated in the chart below. Our rates of growth are similar to Chinese mega cities like Shanghai or Beijing, and well ahead of comparably productive, profitable cities of the west with qualities we often seek to emulate.

Accommodating these almost frenetic rates of growth has for more than 20 years seen Australian state and local governments adopt a pro-density housing model which seeks to prevent outward growth and to encourage higher density living in established urban areas. While there is much logic behind this, it also means – for existing residents of those areas – potentially significant changes to the residential environments they’ve been used to.

To reassure residents, planning strategies sometimes got carried away with over-promising the benefits of higher urban densities. This blurb from the 2013 version of the Draft Metropolitan Strategy for Sydney is one example: “A home I can afford. Great transport connections. More jobs closer to where I live. Shorter commutes. The right type of home for my family. A park for the kids. Local schools, shops and hospitals. Livable neighbourhoods.” Few Sydneysiders would think those promises have since been delivered. Many might suggest the opposite.

Other planners were highly critical of the infill ambitions that were central to various state and regional plans. Nationally respected planner Tony Powell AO described Melbourne’s version at the time (“Melbourne 2030”) as “superficial to the point of ridiculousness.”

He went on to say (in 2007): “The proposition in the latest crop of metropolitan strategy plans that 50% or more of future housing development can be accommodated in existing suburban areas of the major cities is patently ridiculous. These are simply unexamined  and unreliable hypotheses, not strategies.”

Fast forward to today and the arrival of higher density housing forms into traditionally low-density suburban housing is not going down well with residents. In some neighbourhoods, residents are positively hostile. To whom do they express that hostility? Not to the urban planners and architects who have actively promoted the benefits of density (while downplaying its flipside) but to their local, elected representatives.

This is democracy at work, and local representatives have a duty to reflect those concerns. In Brisbane’s case, those concerns saw the Liberal majority Council introduce restrictions on townhouse and “missing middle” housing form in low density neighbourhoods. The fact that this amendment was supported by the opposition Labor Councillors suggests it’s feedback they are getting also. The community have voiced their opinions and the legislators and elected representatives have listened. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

The reality of the restrictions is far from a blanket city-wide ban, as some critics have tried to make out. Townhouses can continue to be developed in areas zoned for them: in low-medium density zones, character residential infill zones, and in medium density zones. There have reportedly also been some 40ha of ‘emerging community’ zoned land which is no longer eligible for townhouse development (which is old news). 

Neighbourhood plans are also in a process of ongoing renewal, meaning additional zones suited for townhouse development can be created in the future, especially in and around transit or infrastructure nodes. The community simply doesn’t want to see townhouses arrive in suburban streets of detached homes where the zoning is low density. They understand low density to mean just that. They want town plans to deliver on what they say.

(Previously, if a 3000m2 block was available in a low density residential zone, or if one was amalgamated, developers could apply to develop a townhouse product irrespective of the low density zone. You can understand why this went down with locals like a ton of bricks).

But it’s been the hostile reaction of some parts of the planning community which has been enlightening. There is, it seems, a low regard by some for the right of the community to have an opinion on what gets built in their neighbourhood, near the property they own and on which they pay their taxes and (for many) want to raise their family.

In this case, the Council was criticised “particularly for ignoring the advice and submissions of industry experts” because “the community doesn’t understand the full story because they are not experts in the field of City design and planning.”

The Housing Industry Association chipped in: “This is plainly and simply a political move because they want to win the election next year.” Meaning doing what the community wants and hoping to be returned on that basis is now a bad thing?

Another commented: “It’s concerning that we listen to the general public for planning in our city rather than the experts who understand growth of a city.” Wow. Let the import of that statement sink in for a moment.

The tone in all this is “leave this to the experts.” Respect your betters. If the community fail to appreciate the wider planning objective being served by the arrival of unwelcome housing forms into their immediate neighbourhoods, they need re-education. How Orwellian.

Those sentiments obviously don’t represent the majority of the urban design profession. But the industry as whole might need to be mindful that the challenges of bringing the community with them, and in describing the benefits of housing forms such as townhouses, is something that can’t be taken for granted, nor can community opinions (nor their right to hold them) be dismissed so readily as the views of “non-experts.”

So the solution? I don’t know – but slagging off at the community isn’t one of them. There are design prototypes that are perhaps less likely to provoke community resistance, and there are many people who could welcome the cost and opportunity this type of housing can provide – from low income households to seniors to first home buyers. Maybe the community hasn’t seen as much of the ‘well designed’ product they can actually afford, but rather have seen perhaps too much of the product that is cheaply designed with little regard to its lasting community impact?

Either way, a lot more listening and a lot more respect of community opinion – and the people who are elected to listen to it – would go a long way.

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.