If recent troubling reports in The Fifth Estate and elsewhere on the state of urban planning and governance are to be believed, then a sector-wide inquiry sounds like a good idea. Mike Brown, for one, thinks it’s time to take a good hard look into the state of our urban affairs.
This well-known painting by Jeffrey Smart depicts the Cahill Expressway soon after its construction in 1962. Like many of his paintings, this one includes a lonely figure, here a diminutive overdressed spectator amid an alienating urban-scape.
The figure apparently lacks a left arm, his sleeve tucked into the jacket pocket, and stands on a traffic island.
Those familiar with the location will recognise that in its contemporary condition he is marooned; unable to escape due to relentless traffic and high bounding walls.
Reportedly, Smart’s artistic interests were principally formal, but many ascribe allegorical significance to his work, here the impotence of urban humans in the contemporary city.citi
For some, this interpretation is inapt; our cities are genuinely democratic artefacts emphatically moulded by our reason.
In Sydney for example, newly established pan-urban institutions promise to streamline the way our cities grow and develop. Learned research explains urban problems and offers solutions. There is record public investment in urban transport improvements. Urban development participants regularly express their opinions in public forums. We are frequently offered the chance to participate in urban decision-making. We are constantly reminded of the link between our urban economic health and our personal wealth.
Others experience the city more equivocally; they see themselves as hostages to darker forces.
Their dwellings are lost to transport projects. New high-rises are built next to their suburban homes of many decades. Their fundamental interests are ignored yet they see great attention being paid to the microscopic interests of others. They ask, is this the city we actually want? How did it come about? How can we change or at least escape from it? And metaphorically, whatever happened to our instruments for effecting change – our arms?
A quick review of some recent reports illustrates this disquiet.
Urban unease
Phillip Bull questions the defining urban vision prepared by the widely welcomed Greater Sydney Commission. In part the commission was established to address a growing east-west divide in our city. Yet, in a manner analogous to the apocryphal etymology of Eton Mess, disaster was transformed into triumph simply by renaming it. Sydney will henceforth develop as three separate cities!
Mr Bull goes on to query the apparent uneven distribution of the commission’s housing targets – the numbers of new dwellings local planners must allow for in different Sydney suburbs.
Numerous outer suburbs are expected to accommodate many new dwellings yet suburbs with high amenity, close proximity to jobs, well serviced by public infrastructure, with high per-capita wealth but low dwelling densities are expected to accommodate only modest increases.
If Sydney is deemed too big to service yet not big enough to accommodate growth why don’t we just allow greater density close to its current well-serviced pulchritudinous centre, he asks? What’s wrong with more Potts Points and Pyrmonts?
Benjamin Driver draws attention to persistently poor quality apartment design despite long standing legislation aimed at improving it and of well tried medium density alternatives.
Commenting on recent debates around urban growth, Sue Holiday highlights the impracticality of many proposed solutions. She agrees with many economists that limiting growth outright will harm our economy. She points out that simply directing growth to the regions will immediately impose greater demands for public infrastructure, but without the local economy to pay for it. Further, we would need to dilute some of the social contract freedoms that draw people to Australia in the first place.
She instead argues for a well-reasoned bipartisan settlement strategy to grow these settlements such that they attract new settlers, rather than become their gaol.
Commenting on proposals for an extension to the northern beaches link expansion of WestConnex, Michelle Zeibots casts doubt on its business case, currently some $14 billion – almost three times that of a recently announced nation-wide drought relief package.
Recalling Professor Holiday’s observations concerning regional investment, what is sensible about spending more than the original cost of WestConnex on wider roads to low density northern beaches suburbs when we intend to dramatically increase the density out west? Is this where the money should be spent?
When it was recently elected, the state government placed housing affordability as a significant priority. Even though the housing market has slowed the cost of housing it is still beyond the reach for many and is particularly severe close to the costly centre where many high value jobs are.
In the context of increasingly scarce high-value inner urban land, this author has previously wondered at its comparative inefficient use for some transport infrastructure. Why is it financially essential to sell the Sirius building in The Rocks when less than 500 metres away a decked road cuts through the inner city, arguably the most valuable land in the nation? Why build a nest of tunnels under single story inner city Rozelle yet leave untouched elevated road decks that run from Glebe Island through valuable Pyrmont and Darling Harbour, stymying development along the way?
For most, the city’s imperfections can only be endured but some are more fortunate. The Minister for Finance, Victor Dominello, is reported as publicly opposing urban intensification targets for Hunters Hill and Lane Cove, despite these targets being the adopted policy of the cabinet he is a member of.
Similarly, Crown is currently litigating to protect views from its new Barangaroo harbour-front development.
New perspectives?
Against the fractious background illustrated by these examples, NSW opposition leader Michael Daley’s recent announcement could well be transforming.
The incoming NSW opposition leader has characterised current politics as disreputable and identified “four pillars (of) education and hospitals, easing the cost of living, jobs and overdevelopment” as priorities for his government, if elected.
He added that, “if (the federal government) is going to send 1200 new people to NSW a week, then they will have to stump up with funding for city-shaping projects”.
In essence, he has identified urban policy and infrastructure as his electoral battleground and said that the current system is broken.
It seems those identifying with the man in Smart’s painting are not mistaken.
Inquiry need
Our cities have increasingly become the centres of our economic social and political growth. At a time when democracies globally are increasingly challenged by, to coin a phrase, “mendascatocracies” (crudely, government by lying turds) the need for integrity in Australian urban governance could hardly be greater, as this author has argued previously.
Urban debates are increasingly complex, incapable of fitting within the confines of contemporary news cycles.
They encompass ever broader themes: population growth and immigration; national productivity; social and intergenerational inequity; environmental sustainability; housing affordability; infrastructure under- and over- provision; community participation; rural versus urban interests; financial prudence; legislative powers; fiscal and taxation policy.
These debates also transcend traditional responsibility boundaries that used to define different tiers of government or agencies within them. Cities are no longer the responsibility of any one entity.
Metaphorically, all these examples might be conceived as skirmishes in a large plain. Individual scuffles may be comprehensible within narrow perspectives close the surface, but what do they mean collectively?
What is lacking in all of this is a genuinely uniting aerial perspective.
The ongoing inquiry into the financial services sector has demonstrated that complex systems that define our lives can indeed be examined, shortcomings identified, and, hopefully, improvements recommended.
Given the commitment by one politician to address a similarly wide-ranging topic, would it be too much to demand a comparable examination of all the features affecting our contemporary cities?
State and national elections are approaching. Before any new announcements are made for yet another transport project, administrative authority, hospital, growth target, division or combination of agencies, or infrastructure-funding commitment, how about we hear an announcement of a single broad-ranging inquiry into urban development and governance.
We need to help Mr Smart’s figure get off the traffic island.
Mike Brown has worked in NSW local and state government in planning, urban design, and strategic roles for 15 years. He is also a graduate of the Masters of Urban Policy and Strategy program at the University of NSW.
The Fifth Estate invites other thinkers to contribute to this topic. Send articles or flag ideas to editorial@thefifthestate.com.au