The future of the human race is urban and so the design of cities is fundamental to survival … and innovation is not the key.
For too long urban planners appear by their actions not to have had the tools and therefore the focus and commitment to assist in making urban environments that work for people. The issue is not just meeting basic survival needs but delivering outcomes that enhance people’s ability to grow and prosper, and in turn create and strengthen viable robust communities.
It’s not enough to limit discussions about strong community planning to merely consultation and lists of infrastructure. With advances in our knowledge of neuroscience, I suggest our understanding of human needs can now identify a range of specific issues in making cities that really work for people that urban planning and design practices can plausibly and practically address.
Policy objectives such as creating places for contact with people, the tribe’s history and with nature move from the realm of nice idea to social priority.
Creating robust and flexible places becomes as important as safe places. Ensuring not only accessible environments but ones that are widely supportive of personal development and life-cycle needs is better understood.
We already talk about some of them intuitively but evidence seems to be mounting that supports our intuition. In some ways we already know how to do this but we seem uncertain how to defend such approaches.
So the need is not so much for innovative city-making forms and technologies as it is for being clear about what city environments can in practice do, and are critically needed to do, to support individual and community well-being for a better future. The inspiration is to be found more in focus and legitimacy than in innovation.
John Byrne LFPIA FRAIA is an urban designer with a background and experience combining urban planning, architecture and social policy. A former award-winning public service director, he is a consultant advising public, private and community clients on development projects and policy initiatives across the continuum of city-making. His work ranges from regional and social policy to the design of TOD and knowledge precincts, centres and residential projects and often involves public and professional presentations. A long-serving QUT Adjunct Professor in Urban Design and Architecture, he was in 2014 the co-recipient of an Australia Award for Urban Design for contributions to Australian urban design, prompted by the UDF’s book "Urban Voices” celebrating a quarter century of Australian city-making.
