CityALLIANCE: Brisbane, Auckland, Vancouver, Perth

Jeff Humphreys of Brisbane gets the credit for coming up with the original concept for City Alliance – or BAVPer as he called it.  [Brisbane, Auckland, Vancouver and Perth.]  We North Americans suggested we might add Portland to the mix. 

At any rate, here’s Jeff’s original document:

BAVPer Alliance Manifesto 

Introduction

For a while now, I have been thinking about whether the urban planning issues we are dealing with in Brisbane have similarities with those faced in certain cities around the world, rather than others (probably beginning with a trip to Vancouver in 2004). While we can learn from the experiences of many cities, there may be some that are particularly interesting because of closer parallels with their situations, and there could be benefits in studying those cities more intensively, and forming relationships with professionals and others similarly engaged in those cities, to establish some mutual exchange, and who knows what. 

Based more on a personally experienced sense of place than anything else, and certainly not upon some reductionist analysis of what makes a city tick, I have come up with this group of cities, and no others: 

Brisbane – Auckland – Vancouver – Perth 

Why these four?

Similar size, Prosperous New World cities, British Commonwealth!, High growth rates

1. Size Matters

Each of these cities is in the range of 1million to 2+ million population, depending upon how you count it. Vancouver is the biggest, and Auckland and Perth, the smallest. Brisbane’s relative size depends upon whether one includes the metro region, including Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. However, they are all in a similar size range. When one visits Melbourne, Sydney or Toronto, one has an experience of a larger city, with more intense city centre environment, more traffic, more developed central cultural facilities, and in the case of Sydney and Toronto at least, significant large new centres growing up additional to the city centre.

There are different pressures to separate out different functions into new areas in larger cities, a greater momentum to support major new districts, than is present in cities in our selected group. This is even more evident in larger cities again like Paris, London or Beijing, or in city regions, where there is greater separation of different functions in the city centre, and special purpose districts inside or outside the central city area. In our select group, the city is not so large that there cannot be a multi-functional, walkable city centre, accommodating business, government administration and retail, along with some residences, education and culture. On the other hand, this group has more big city feel than smaller cities like Wellington, Adelaide, Canberra (and I’m not so familiar with Canadian cities) 

2.  Heritage Conservation vs Room to Change

These are all prosperous modern cities of the New World, established first during the nineteenth century, but having grown substantially during the next. They differ in style from European cities because those have more, older urban fabric that usually results in a different character, and greater constraints on change. New World cities, while they have important heritage buildings that must be kept, also are more malleable in terms of the available solutions, because the landscape, urban and otherwise, has more recently been developed.

Nevertheless, each of the group has been established for about 150 years or so, and is neither like a new town – there are buildings and spaces that impart some historical character and a sense of time. There is a similar balance in these cities between having been around for a while, and yet the urban fabric is not so valuable that it cannot be played around with. Of course because they are prosperous western cities, there are plenty of cars, and that has a huge influence on decisions about city form and the quality of city spaces.

The presence of the car is of similar dimensions in these cities, compared with cities of the United States, where the car is more dominant and also compared with less affluent countries. Many European cities are just as wealthy. However, perhaps because of the valued built heritage of these cities, there have tended to be higher densities and more emphasis on walkability and public transport than in the New World; this has been reflected in the decisions that have been made over the last fifty years or so.

3. Sense of Public Domain vs Private Domain

The reason for not including cities (of the New World) in the United States is related to a different sense of public domain, which is evident in the environment of the cities and in decisions that are made about cars and public transport. There is a different civic sense in the US, which more firmly emphasises the individual, and this is reflected in the physical environment. Most of the larger cities of Canada, Australia and New Zealand have well developed public transport systems, which betrays a certain willingness to trade off individual freedoms for a public benefit (that is related to the conservation and re-use of the existing urban fabric, rather than its obliteration or abandonment for more exclusively car-oriented urban forms).

Even those few US cities with well developed transit systems (usually of historical origin) still do not exhibit the same sense of civic domain in their relationships between public space and private space, as is evident in the cities of the British Commonwealth. We could discuss further why this is so, but it may spring from different constitutional arrangements and/or commonly accepted beliefs about the relationship between the individual and the state. Whilst a strong sense of public domain is also evident in European cities, as discussed above, these are not cities of the New World, don’t have as many cars, have longer established and better protected rural landscapes surrounding the cities, and different historical urban forms and contexts.

4. Economic Growth, leading to Change

In each of the cities, things are happening. They are all on the coast in attractive physical settings, which may have something to do with this. All are experiencing population growth, and strong economic growth, even if for different reasons. But they all want their share of the benefits of the economic changes that flow from the advent of the Informational Age.

Each city is positioning itself to leverage its historical and current economic advantages into further economic development based on services. Each has a place in the nation, and the world, but none, because of size and location, is in the upper tiers of international cities or city regions. However, all score highly in world wide quality of life rankings for cities, and this, no doubt, is contributing to their attraction for investment, as well as places to live.

The high quality of life also suggests some similarity in the values underpinning decisions about the urban environment. Because there is significant growth, there are many decisions to be made about the future, in terms of residential settlement, transport and economic development. What is the balance to be sought between employment centres, to optimise the cities’ responses to the opportunities presented by the informational age? Where should new investments in transport be made, to promote robustness in mobility choice, under different scenarios of energy pricing? What are the optimal densities and urban form relationships, to deliver superior quality of life in the future? Because there is growth, there is greater potential to adapt to the opportunities presented over the next twenty years.

The challenges, potential and opportunities presented by change are similar in these cities. 

Conclusion

These are a few initial musings. Clearly, this proposal and the hypothesis on which it is post-rationalised, is not based on any rigorous analysis nor academic theory, that I am aware of.  It might be interesting (maybe necessary) to document and test further what in some cases are merely my assertions. It may be that there are some other factors that are important.

I propose that we could have some initial discussion between ourselves, and then see what we want to do about it, if anything. Again, I am not suggesting that one would only consider what is happening in these cities. Of course, there are many things to be learnt from other cities. It is just that I think that it may be valuable to look closely at what is happening in each others’ cities, because to these similarities. It may be a shorter route to addressing issues, because the contexts are similar.