Use of public spaces

I'm sitting in my 'office' watching the birds at the feeder in back yard. It fascinates me to see how they share the public space and resource of the bird feeder. Each bird species seems to have their own specified time to visit the feeder. When the native parrots arive (lorikeets and rosellas), all the introduced birds fly off, so they must recognise a hierarchy. One way or another, they all get their share of the bird seed.

It makes me think of the way we share public spaces in the urban environment. One of the key issues we have is that many people do not actually like to share public spaces with 'conflicting' groups. Young adults get the worst rap for this, in that they are unwanted in shared spaces by many. It's a real shame the way young people are treated as a 'problem' in Australian urban life, a group that needs to be controlled or moved on.

Frankston City Council has had a successful program of playing dodgy music at the Frankston Railway Station precinct to discourage young people from hanging around. I believe they started with classical music and then moved on to easy listening and country. Some retailers have started using loudspeakers that actually emit a high-pitched whine which is generally inaudible to adults but really irritating to younger people, with the aim of stopping them hanging around the public areas near their shops. I find this type of behaviour unbelievably offensive.

I wonder if any of these public space maangers have ever asked the question, "Why are they hanging around the station, and where will they go if they can't hang out there?". Truth is, train station precincts are a safe place for young people to be, with informal adult supervision and good lighting. If young people (mostly teenage boys) are forced out of this kind of precinct, they are going to end up in places which are much less safe. It's worth noting that young people are far more likely to be victims of crime in public spaces than older people. So shouldn't a key aim of managing public spaces be to provide youths with safe places to socialise?

In an ideal world we would be developing civic spaces where people from all age groups felt safe to socialise together. Many of the European piazzas are like that. Older people hang around all the time, at cafes and in park areas, and younger people are able to meet and socialise in safety.

It's a real shame that older people in Australia seem to insist on treating youths as a problem, rather than as a social group with a problem. All you hear about this group in the media is the drunken binging and wild parties, yet I have met some truly amazing young people who will contribute wonderful things to society as they mature, if only they are encouraged to believe that society wants their contribution.

Ingredients for successful community development

The VPELA Conference is on again soon. The theme is "People transforming Places"
http://vpela.org.au/events_upcoming.html. I'm going to be on a Panel on the 3rd September. The panel title is "Masterplanner or Masterchef? Recipes for successful communities."

After my first meeting with the other panellists it's clear that we all have widely divergent views on what the topic means, let alone how to run the Panel! So I wanted to put into words some of what I think are the key ingredients for a successful community.

To start with, I don't think pretty pictures or structure plans have any role in creating sucessful communities. Attractive, efficient suburbs, yes. Communities, no. Communities happen in spite of urban designers, not because of them.

The most vibrant, inclusive and tolerant communities are also the messiest. And that's four of my key ingredients right there.

Tolerance - one thing you lose when you're in a carefully segregated suburb designed by a corporate urban designer is any interaction with people who are different. By different, I mean the scary people - the weird little old lady, the young bloke with a disability who can't talk normally, the strange fat guy at the video store - all the people on the margins of society. If you never see these people, and never get used to the fact that they're just different, not wrong, you never learn to tolerate difference. It's actually scary to see the lack of tolerance for difference that has grown in our society in recent years. People who are afraid of difference, and who cannot tolerate it, further marginalise people who are already on the edge. And that is sad.

Accessibility - it's rare to see urban designers who design their suburbs specifically to suit people in wheelchairs. In fact, have you ever seen such a suburb? One of my best friends is in a wheelchair, and it's a real life lesson to travel around with her, to see how marginalised people with access difficulties are. The scary thing is that, as the baby boomers age, the number of people with access difficulties will increase exponentially. Designing for access really isn't that hard, and it makes a difference not just to people in wheelchairs but to everyone. Designing without thinking about access is just reinforcing existing barriers to participation in society.

Vibrancy and creativity - the happiest and strongest communities are those where art and culture are highly valued. They did it so right at Docklands when they required a proportion of all money spent in the district to be spent on public art. And the artworks on Eastlink are fantastic (except for the hotel). I will blog more on this topic later, because I firmly believe that art plays a key role in defining communities, both in terms of their sense of place and in terms of how people perceive the community.

Messiness - perfectly planned suburbs where people are effectively segregated by income level may work well in raising property values, but they are boring and have the effect of reinforcing negative cultural values. Communities should mix everyone in together. In any one street there should be flats and big houses and little houses and shops and so on. In any small neighbourhood there should be people of all ages and abilities and social profiles living close to one another. It's that kind of messiness that encourages tolerance and teaches the ability to get along with other people. Messy communities are much better able to deal with social issues and are much more likely to develop interesting and creative communities. Carlton and Brunswick, for example, have always been more interesting places than Carrum Downs or Werribee, and that has always been because they are messy places where the community comprises people from all walks of life. We should value that.

A lot of the commentary in the media today, and community reactions to local and world events, really seems to come from a fear of the other that has become entrenched since we all started 'nesting' in our beautifully planned subdivisions in the outer suburbs. I sometimes wonder if planners realise how these forms of urban design are having such a negative impact on our society. We really seem to be losing the resilience that naturally comes when you have to learn the social skills associated with dealing with a wide variety of people in everyday life. I particularly wonder where our loss of tolerance for people who are 'different' will end up.

The Role of the Planner

This is an interesting discussion on the role of the Planner in development:
http://urbandirection.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-planners-job.html

But it also says something about consultation fatigue and the cynicism that comes from too many plans and not enough action.

The social impact of climate change

I'm teaching Social Impact Assessmentat RMIT again this semester. I decided to offer a choice for the group work assignment. The two most popular ideas were an international development project and the social impact of climate change. In order to 'make it personal', I decided to use a case study of looking at the potential social impact of climate change in a specific community which may be vulnerable. I chose Barwon Heads/Ocean Grove because I did some work there a couple of years ago and know the area reasonably well. The students doing this assignment were very enthusiastic and it will be interesting to see how they scope out the impacts. The international project the rest of the class is doing is the Three Gorges Dam in China. Mostly because there was lots of information available, but also because the sheer scale of impact is almost unimaginable - over a million people displaced, just to start with.

When you're talking about abstract issues like pollution and so on, it's difficult for people to get enthusiastic. There's a tendency to not want to be out there doing more than anyone else - in other words no one wants to sacrifice more than their neighbour, or shoulder an unfair share of the burden. It's human nature. But in some ways it becomes even harder when you get down to specifics. For example, many coastal towns in Australia are in low-lying areas. Even with sea-level rise projections at the lower end of the scale, parts of these towns are at risk of inundation.

So who is responsible for managing these impacts? A specific case is impacts on houses built in areas at risk of inundation. What happens if government modelling shows these properties to be unsafe and at risk of inundation? Does the government then become liable to help these people relocate, or do they have to pay for adaptation strategies, such as sea walls? I can see a time coming when it may be necessary to compulsorily acquire some properties for public safety reasons, and becuase the owners wouldn't be able to sell them any other way.

This issue has already arisen in Victoria, where a couple of coastal Councils have had kand rezoned to prevent construction on the basis of unacceptable risk of sea level rise. The land immediately became worthless and the owners were justifiably angry at their financial loss. The mechanisms for retreating from low-lying coastal areas need considerable thought in the very near future, to ensure that appropriate and equitable systems are in place.

Conferences and Forums

The PIA Social Planning Chapter Forum on the 23rd July was very sucessful, and we are now planning follow-up activities. It is a credit to the speakers, who shared their stories about undertaking social planning in disastery recovery contexts.

I also recently attended the IAP2 "Changing Climate, Changing Communities" Conference. This was another successful event, where a wide range of speakers talked about the issues around engaging with communities about climate change. One key thing I took away from the Conference was the need to make it real and personal. It's no good talking about scientific concepts which most people find quite abstract , like atmospheric carbon dioxide. Even talking about things like coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef doesn't necessarily bring it home. People need to hear the story about how climate change may affect them individually before they will really engage on the issue.