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.