Let’s Be Friends!
Housing and cities are so much the topic du jour. It seems bizarre that wealthy cities like ours can no longer afford to house their young, their workers, their old, their poor or their creative classes. But as someone said to me this morning, when governments fail, it’s time for the non-profit sector to get cracking! Why? Because not-for-profits involve real, ordinary people taking the lead, stepping in where governments fear to tread, making change. It’s time. Time for citizen-led city making.
Our cities are home to almost 90% of us but city planning has reached a stalemate, with the emphasis on ‘stale.’ Business-as-usual planning is making cities that are increasingly unfair, unpleasant and unsustainable. The more we spread and sprawl, the more we build tangles of towers and motorways, the more we drive rocketing prices and out-of-control climate change.
It doesn’t have to be like this. We set up The Better Cities Initiative because we, like so many others, were frustrated with the endless talk, the spiralling costs, the worsening climate and the lack of effective action. Talk isn’t enough. Nor is just removing development rules. The biggest building boom in Sydney’s history has done nothing to reduce housing prices: quite the opposite.
We believe in the power of community-driven change to create better cities. Communities contain vast, largely untapped reservoirs of talent, energy and good-heartedness that can help solve complex urban issues and sidestep the impossible politics. Our mission is to foster informed civic leadership in city-making, prototyping new pathways, new processes, and new ways of making cities better for everyone.
There are many world examples of citizen-led city-making. From the German Baugruppen, where council-supported collectives design and even build their own mid-rise neighbourhoods, to Europe’s Clever Cities, Amsterdam’s housing co-ops or wooncoöperatie and the revival of co-living in New York City, people are beginning to take the housing crisis into their own hands. We need to do likewise, while ensuring the overall wellbeing of the city and the planet.
Together, we can do it. We can rethink neighbourhood patterns, diversify dwelling types, install circular water and waste systems, build tree canopy, encourage clean, active transport, nurture engaged communities and make things much, much fairer. In short, we can rewrite the planning system – and isn’t that about time!?
Sure, it sounds big – and it is. But if we all get involved it’s entirely doable.
You might want to be our friend for a reason - a particular project, say, or a pet peeve. You might want to be friends for a season - for the summer, for a year. We’d like to be friends for a lifetime! But in any case, - LET’S BE FRIENDS!
