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Transcript of URBAN magazine
ISSUE 1 | VOLUME 5 | MARCH 2011
A nation’s memoriesdeserve a significant urban space
Graduate perspectivesurban design from a new angle
Cycling by design:urban form arrives on two wheels
10
02CHRISTCHURCH’S FUTURE
After the big quakes, our
second-biggest city’s future is
under review
03WHAT TO DO ABOUT CITIES?
Our North American
correspondent, Keith Hall, looks
at Columbia, past and present
04GIVING LIFE TO MEMORY
Stephen Olsen reports on a
project at Auckland’s War
Memorial Museum
10SMALL TOWNS, TAKE HEART
Small-town New Zealand is
reasserting itself, stepping out of
the cities’ shadows
13GRADUATE PERSPECTIVES
Three students of urban design
present their master planning
exercises on ‘live’ sites in Auckland
16THE SOCIAL DIMENSION
How to get social wellbeing into
planning and decision-making
18LOOKING AT SMALL TOWNS
David Pronger writes of cream
buns, entrepreneurs and modest
urbanity
21CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS
Our legal expert monitors
progress by DBH on the CC Act
March 2011 I S S U E H I G H L I G H T S
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18
04
13
The plan is to look for the best way forward in
the rebuilding of Christchurch, following the
devastating earthquake of February 22.
Warren and Mahoney director Peter
Marshall, from the firm’s Christchurch office,
says while the plan is at a preliminary stage,
the aim has been formed out of a sense of
responsibility to the city.
“We were founded in Christchurch in 1955 by
Sir Miles Warren and in many ways
Christchurch’s post-war building story is also our
story. Its modern heritage is also our heritage.
“From this shared history we feel a profound
sense of commitment to the city. Clearly
though, a careful and collective response is
required, and that’s why we have partnered
with other experts who also care deeply about
rebuilding our city,” Mr Marshall says.
Designers, planners look to shape Christchurch’s futureNational architectural practice Warren and Mahoney has set up a group of leading New Zealand urban planning, design and property services experts.
Initial members of the group are:
Warren and Mahoney – architecture and
interior design
Boffa Miskell – environmental planning and
urban design
Holmes Consulting Group – structural and
civil engineering
Colliers International – commercial leasing
and sales services
Wareham Cameron + Co. – tenant advisory
services
RCP – project management.
Don Miskell, managing director of Boffa
Miskell, says the formation of the group was a
logical response from the local planning and
design community.
“Civic leaders and government officials are
rightly focused on the immediate rescue and
recovery mission.
“Forming the group and turning our minds
to seeking integrated solutions by combining
visionary thinking with a depth and breadth of
development experience is one way that the
interdisciplinary members thought we could
contribute to the rebuilding of Christchurch,”
he says.
As an initial outcome, the group will develop
a set of key design principles and long term
development scenarios for discussion with
Christchurch stakeholders.
Mr Marshall says the group will seek to work
closely with Christchurch City Council – as well
as central government – to ensure a
co-ordinated approach is taken, and the group
will recruit other members as its role evolves.
engineers • surveyors • plannersPhone : +64 7 378 6405 Email : [email protected]
www.cheal.co.nz
nz planning institute project award 2008 nz institute of surveyors gold award of excellence 2009 signatories to the urban design protocol
CHEAL – helping to shape the future
engineers • surveyors • plannersPhone : +64 7 378 6405 Email : [email protected]
www.cheal.co.nz
nz planning institute project award 2008 nz institute of surveyors gold award of excellence 2009 signatories to the urban design protocol
CHEAL – helping to shape the future
2 URBAN MARCH 2011
A 1993 New York Times article ranked Bogota
fourth in Latin America and among the world’s
worst twenty cities for air pollution. The Vice
President of Planning of the Bogota Chamber
of Commerce said the city was becoming as
‘unmanageable’ as its larger peers, México
City and Saõ Paulo.1
Instead of continuing along its seemingly
predetermined path, the city’s politicians and
planners charted a new course from the early
1990s. They began tackling the city’s
problems from the high crime rates and the
deteriorating environment – with an
overarching goal of creating a liveable city
where the needs of its citizens were prioritised
first.
The city invested in projects and
programmes to benefit its citizens in direct
ways: parks and bikeways to provide
recreation and encourage healthy activity, a
better public transit system to link people to
jobs quickly and efficiently, and land use
plans and development strategies designed to
create a more attractive, liveable and humane
city. In the process, the city may have
undertaken strategies that ‘accidentally’
supported a more robust economy in the city.
Less than two decades later, Bogota is a
much safer and, by some measures, a less
polluted city. Bogota is more than safe; the
city cut its homicide rate by nearly a third – to
a level less than that of Washington, DC.
Although the city still struggles with air
pollution, Bogota’s planning and
environmental strategies have produced
positive results.2 Nonetheless, a more
prosperous Bogota has seen the number of
cars in the city triple from the early 90s, while
population grew by 62 per cent in just two
decades.3 In spite of its growth and
prosperity, only one private car is registered
for every seven residents, a low rate of car
ownership in comparison to other large cities
in Latin America.4 Nonetheless, the city’s
autopistas (motorways) are perpetually
clogged with traffic, and the situation
promises only to get worse.
Among the most innovative of its
transportation and air quality solutions has
been TransMilenio, the city’s bus rapid transit
(BRT) system. Bogota’s BRT began as an idea
to consolidate the tens of thousands of buses
operated by nearly as many private companies
into a coherent rapid transit system that would
be less costly to build than an under-ground
metro.
The first trunk line on Caracas Avenue,
Bogota’s ‘main street’, included branches on
either end to link the city’s far-flung
impoverished neighbourhoods with the
wealthy ones in the north. Bus lanes – two in
each direction – were carved out of Caracas
Avenue, along with wider footpaths, street
trees and enough space for enclosed stations
that function more like those on a train line
than those of a typical bus stop. Nearly 1.4
million passengers enter the TransMilenio
system each day; the buses are fast and
efficient, but they are typically jam-packed at
all times of day and in every direction.
Construction of TransMilenio is ongoing,
and Phase II has recently been completed.
The system now includes two central trunk
lines and seven distinct branches totalling
84km, over which more than a thousand
160-passenger (articulated) buses operate.
More than 70 feeder routes and nearly 1500
bicycle parking spaces connect passengers to
the main BRT system5, not including those
who transfer from the city’s 20,000 privatised
urban buses. Construction recently began on
the third phase of the system (seven phases
have been planned), and funding for the
construction of an underground metro was
recently announced by Bogota’s mayor.
In 1990, the view of Bogota’s future was
bleak. Nonetheless, the city changed course
and became a model for coping effectively
with growth, transportation and pollution. In
short, Bogota proves that difficult urban
challenges have solutions and that, with
political will and public support, large cities
can be transformed into livable places.
Next stop… BRT in America.
FOOTNOTES1 Growth, Pollution and Crime Stifling Bogota, New York
Times, Sept. 9, 1993.
2 Secretaria Distrital de Ambiente, Sistema de
Informacion Ambiental (SIA), Base de Datos 1991-
2010.
3 Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica
(DANE), 1985-2005.
4 Portal de la Ciudad de Bogota.
5 TransMilenio System, a presentation to the C40 Cities
conference, Angelica Castro Rodriguez, 2007.
Cities: can we solve their problems?In the early 1990s, Colombia’s capital city was known for the uncontrolled growth, crime and pollution that stifled its economy.
By KEITH C. HALL, former CEO of NZPI
MARCH 2011 URBAN 3
The act of giving life to memory in our public spaces
English and Maori story telling – from the
integration of Laurence Binyan’s famous lines
beginning “They shall grow not old” coupled
with a Maori translation, which is then further
coupled with a 239 word essay-length
exposition that ends with the words:
“Celebrate our Fallen, our Tupuna. Honour
them with Peace”.
Vincent: “To take all this in, you have get up
close, to be on the spot, in person, casting
your own impression. This isn’t some
ready-made postcard. The effect I was hoping
for is a sense of floating, like a sense of spirit.
“Along with intentional details such as
replicating the same font as you see on the
cenotaph and museum and other technical
aspects, the art of building this was the art.
“As well as being a mark of respect, the
other strong driver for me was that everyone
who visits this place should leave with a
clearer understanding that, as the words say,
we all are one – we are fronds on the same
fern.”
Vincent chooses to put the water feature on
a par with the symmetrical resolution achieved
within the overall site: the containment of lines
with the existing cenotaph’s consecrated
boundary, the alignment of sculptured
bespoke plinth-like seating and large granite
paving with the Museum’s neoclassical
columns, the understated new pathways and
We New Zealanders live in a country where the contained memory of memorials – particularly those commemorating a nation’s war dead – is plainly visible in significant public and urban spaces.
by Stephen Olsen, URBAN correspondent
To see a new memorial of the kind now in situ at
the Auckland War Memorial Museum (see
photos), is a special opportunity then to reflect on
the place that memorials occupy in those spaces
and the associations we make with them.
This new memorial is now ready in its final
form, to see the light of its first ANZAC Day in
April. Judging from observable visitor
interaction, it is evoking a positive and
poignant experience.
The elliptically engaging centrepiece of the
memorial is a raised feature of cascading
water, the full story of which only unfolds
(along with its iconic silver fern and koru
crest) when looking back towards the
Museum building from below.
Seen from the Museum steps above, this
appears as no more than an anonymous black
rectangle, while from the facing side it reveals
an embossed combination of symbols and
words, English and Maori together, gently
concealed on a 45-degree angle beneath a
continuous 5 millimetre flow of rippling water.
This concept was developed and refined by
design engineer and landscape architect Ian
Vincent, with assistance on graphic design
from Jeremy Snowsill of Long White Cloud.
The design process referenced points of
inspiration such as Quebec sculptor Pierre
Granche’s Canada Memorial in Green Park,
London (unveiled in 1994) and more recently
the New Zealand Memorial in London’s Hyde
Park Corner as designed by architect John
Hardwick-Smith and sculptor Paul Dibble and
dedicated on November 11,2006.
Originally from London himself, Vincent
valued the opportunity to work on a once-in-a-
lifetime project that mediates a blending of
4 URBAN MARCH 2011
contoured gradients, a shared space roadway
and the use of “tactile” stone ridging.
From this attention to detail one of the end
results has been improved accessibility for
those who might be sight-impaired or in a
wheelchair, or simply someone pushing a
child’s stroller. Making the memorial
accessible to everyday users was an important
aspect of the project says Alan Gray, a former
member of Auckland City Council’s urban
design team who had project oversight and is
now working at Waterfront Auckland.
For Gray, who had worked on a memorial
project in his native Georgia, USA, the
response to the new Auckland memorial
space is best described as reverent. “People
get it… it resonates with people. Different
groups bring a different lens to its uncluttered
nature. It has been considerate of the heritage
value, of the need for open space, of the
vistas.”
He credits the success of the project (which
had a few starts and stops since the 2007
master plan by Salmond Reed Architects) to
everyone involved in the stewardship of the
site walking in step – the museum people, the
operations people, Urban Solutions as project
manager, John Filmore Contracting, Design
Source, Hatch New Zealand, 360 Urban and
Vincent’s Urbanlogic.
Gray also notes that this memorial “canvas”,
at one of New Zealand’s most sacred spaces
and the beneficiary of its relatively isolated
location, is not such a completely finished
piece that it can’t evolve in the future as its
role of giving life to memory continues.
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CONTAINED MEMORY
This topic of memorials was given full
play last December at Te Papa, where
Massey University joined with New
York’s Syracuse University in holding
a conference of the world’s top
scholars in the study of a growing
area of both academic and public
interest: public memory.
A theme of the event was the idea
that remembering together is a
powerful activity. Across the
programme, which also featured artists
and poets, were presentations on
almost every conceivable aspect of
memorial landscapes, also referred to
as memoryscapes – across borders,
cultures, time and space. For more
information on this event, versions of
which are now being repeated annually,
see www.containedmemory.org.nz
MARCH 2011 URBAN 5
Lest we forget our darkest hoursA recent gathering in Auckland saw the launch of a project dedicated to seeing a memorial landmark with a difference established in the northern French township of Le Quesnoy, in permanent memory of the New Zealanders who fought and died in Europe in the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.
by Stephen Olsen, URBAN correspondent
occupiers on November 4 1918 – just seven
days before the Armistice.
Le Quesnoy has famously never forgotten
the fact that their 5000 residents were not
subjected to bombing on that fateful day, and
that the assault on the ancient fortress
township was instead conducted by use of
smokescreens and by ladder.
Military historian Herb Farrant, a regular
visitor to Le Quesnoy since 1995, is heading a
project team that has commenced fundraising
for the $NZ500,000 needed to gain final
planning and consent approvals for a
Memorial Museum and New Zealand-themed
hotel to proceed on prime land being
effectively gifted for the project by Le Quesnoy
citizens.
The project team includes Auckland
architect Malcolm Brown, of Brown Day
Group, who has taken on the design of the
40-bedroom hotel to be known as ‘The
Riflemen’ in honour of the New Zealand
infantry brigade that stormed Le Quesnoy.
The planning to date integrates the hotel
within the urban fabric of a walled settlement
part of the world – backed by the sister city
relationship enjoyed between her hometown
of Cambridge and Le Quesnoy, and also
Waipa District.
Both Beaudignies and Le Quesnoy were
liberated by New Zealand infantry in the last
months of 1918, with 122 New Zealanders
subsequently dying in the battle to take the
town of Le Quesnoy from its German
The launch – which took place in the same
week as the tragic devastation and loss of life
wrought in Christchurch – was attended by
the Mayors of both Le Quesnoy, Paul Raoult,
and its smaller neighbour Beaudignies, Mrs
Raymonde Dramez. Olympic cycling
champion Sarah Ulmer was a guest speaker
and spoke of her first-hand experience of the
special bond between New Zealand and this
6 URBAN MARCH 2011
dating back several centuries – a unique
challenge – with proposed interior design
contributed by Unitec students.
As many will know, Le Quesnoy is one of
the battle sites engraved on the exterior walls
of the Auckland Memorial War Museum, the
frontispiece of which has the memorable lines
about men being “commemorated not only by
columns and inscriptions in their own country/
but in foreign lands also by memorials graven
not on stone/ but on the hearts of men”.
As described by Herb Farrant there is a
certain pathos that the people of Le Quesnoy
live with the “evidence, legacy and aftermath
of the Great War every day” while this remains
a too-distant place for New Zealanders
despite the fact more than 16,000 of our
forebears lost their lives in that war alone – a
lost generation that touched virtually every
family in our young nation.
Having a New Zealand presence and a
memorial museum amidst the network of
museums and memorials in the region
between northern France and Flanders is
expected to right the balance that has put this
place at too far a remove.
It will also provide a hub or base for what, in
the translated words of Paul Raoult, could be
regarded as a central point for a “tourism of
memory” – a way of respecting the past and
making the kinds of connections that help
make sense of what might otherwise be a
wasteland of loss.
MARCH 2011 URBAN 7
Citygate to boost Hamilton’s CBD
He says the building plan was helped by
McConnell Property’s close relationship with
both Hamilton City Council and Wintec. While
the three organisations are not partners in
any financial or legal sense, Mr Donnelly
believes working closely together was an
integral part of successfully delivering the
Citygate project.
“Citygate will complement the fantastic
work recently undertaken by Wintec in
refurbishing Block F and that area of the
A planned building described by Hamilton Mayor Julie Hardaker as having a “stunning”design will help to further develop the city’s central business district.
campus. The building footprint is triangular to
protect the views to Block F and into the
campus, and to enable better pedestrian
connections between the campus, Citygate
and the City.
”The project is a boost for the CBD and a
fantastic addition. We see this as a sign of
better things to come in terms of the CBD
office market. Our discussions with Hamilton
businesses indicate that they are eagerly
anticipating the delivery of the Citygate
building. We have had a very good level of
interest to date and will be formally launching
Citygate in the coming weeks.”
Around 300 people will be employed within
the building.
Hawkins Construction is part of the
McConnell Group and will be responsible for
constructing Citygate.
McConnell Property, an Auckland-based
property developer owned by the McConnell
Group employed Jasmax Architects to lead
the design work for the building, to be called
Citygate, and construction is planned to begin
late this year.
The development will go ahead on the vacant
“sand-pit” site next to Wintec’s Atrium building
on the corner of Ward and Anglesea Streets.
The five-level building has a distinctive
triangular glass and pre-cast concrete facade
and behind the exterior will be mostly offices,
with retail, cafes, and licensed premises at
street level.
The Mayor says Citygate will be a significant
addition to the Wintec tertiary precinct and
CBD generally and she is pleased to see
business opportunities opening up in the city
centre.
Aidan Donnelly, development manager for
the McConnell Group, says the building will
take full advantage of the corner site and will
include the creation of a public open-space
area, which is to be landscaped to a high
quality for use by staff and the public.
Citygate has been designed to reflect
sustainability principles and will feature
natural day-lighting, indoor environmental
quality, energy efficiency and water
management.
8 URBAN MARCH 2011
Resilience: the ability to recover quickly from setbacks (Encarta)
By PHIL McDERMOTT
Without debating whether an increase in the
frequency of extreme events reflects climate
warming, such events can be catastrophic
when they impact on densely populated areas.
Natural disturbances, whether geophysical
(tsunami, earthquakes, mudslides) or climatic
(flooding, hurricane strength winds, tidal
surges), become disasters if they strike heavily
populated centres.
So do human acts of aggression. The tactic
of terrorising civilian populations taken to new
heights in the bombing raids of the Second
World War and adopted by today’s extremists
is most effective – and destructive - when
directed at the heart of major cities.
So how do we respond, especially given the
expectation that we face an increase in such
events?
We can prepare ourselves individually by
sensible precautions. House design,
construction, maintenance can help in
high-risk areas. Having household plans and
resources for escape, survival, and recovery is
becoming more common. As communities we
can build our collective emergency response
and recovery capacity. We can also look to our
hinterlands to ensure that land use practices
– clearances, monocultures, river
straightening, irrigation, and dams – do not
precipitate major events such as dust storms
or floods that impact on cities downwind and
downstream.
The Civil Defence Emergency Management
Act 2002 increased the New Zealand
government’s focus on risk reduction, hazard
avoidance, and community readiness. In
particular, Part 1 (3) (d) requires: local
authorities to co-ordinate, through regional
groups, planning, programmes, and activities
related to civil defence emergency
management across the areas of reduction,
readiness, response, and recovery, and
encourage co-operation and joint action within
those regional groups.
The effects of climate change, presumably
including the potential for violent storms and
inundation, are matters to which people
exercising powers under the Resource
Management Act should have particular
regard (Part 2 7 (i)).
There is an imperative in legislation in New
Zealand, then, for local and regional councils
to consider hazard mitigation and risk
avoidance in our urban planning and design.
This is so internationally.
It is not coincidence that many – if not most
Cities in search of resilience – major cities in the world are built on rivers or
at the coast, given their origins as nodal
points; or on fertile flood plains in the lee of
mountains, between mountains and sea, even
on fault lines. They are consequently built
across unstable and vulnerable sites in many
instances. This should be a fundamental
consideration in our urban design,
architecture, and engineering.
So here are some reasons why we might
seriously question the compact city paradigm
which so influences planning and urban
design today:
1. It relies on sophisticated, centralised
interdependent systems of services. This
creates greater capacity for disruption when
any one part fails. Economies of scale in
utilities may come with increased risk of
failure under duress. This applies to sewage
treatment infrastructure, communications,
water, energy distribution, and power
supplies. It also applies to public transport
systems.
2. Poorly designed intensification reduces
permeable surfaces, intensifying flood
impacts.
3. Converting brown-field and even green-field
sites (such as undeveloped urban space) to
housing or mixed use reduces the safety
valve of open space and increases
vulnerability associated with the
concentration of buildings and populations.
4. Crowding more people into smaller spaces
around constrained road capacity reduces
prospects for rapid evacuation from the city
or into safe structures and areas.
5. Lifting the density of buildings increases the
consequential impacts of severe events by
such things as the collapse of structures,
the spread of fire, and the transmission of
disease.
6. Mixing uses increases the risk of injury and
destruction when people live close to
premises where hazardous and flammable
goods may be stored. Gas, chemical
cleaners, and fuel are obvious examples.
7. Reducing the space available reduces the
capacity of people – households and
communities – to fend for themselves,
particularly if the consequences of a
disruptive event are prolonged.
Looking over these issues, it is unsurprising
that our past history of increasing prosperity
was a history of reducing urban densities,
even as rural-urban migration pushed up city
populations. What is surprising is that we
seem to have given up the quest to make this
same movement – essentially a de facto
public health programme – work in a
resource-constrained environment.
One of the drivers of early town and country
planning was the desire to protect public
health, with zones separating industry from
where people lived. A healthy workforce was a
productive workforce, so it made sense to
reduce the exposure of people to industrial
pollution. There were also public health
benefits from getting families out of high
density slums into something approximating a
rural lifestyle with access to space, gardens,
and parks. The resulting residential areas
– the suburbs – came to be highly valued in
the 20th century. Many people still value
them, even in a post-industrial age.
But in today’s quest to preserve city edges,
to support public transit, and curtail car use,
planners have moved to reinstate higher
urban densities around existing city centres,
denigrating suburban life as ‘sprawl’ and
down-playing the new risks that revisiting the
old ways raise.
We may have to rethink these revisionary
ideals in the face of reality. A better
understanding of resource constraints and the
need for diversity may mean that we shouldn’t
look at expanding our cities in the uncritical
way we did in the past, providing large plots
for small households. But for many people,
and perhaps for nature, high density, mixed
use is not necessarily the best alternative.
I’m not sure what form a move to resilience
in urban design might favour. Most probably it
will – and should – vary from place to place.
Decentralisation will have a role to play.
Certainly smaller centres, within, on, or beyond
the edges of large cities, with a full range of
services and amenities and a high level of self
sufficiency are likely to offer more resilience to
communities than centralised, hierarchical and
interdependent services stretched over the
entire city. In some places, well-constructed
and spacious high-rise apartments set in
extensive green spaces might work. In others,
terraced housing, each dwelling with a small
garden, interconnected by pathways and roads
to nearby community and commercial centres
will be appropriate. Traditional suburbs,
perhaps scaled down, will have their place,
providing private and public spaces to nurture
families and nature. High-density suburbs with
extensive parks, green belts, and generous
transport corridors are another option.
Whatever the form, the risk of disasters in our
cities being compounded by crowding and
mean design, calls for putting resilience into
the urban design equation. The possibility of
marginal long-term savings in fuel consumption
and vehicle emissions used to justify
constricting our urban places (and lives) may
otherwise come at too high a cost.
Phil McDermott is a consultant in urban,
economic and community development who
has worked throughout New Zealand and in
Australia, Asia, and the Pacific.
http://cities-matter.blogspot.com
MARCH 2011 URBAN 9
Historically, many small towns
were bustling hubs of enterprise
that sprang up to service rural
hinterlands and to process
primary products. Foxton, for
instance, was the centre of a
thriving flax industry based on
the vast flax swamps that still
covered much of the Manawatu
plains during the nineteenth
century. Picton, at the head of
the Queen Charlotte Sound in the
Marlborough Sounds, became a
busy port linking the North and
South Islands and handling large
volumes of primary produce. In
their heyday, such towns were the
focus of community life, servicing
the social as well as economic
needs of the town dwellers and
those who would ‘come to town’
from surrounding areas.
Times change, however, and
during the twentieth century
many of New Zealand’s small
towns experienced decline. Local
primary-processing industries
closed down or relocated to
cities. Transport routes, intent on
linking the main cities, bypassed
or cut right through small town
centres. People became more
mobile, too, and increasingly
went to larger centres for their
employment and shopping. Small
towns seemed to be languishing
by the wayside. Their role as the
gathering place for local
communities was much
diminished; their townscapes
were haunted by areas of disuse
and often shaped by roading
infrastructure with its inevitable
parking lots and highway-oriented
services.
The 21st century is heralding a
renaissance, however. Small town
communities like Picton and
Foxton are looking for
opportunities to reinvent
themselves, while also wishing to
revive their sense of community
and redevelop their towns to
reflect that.
New Zealand’s small towns – take heartSmall town New Zealand is reasserting itself after languishing in the wake of the big cities for too long. This is not the superficial makeover stuff of new street furniture but a more fundamental and wide-reaching approach that seeks to put the heart of a community back into a town, as exemplified in Picton and Foxton.
By SHONA McCAHON for Boffa Miskell
Planning
Marc Baily, urban planner with
Boffa Miskell, who has been
assisting a number of small town
communities translate their
redevelopment dreams into
reality, says if proposals are to
succeed they have to be
well-considered and practical
while also being inspirational and
visionary.
“It takes time – typically four to
five years – to work through the
strategic and urban planning
stage and reach the point when
things start to happen on the
ground,” he says. “As a
consultant, you can’t expect to
really understand the place and
how it works without spending
considerable time observing the
current environment and finding
out from locals about the cultural
and social context, as well as
their issues and aspirations.
Spending time at this stage pays
off hugely when it comes to the
inevitable debates about the
physical changes that might be
proposed in the town.”
Such timeframes can, of
course, be frustrating for a
10 URBAN MARCH 2011
and welcoming to all. These are
the places where people can
meet up with those they know but
also encounter people from
outside their own social group
who are, nevertheless, part of the
community. In a small town, that
enables people to (at the very
least) recognise who else lives in
the community and perhaps get
to know a little more about them.
That in turn builds the sense of
belonging, shared ownership and
security.”
Enabling out-of-town visitors to
also use the public space and
intermingle comfortably with
locals is another important
consideration in many small
towns, where attracting visitors is
crucial to economic revival and
survival. Community spaces need
to be designed in such a way that
seasonal or weekend influxes of
visitors can be accommodated
while also providing for more
low-key local use in between
times.
“There’s more to it than simply
providing a public square or a
promenade,” Michael says. “The
public space needs to be part of
the fabric of the town and that
means integrating it with the way
the town works both socially and
economically. If we create places
where people want to spend time,
it will support local businesses
through increased foot traffic and
activity. Conversely, having
businesses and services adjacent
to and integrated with the public
space can improve the success
of the space by bringing people
through it and improving passive
surveillance. These factors are far
more critical than fancy signage
or town branding ”
understand their own history and
to think about what kind of
community they want to be part
of.”
Public space
When community revival is an
objective, the future of public
space in the town is a major
focus because of its role in
potentially bringing people
together and enabling interaction,
according to Boffa Miskell
landscape architect Michael
Hawes.
“The design of the public
realm in cities has attracted a lot
of attention but the principles
apply just as much in small
towns,” Michael says. “Ideally,
public space should
accommodate a lot of different
types of interaction if it is to be
truly public – that is, accessible
community that is pressing for
change, yet necessary to ensure
that the different views within that
community are properly
canvassed. While there may be a
general desire for change, there
will be a range of views about
what that might mean in practical
terms, and there will be some
who are simply suspicious of
change.
“One of the outcomes of a
town redevelopment project
should be a strengthened sense
of community and that won’t, of
course, be achieved purely by
reconfiguring the built form,”
Marc says. “If the process is well
managed and seen to be
democratic, the visioning and
debate during the planning phase
can assist people within the town
to get to know each other in new
ways, to perhaps better
MARCH 2011 URBAN 11
Picton’s London Quay
The integration of business and
community activities has been a
key component of Picton’s new
London Quay town square and
waterfront redevelopment,
completed in October 2010. The
redevelopment followed a
four-year strategic planning,
community consultation and
master planning exercise led by
Boffa Miskell on behalf of the
Marlborough District Council.
London Quay had traditionally
been Picton’s gathering place
when it was the town’s main point
of departure and arrival, but this
changed. The main port was
developed further away and the
site became a ‘back door’ to the
town centre, dominated by car
parking and service functions.
The redevelopment
incorporates tourist operations,
fishing boat and boat servicing
uses to ensure that both locals
and tourists are drawn to the
area. Moreover, new buildings
designed by Warren and
Mahoney to help define the new
square, have been designed with
ground floor public uses that will
encourage cross-over of inside
and outside activities.
Marc Baily says practical
considerations and benefits have
flowed through from involving the
local businesses in planning the
overall concept and developing
specific facilities.
“Not only does their presence
attract public use and contribute
to the site’s waterfront character
and vitality – the businesses have
also contributed financially and
enabled a level of funding for the
project,” Marc says.
The redevelopment has created
a series of interrelated spaces that
provide flexibility for both peak
season and off season activity. On
New Year’s Eve, it accommodated
a crowd of more than 9000.
During weekends fish is sold
directly off the fishing boats,
bringing a flow of locals to the
space and during quiet times
lunch time workers and off-season
travellers are able to find
smaller-scale sheltered spaces
that feel safe when there are fewer
people around. The evenings see
overnight visitors promenading
between the marina and foreshore
“The design has reinstated the
historic role of the London Quay
site as a meeting place, but in a
contemporary context,” Michael
says. “Meeting places are focal
points for communities and we’ve
built upon that by drawing
together the functional
requirements with the aspirations
of the local people, the
commercial interests and the
marine-related operators located
on the waterfront – not to
mention the needs of visitors.
The aim has been to better
integrate the wide range of
commercial and public waterfront
activities and link them strongly
to the town centre.“
Foxton
Plans for revitalising the Foxton
community came out of an urban
planning project in which Boffa
Miskell assisted the Horowhenua
District Council to look at
opportunities and best locations
for growth and development over
the whole of the Horowhenua
district. Foxton was identified as
having development potential,
which happily aligned with
various initiatives the council had
already earmarked in consultation
with the Foxton community.
Located on State Highway 1,
Foxton is one of those small
towns where the main road has
been diverted away from the
commercial area and main
shopping street. Through-traffic
problems in the town centre have
been avoided but highway
travellers have been diverted with
a consequent loss of potential
business.
Marc says the focus during the
consultative strategic planning
phase was very much upon
understanding the town’s history
– how it came about and how it
works now. Out of that came an
understanding of the issues and,
importantly, the opportunities for
the future.
Boffa Miskell led the
formulation of the Foxton Town
Plan, which was recently signed
off by the community board. It
provides the over-arching
framework for enhancements,
aimed at attracting people into the
town; consolidating activities to
better emphasise the sense of a
town centre; and celebrating
Foxton’s heritage. Two other
overlapping plans bring together
proposals for specific focus areas.
Under the Te Awahou
Development Plan a regional
multi-purpose culture and
heritage centre will be developed
in Foxton’s town centre. It will
incorporate the site of the now
long-gone Foxton port, which
operated on a former bend in the
Manawatu River before the river
was straightened, and will tell the
historic stories of the
Horowhenua. The centre will be a
focus for the local community
and out-of-town visitors. It will
incorporate a new library and
council service centre, a Dutch
museum, a Maori arts and craft
gallery, tourism information and
meeting spaces.
“The objective is not only to
preserve the cultural, social and
economic heritage of the district
but to enable that heritage to be
celebrated and extended in the
contemporary activities of the
local community,” Michael says.”
In doing so, the public space
created will build upon the Town
Plan’s key concepts of
consolidation and reconnecting
Main Street with Foxton’s
historically important riverfront.”.
Meanwhile the River Loop Plan
is underway, aimed at restoring the
physical and historic connections
with the Manawatu River via the
remnant ‘ox – bow’ that was once
part of the river. It will involve
restoring the degraded ox-bow
environment and developing
recreational opportunities for locals
and visitors.
“Communities often push to
get things done quickly, but our
advice is to not be too ambitious,”
Marc says. “Small things can turn
big wheels and affect the wider
picture in surprisingly effective
ways.
“It’s also important to realise
that urban places change over
time and you can’t always plan
for completion. Small towns are
better to think of these plans as
works in progress than to try to
implement a single master plan
all in one go. As the parts are
progressively implemented, the
community will notice changes
and perhaps adapt and evolve
their plan as they go along.”
(Marc Baily is a director and
Michael Hawes a principal of
Boffa Miskell Limited, a town
planning and design consultancy.
Shona McCahon is a freelance
writer and oral historian.)
12 URBAN MARCH 2011
PH
OTO
CR
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|| 01:
Gra
nt
Neill
Graduate perspectivesLast year I returned to university to study towards a Master of Urban Design at the University of Auckland. The decision to go back was due to a desire to gain more technical skills in urban design, to add to the urban policy and project work I had done previously. In brief, it was one of the most stimulating, yet intense years of my life.
Compiled by ANNA WOOD, Urbanismplus
Design studios provided the focus of the
programme and this is where techniques were
taught and mastered.
‘Live’ sites from the Auckland region were
used for master planning exercises. For our
class this included Swanson, Avondale,
Henderson and Wynyard Quarter – enabling a
focus on transport orientated development
(TOD) and sustainable intensification.
Three of my classmates from the 2010
MUrbDes programme are profiled here,
presenting their studio submissions.
Hayley Fisher and Grant Neill both
showcase Wynyard Quarter – developing
master plans and designs for the brown-field
site on Auckland CBD’s harbour edge.
Students tackled residential intensification,
establishing central city communities and
supporting the marine industry that exists on
the site.
Jere Wilks shares his work for Henderson
– presenting a design response to enable a
sustainable future for the mixed industrial/
suburban area. Work here explored
opportunities for intensification at growth
nodes along the western rail corridor.
The course, and in particular the studios,
encouraged us to research, test and apply
design principles and techniques. A focus on
building typologies was something I found
particularly interesting and was a useful
addition to my planning background. A
research project enabled me to focus
specifically on the perimeter block typology
and its application to the New Zealand
context.
At the conclusion of a busy yet invigorating
year, we left the programme with the
knowledge and techniques to work on urban
design projects at a range of scales. The
course enhanced our passion for the design
and function of the urban environment and
left me with no regrets for temporarily
reverting back to student life.
Anna Wood
MUrbDes (Hons), MPlan (Hons), BPlan (Hons)
Urban Planner/Designer, Urbanismplus
01
MARCH 2011 URBAN 13
WYNYARD QUARTER – GRANT NEILL
Life
Wynyard Quarter is a CBD “bookend”
positioned on an edge to the sea [01]. It
celebrates multiple urban roles while offering
the opportunity for life at its edges to be
permeated by the life of the harbour.
It anticipates public use, high-density
residential living, and commercial activity: the
life of the CBD is extended to the Wynyard
Quarter and the harbour edge.
The peninsula offers unique opportunities
for public life on a regional scale, by ensuring
the majority remains publicly owned and
used. An urban regional park is accessed past
a sculptured lake that signifies arrival, beyond
an intensely activated “blue square”. [03]
Space and connections
Common social and activity precincts are
created by contextually consolidating
compatible activities; public use on the
harbour edge, residential in the enclave of the
basin area, and commercial buffer strips to
Fanshawe Street and the marine industrial
area. A marina, maritime tourism base and a
beach face the recreational area of
Westhaven.
Wynyard Quarter connects directly with the
spatial experiences both intimate and formal.
It was also designed to allow the functioning of
everyday life and cultural exchange as
Auckland society moves from a bi-cultural
context to a more diverse multi-cultural
network. A civic space is incorporated into the
master plan, achieved through a pavilion and
a formal plaza. The constriction of the eastern
edge of the plaza physically concentrates the
experience of entry to the large open space.
This area can accommodate large outdoor
performances as well as create a powerful
presence when occupied by only a few.
Columns flank the pavilion, softening the
boundaries of interior and exterior. The
columns’ form references the Kuta reed that
once grew in the streams around the area.
The position of the pavilion is also important
as it is situated at the hub of the Quarter and
responds to the wider context orientated to
Rangitoto cone with the main entry facing the
rising sun. [02]
This civic space was designed as a pause
along a greater journey of experiences around
the Wynyard Quarter master plan. A series of
spaces with differing characteristics and
purposes, nomadic, conversational, powerful
and insignificant, all contributed to creating a
‘place’ adding to Auckland’s waterfront
experience.
Hayley Fisher
B.Arch (Hons), M.Urb Des (Hons)
H.Fisher Architecture Ltd.
WYNYARD QUARTER – HAYLEY FISHER
Our challenge at Wynyard Quarter on
Auckland’s waterfront, was to develop a
master plan illustrating how the site would
function in the future, successfully responding
to its currently industrial and under-developed
nature.
Wynyard Quarter is a much-debated corner
of Auckland and presented an opportunity to
challenge ourselves as budding urban
designers within a realistic context.
My project investigated the concept of ‘local
culture’ by creating spaces that responded to
our values in a contemporary society. The
Auckland waterfront is steeped in a rich history
both colonial and Maori. Consideration of this
historical context was also infused into the
scheme to create identity and a sense of place.
One example was the inter-relationship
between the natural landscape and built form,
which is privileged within the master plan.
Although the site was designed to be densely
urban, the implementation of a swale to
collect water from buildings presents an
opportunity to reduce ecologically damaging
stormwater runoff, as well as create an
attractive setting for new local communities. It
also allows an incorporation of native coastal
planting which imparts a sense of identity and
grounds the space to its context.
The role of open space within the Wynyard
Quarter was to facilitate a range of different
02
03 04
14 URBAN MARCH 2011
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2:
Hayl
ey
Fis
her;
03 &
04
: G
ran
t N
eill
; 0
5:J
ere
Wilk
s
CBD and the region, Quay Street extends and
terminates with a large public space. A
transverse connection runs to the end of the
peninsula from Fanshawe Street serving the
public, park and residential areas. Another
serves the existing marine industrial areas,
separating potential conflicts.
Public transport systems are integral. Within
the residential and commercial precincts a
pedestrian scale “T.O.D.” environment is
created by breaking down the existing large
grid with lanes and paths; transport
interchanges are at the centre. Public
transport loops through the regional park.
Public space in the residential precinct is
purposeful and hierarchical; a central square
is a space of gathering and meeting, an
outdoor living room for the residents; a water
courtyard public space is an intimately scaled
bay with vistas out of the precinct. A
connecting street continues by pedestrian
bridge to the existing viaduct precinct, with
spaces for pedestrian engagement, movement
and encounter. Perimeter block courtyards
are opened up into publicly accessible shared
spaces – apartments orientate toward the
shared spaces for ‘ownership’ and security
[04].
Buildings
An urban contextual scale is achieved by the
existing city street grid continuing over the
site.
Facades facing each other in the street
house common activities and form legible
streetscapes with purpose, by activities
changing mid-block, instead of whole blocks
of activity changing at streets.
Perimeter blocks change to singular
buildings toward the openness of the
peninsula, as the direct connections force
block sizes to reduce; giving potential for
dramatic public architecture of a scale
commensurate with the harbour it sits in.
Grant Neill
Registered Architect, BArch, MUrbDes (Hons)
Grant Neill Architects Ltd
HENDERSON – JERE WILKS
Following a site visit to the Henderson valley, it
was considered that an opportunity for
redevelopment existed within the large
industrial area slightly south of the town
centre. This brown-field land displays several
‘deficiencies’ antithetical to a TOD proposal,
including single use zoning; relatively poor
connectivity through the road network;
inefficient use of land displaying outdated
industrial buildings and the adjoining
residential areas being poorly connected to
nearby rail stations.
In seeking to address these issues, the
design project sought to create a mid-valley
TOD predicated on altering the current built
form parameters. These amendments
included changing the current zoning to allow
for mixed use capabilities while still
recognising the economic opportunities
created by the industrial zone. Architecturally,
a distinct built form differentiation was
proposed to encourage a sense of place
particular to the neighbourhood. The
adaptability of building design for future uses,
specific materiality and small building design
was also considered, aimed at both economic
affordability and aesthetic variance within the
urban fabric.
The economic mechanism for delivering
this design proposal was via the identification
of an industry that could reward the region in
growth opportunities and by tailoring the TOD
around that industry’s requirements and
support services. The three film studios within
the immediate vicinity of the proposed TOD
were highlighted as just such an industry.
Their requirements would include cost-
effective and adaptable large buildings with
ease of access to transport systems.
Supporting businesses would be required in
transport, accommodation and
communication to name a few. Therefore the
inclusion of small business neighbourhoods
displaying adaptable spaces for a variety of
use were proposed, specifically aimed at
creating cost effective premises for the
creation of new business opportunities.
Improving the connectivity across the valley
was also explored. The primary design
concept to deliver this was the inclusion of two
new axial roads running approximately
east-west. While obviously facilitating
vehicular access their principal aim was to link
the current disparate cycle and pedestrian
systems at each side of the valley. This
proposal then created ease of access to the
new rail station via multiple forms of
transportation. [05]
The uniting theme for consideration in the
design was ecological, being underpinned by
much of the now amalgamated Waitakere City
Council’s environmental aims. The built
environment aspect proposed issues of water
sustainability, collection and re-use along with
alternative power generation as an integrated
form of the architecture. Public open space
was increased where possible, with multiple
sites for community garden inclusion and
planting strategies to reconcile the built
environment as an ‘island of heat’ while
creating identity through street tree
hierarchies.
Jere Wilks
MUrbDes, BLA (Hons)
Landscape Architect
05
MARCH 2011 URBAN 15
Scratching the surface of urban design-led
projects reveals continuing difficulties in the
way ‘social’ considerations are captured,
integrated, and reconciled across projects.
Seldom are case-sensitive, often qualitative
issues such as community equity, accessibility
and identity brought to the table as equal
partners to transport data, land-use
projections, and environmental models.
Should this be a reasonable outcome, or
should urban design, as a holistic, integrated
approach, be expected to do better?
Urban designers are comfortable
representing issues spatially and those in the
social sciences more often communicate
verbally, with words and policies. A number of
tools to bring these together have been
developed: producing a CPTED plan;
designing a public space for the mobility,
comfort and the amenity of its users;
determining where and why social
infrastructure should be provided in an urban
environment to support densities, ethnicities,
and other socio-economic indicators. Yet
intangible dimensions are less well-evaluated
and remain harder to represent compared to
other components of the urban system.
This article explores the value of spatial
analysis techniques and tailored project
methodologies to tackle the difficult contours
of things ‘social’. It discusses a series of steps
that practitioners can draw on to achieve this
objective. It argues that despite being
sometimes problematic, persevering with the
issues can demonstrably lead to more robust
outcomes. These not only provide a more
rounded and integrated outcome, but one
which better reinforces the arguments
supporting other ‘non-social’ components.
Step one: Get the right people around
the table
Target those involved in the day-to-day
planning, provision and delivery of services
such as central Government agencies, Local
government officers, private sector providers
of community infrastructure, and
non-governmental (third sector) providers and
groups. This is critical in order to input local
knowledge about specific characteristics and
constraints, ensure continuity and
understanding through implementation, and
to gain cross-agency support. These
participants must be able to be part of the
answer rather than confined solely to reporting
a role or position.
Step two: Analyse the existing social
context of the study area
Explore:
knowledge and policy gaps;
demographic trends;
the provision and performance of services
and facilities;
social service disposition;
factors that contribute to community
cohesion; and
community-led initiatives.
This has been effectively achieved elsewhere
through the following techniques:
represent community infrastructure: Plot
the distribution and provision of social
service providers, educational, health,
recreation, leisure, and cultural facilities
(both public and private). Understand
where the high order sub-regional, district
or city-wide institutions are located -
universities, hospitals, courts, emergency
services, and sports centres. Understand
where the lower-order local and
neighbourhood facilities are located –
community centres, churches, primary and
secondary schools, childcare, marae, and
RSAs for instance.
represent known social issues: Understand
the social challenges facing the area. Mark
up areas with high social-deprivation; areas
with severance and poor accessibility to
services and amenities; pockets of
geographical isolation; places with a
prevalence of crime and anti-social
behaviour; areas of vandalism and
degradation where community ownership
may be lower; and locations of tension
between different demographic groups.
Other socio-economic variables such as
ethnicity or education are often also
relevant.
support the mapped analysis with a
literature review of significant projects,
strategies and policies that contribute to
social capital building in the study area.
Case studies of previous initiatives,
including what worked and why are
extremely valuable.
Step 3: Collate and compare social
infrastructure and issues
Evaluate social and community well-being in
the study area and the wider context.
identify socially distinct communities of
interest peripheral to the project area.
These may overlap and fluctuate between
issues as people are now often members of
more than one community. These
community catchments may be defined by
topographic, demographic, ethnic or
socio-economic change; land use type and
housing mix; ward or suburb boundaries.
graphically represent the social networks
within the study area and the surrounding
community catchments. This should
include a relative assessment of:
1. the existing provision of ‘hard’ physical
infrastructure;
2. how well intangible, qualitative aspects of
community well-being are being met;
3. the scale (or quality) of provision from
neighbourhood to regional levels; and
4. the potential or desire to grow (or
improve) services, accessibility and
sense of community.
Step 4: Determine community network
opportunities in the study area.
Look at the comprehensive picture. Evaluate
all data and maps and identify possible
actions. Amongst others, opportunities may
exist to:
consolidate or co-ordinate multiple
Strengthening social dimensions in urban design
Despite the best efforts of urban designers, planners and community specialists, elements of social well-being, often less easily defined or quantified, are still inconsistently embedded into plans and decision-making processes.
By NICOLA ALBISTON, Urbanismplus Ltd
16 URBAN MARCH 2011
agencies and organisations e.g. sharing or
pooling of information, resources and
venues;
build local self-sufficiency, leadership and
capacity through utilising what was already
at work in the community;
leverage additional or improved community
facilities through expected population
growth; and
grow cultural and creative recognition and
expression in the community.
Horses and courses
There are many ‘typical’ tools that will be
relevant in almost all instances. However as
demonstrated in two urban design-led
projects from New Zealand and Australia, the
use of custom methodologies to truly unlock
rather than just map the issues, has benefits.
Case study 1: Social understanding can
influence decision-making priorities
As evidenced in Casey-Cardinia, one of five
urban growth areas in the Melbourne 2030
Growth Strategy, the articulation of community
infrastructure issues had a direct influence on
resultant transport funding priorities. Use of a
‘social pin-wheel’ tool to evaluate the provision
of physical infrastructure across suburbs,
revealed it was not possible to provide all
services in each location. Each instead had to
essentially specialise, with people moving
between suburbs to access the full range of
amenities. Specific transport investments
were then prioritised to make accessibility
easier.
Case study 2: A community network
proposition needs an equally enabling
process and meaningful engagement
Nowhere was this more evident than in the
Tamaki Transformation Programme, an urban
and community renewal project on a scale not
attempted before in New Zealand. The
workshop-based approach, led by
Urbanismplus, sought to develop a clear and
prioritised action plan (distinct from a spatial
master plan). It addressed three important
objectives:
1. build integrated partnerships between
community champions and the local
residents and communities they represent,
multi-sector agencies, and other
stakeholders;
2. explore both non-spatial and physical (built)
initiatives around all social issues; and
3. be firmly grounded in delivering real,
tangible action.
The workshop, building on significant previous
work by many of the stakeholders, explored
each aspect of the community through a
process of dialogue and co-design. The
resulting Development Plan builds on a
unifying vision for the area, finding
opportunities for the people of Tamaki to more
easily provide for their own well-being. A suite
of integrated community and social initiatives
are co-ordinated and organised under five
‘change strategies’:
Tatou tatou (all together): Engage with
people in their communities though
centralised multi-agency / community
service hubs and grassroots care networks
within local neighbourhoods.
Tangata whenua (people of the place):
Celebrate the environment, heritage and
cultures through story-telling in public
spaces, event programmes, trails,
community gardens, and medicinal/edible
landscapes.
Haora (well-being): Create healthy,
creative, learning environments through
cultural enterprise, trade-based and health
sector training schemes for residents, a
technology-based learning network for
children, more high quality early childhood
centres, and expanded marae-based
service delivery.
Whai rawa (abundant resource): Connect
people with their full economic potential
through building on amenities offered in
town centres and along Tamaki River,
affordable business incubation, and a
community transport scheme.
Kainga (home): Deliver quality, integrated
living environments through state housing
renewal demonstration projects in
community and town centre nodes,
non-shelter outcomes, a redeveloped
people’s park and sense of pride and
ownership initiatives.
The Plan places initiatives into a 20-year
strategic sequence for comprehensive renewal
with responsibilities for different agencies and
stakeholders identified. It builds on foundation
projects for 2009-2011 with full or seed
funding and is backed by clearly defined
targets. Economic analysis estimates the Plan
will grow New Zealand’s GDP by around $2
billion (1 per cent), directly support 20,700
jobs over 30 years and decrease crime and
avoidable hospitalisation rates to the Auckland
average¹.
Conclusion
While spatial mapping techniques follow a
relatively straight-forward formula, giving
social dimensions a voice within a broader
programme of engagement and
implementation remains the continuing
challenge. Analytical tools must be tailored
and new methods developed if urban design
is to truly commit to social sustainability
imperatives.
¹ Tamaki Development Plan: Economic Value Proposition, October 2010, SGS Economics and Planning Pty. Ltd, SGS
MARCH 2011 URBAN 17
Across river is Cambridge’s ‘southbank’,
Leamington, with its own distinct character.
Originally a separate borough, Leamington has
its shopping precinct currently in growth
mode. Nine retail shop units, a café, a
supermarket, and a new, more intimate
two-bar tavern replacing the old medallion-
carpeted, 70s vintage one, is the latest
development for Leamington’s heart.
“If you want to succeed, if you want to get
ahead of the competition, then you need to
stop tolerating mediocrity and start focusing
on the behaviours and attitudes that get
results,” advises LesleyAnn Thomas, the new
president of the Cambridge Chamber of
Commerce.1
Cream buns , entrepreneurs and modest urbanity
Re-imagining the small townIn downtown Cambridge there just isn’t an empty shop to be found. Presided over by a hundred-year-old town hall and flanked by the verdant Victoria Square and busily cultivating boutique shopping credentials, Cambridge town centre is clearly a part of ‘old Cambridge’. [01]
By DAVID PRONGER, Antanas Procuta Architects Ltd
18 URBAN MARCH 2011
low wages and often poor environmental
protection. The economic reforms of the
mid-80s had removed import tariffs and
privatised government departments. This hit
hard with business closures, unemployment
and general economic decline in many
communities throughout the country. Kaitaia,
a small town in far north New Zealand, nearly
400 kilometres from the Auckland CBD, was
not immune.
But with DIY resilience, Kaitaia (population
around only 5000) responded positively,
seeing the opportunity for establishing an
enterprise that would put community benefit
before return on profit. In 1989, Kaitaia’s
‘Community Business and Environment
Centre’ (CBEC) was born.3
CBEC’s raison d’etre was to create a
community owned organisation that could
generate new businesses and jobs. The
organisation was seen as being able to bid for
contracts that would otherwise be won by
companies from outside the district. Profits
could be ploughed back into the community
to create more employment and other
community benefit.
The founding managers and board
members were determined to establish
sustainable businesses and practices that, at
the same time, would provide training and
employment for local people.
CBEC is a community enterprise that now
operates a range of businesses and
environmental programmes as part of an
overall effort to build a sustainable local
economy. A shareholder-elected board of
directors controls CBEC. Anyone within the far
north community can become a shareholder.
Today CBEC employs more than 70
full-time staff in a number of enterprises and
joint ventures, including waste management,
recycling, labour hire, transport, home
insulation, nursery and environmental
education.
Cultivating entrepreneurship
“‘The green shoots of entrepreneurship give
an economy its vitality,” maintain William
Bygrave and Andrew Zacharakis of the
Babson College, Massachusetts in their
textbook on the subject, ‘Entrepreneurship’.
Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs come
in many shapes and sizes. Some create
businesses, some contribute to civic
organisations and still others endeavour to
enhance the provision of public goods and
services. What they all have in common is
what Bygrave characterises as ‘the presence
of imagination, flexibility, creativity, a
willingness to think conceptually and the
capacity to see change as an opportunity.’
Entrepreneurship, however defined, is
commonly recognised as a key ingredient of a
robust community and a sustainable
economy.
Over the Moon in Putaruru
Operated by longtime Waikato resident Sue
Arthur and situated in a small factory in
Putaruru, Over the Moon is a boutique
cheese-making company producing around
9000 kilograms of cheese a year.4 [02] Sue
Arthur is clearly an entrepreneur in its widest
sense.
Since 1985 she has served in various
elected and executive positions on the local
South Waikato District Council, helping to
drive many high-profile local tourist attractions
such as Tokoroa’s ‘Talking Poles’, Tirau’s ‘Big
Dog’ tourist information centre and upgrades
of three of the region’s central business
districts.
The perfect dairying environment that
begirded Sue Arthur over many years had
inspired a passion for dairy products that
eventually sent her globetrotting –
experiencing, making and sampling cheese.
Sue eventually brought her inspiration back to
the South Waikato and set up Over the Moon
and its affiliate the New Zealand Cheese
School in late 2007. By early 2008, Over the
Moon had made its first cheeses and won a
gold and two silver medals at the Cuisine New
Zealand Champion of Cheese Awards. In 2010
Over the Moon was recognised by the
international cheese community as the world’s
best producer of semi-soft mixed milk and
flavoured sheep cheese.
Located on State Highway 1200 kilometres
south of Auckland, Putaruru is a rural town
with a population of around 3800. Putaruru’s
‘Blue Spring’ on the local Te Waihou River
provides 60 per cent of New Zealand’s bottled
water (distributed nationwide and
internationally) and also supplies the town’s
water supply.
Across Tirau Street from Over the Moon is
Putaruru’s former post office. Constructed in
1968 and designed on a circular plan with a
crown-shaped roof of thin parabolic pre-cast
concrete shells, the former post office and its
900 square-metre footprint is architecturally
undoubtedly provincial New Zealand’s most
outstanding example. [03] No longer used by
NZ Post, the building is now in private hands
and destined to gain a new zest for life as a
food court.
Shepherding Putaruru’s development
potential is Pride in Putaruru, a close
descendant of the Chamber of Commerce,
but which now embraces not only the
business interests of the town but the social
and community interests as well. Capably
orchestrated by the dynamic Annie
Waterworth, Pride in Putaruru is currently
actioning a plan Vibrant Putaruru
commissioned by it to coordinate future social
and economic development.5
Social entrepreneurship
Just as there are entrepreneurs who change
the face of business, there are also social
entrepreneurs who act as the change agents
LesleyAnn, a freelance human resources
consultant and business owner, directs her
counsel at small enterprise, but equally it
could apply to the management of small
towns. LesleyAnn Thomas is the third woman
in a row to hold the presidency of this
230-strong membership business
organisation.
Cambridge has that timeless quality, built
on a simple street grid of vista-harvesting
tree-lined avenues, culminating in a town
centre of admirable architecture.
Its congenial relationship with both the
equine and dairy industries, its proximity to
Hamilton and its attractive arboreal
environment are commonly presented as the
principal contributors to its consistent
progress. But the continuing dedication over
time of an active and committed Cambridge
entrepreneurial core – as in many other
successful towns – is an enviable asset not to
be dismissed too lightly.
Baker’s man
Across the Tasman in rural northeast Victoria,
Tom O’Toole is busy containing his ebullient
bakery team. Tom O’Toole is no ordinary
baker. He owns the very felicitous Beechworth
bakery. If you have read Bryce Courtney’s
novel ‘Four Fires’, you’ll have some familiarity
with Beechworth. About 280 kilometres from
Melbourne, Beechworth is a well-preserved
historical town, establishing itself during the
gold rush days of mid 1850s. Its present
population is just 3200, about the size of
Putaruru in south Waikato.
On one recent Easter Saturday, the cash
registers of the Beechworth Bakery rang up
some 3500 transactions, altogether taking
$31,000 in one day’s trading. They had 30
staff in the shop working that day. 2
Tom O’Toole reminisces: ‘I remember when
I first came back to Beechworth 26 years ago
to set up the bakery, my accountant and the
bank manager said I was mad taking a risk
investing in a dying country town, but luckily I
didn’t listen to them.’
The exuberant Tom O’Toole is proud of his
employees and encourages initiative and
participation. “I sell lamingtons and pies, and
my business is far from perfect. Its 5 per cent
technology and 95 per cent psychology – it’s
all about people. You need to have vision,
persistence and discipline, but most of all you
need to believe in yourself, your business and
your community.’
Today the Beechworth Bakery boasts six
bakeries across Victoria and southern New
South Wales. Tom O’Toole is an entrepreneur
and a great ambassador for his hometown.
Give the town the business
In New Zealand, the late 1980s was a difficult
time for many small towns. Locally owned
businesses and manufacturers were
struggling to compete against pressure from
international corporations and countries with
MARCH 2011 URBAN 19
for society, seizing opportunities others miss
and improving systems, inventing new
approaches and creating solutions to change
society for the better. While a business
entrepreneur might create entirely new
industries, a social entrepreneur comes up
with new solutions to social problems and
then implements them on a large scale.
“Our job is not to give people fish, it’s not to
teach them how to fish, it’s to build new and
better fishing industries,” explains Bill
Drayton, the ‘godfather of social
entrepreneurship’ and founder of Ashoka, a
global non-profit organisation with
headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, dedicated
to finding and fostering social entrepreneurs
worldwide.6
The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s split
society into two unequal segments, maintains
Ashoka’s Bill Drayton. Commerce became
entrepreneurial and competitive, its
compounding productivity gains sparking
rapid income growth. But somehow
enlightenment bypassed society’s other half,
that part concerned with education, public
welfare and the environment, Drayton
laments. As the consumer sector grew more
productive, the social sector supported by
taxes and protected from competition, fell
even further behind.
While it is basic for human beings to trade
and exchange, it is just as fundamental to
cooperate. We are social beings who are at
our best as active participants of thriving
groups and networks.
‘Community is not something we have, it is
something we never stop doing.’7
Set around 1950, Nevil Shute’s novel, A
Town Like Alice, is firstly a love story – about a
Jean Paget and a Joe Harman, two people
thrown together by war finding each other
again after six years. But also it is a story
about love of place and what one person with
the motivation to contribute and build for the
benefit of community can achieve.
A Town Like Alice captures the vision of a
young Englishwoman: how to build
attractiveness into a place such that its young
people want to remain and where others want
to come to live. In her travels Jean had been
enchanted with the quality of life in the remote
Alice Springs (population then about 1200) in
central Australia. Armed with this experience,
she devises a plan for her adopted home, an
outback town in western Queensland starting
with the building of a workshop to employ a
small number of ladies making fashion goods
from locally produced leather – and
progressively superintends the plan’s
implementation.
“Community is about place, spirit,
belonging and connection. It is about joy, fear,
love and hope. Community is also about
friendship, caring and being cared for. These
are the things that motivate us every day,”
announces the Tamarack Institute website.
Tamarack is the real-time Jean Paget. It is a
Canadian organisation dedicated to
supporting “collaborative strategies that
engage citizens and institutions to solve major
community challenges”.8
Brit Nevil Shute was himself an
entrepreneur, starting up an aeronautical
engineering business prior to taking up writing
full time. All his books, one way or another,
are about this – except ‘On the Beach’, and
that is a warning of what will happen to
mankind if it ceases to be on the side of
creation and improvement.
Small towns, big opportunities
It takes less than four minutes to drive through
the built-up area of Putaruru and at just five
houses to the hectare, it is neither a big nor a
particularly compact place. This is not
necessarily a bad thing. With their walkable
characteristics, spare infrastructure, space for
local food production and home occupations,
small towns like Putaruru are in fact
well-placed to confront issues of climate
change and diminishing resources.
Retirees are already discovering the
affordable housing such places offer.
Businesses that are able to service their
clients remotely via telephone and the Internet
are discovering the benefits with cheaper
overheads.
The important challenges facing us today
– the need for frugality, living more sustainably
and fostering civic engagement – are all made
easier in small towns.
Small town initiatives are part of an
emerging movement that is bringing people
together to explore how we – as communities
– can respond to the environmental, economic
and social exigencies of today. Our
communities have within themselves the
innovation and ingenuity to create positive
rejoinders to these challenges of our time.
What is required is firstly igniting and
supporting local responses and then weaving
them together into a coordinated action plan
for change.
By building local resilience, we are able,
collectively, to respond to whatever the future
may bring in a positive and creative way. By
remembering how to live within our means, we
can rediscover the spirit of community and a
feeling of empowerment that flows from
belonging and sharing in a world that is
vibrant, just and truly sustainable.
Conclusion: stewardship and
imagination
“If Henry Ford had gone out and surveyed his
community, they probably would have told
him they needed a faster horse.” It’s trite but
pedagogical. We all need a vision.
Communities need vision. But equally
important, communities need people to help
articulate, nurture and drive their vision.
In the future, leaders will not be
remembered for their professional, technical
or cost-cutting skills but for their wisdom,
empathy, presence, intuition and artistry,
predicts leadership educator and pianist/
composer, Michael Jones.9
“It will be a way of leading that is more
relational focused and based upon creating an
empathic resonance with others as a
networker, connector and convener of webs
and communities,” suggests Jones.
As designers we practise those particular
disciplines that awaken the power of the
imagination. These help transform our
mechanistic or industrial view of our world to
one that is more subtle – and sustainable – a
transcendent vision that is more creative,
organic and whole. This is how an artistic
viewpoint can be especially helpful to
community leaders.
“Make and mend is a fundamental principle
in the history of cities as of civilisation,”
observed Professor Arthur Smailes in his slim
but pithy volume on the history and
morphology of town building, ‘The Geography
of Towns.’
The scale of required interventions to make
better, more-liveable places does not have to
be big. Small projects can add massive value
to rural towns and these small urban
programmes can be the catalyst for positive
change. Likewise, solutions do not need to be
spectacular or eye-catching. The important
thing is they need to be pragmatic, sensible
and place-based. If they are, they can work.
REFERENCESBygrave, W.D and Andrew Zacharakis.
Entrepreneurship (Second edition), John Wiley,
Hoboken, NJ, 2010.
Courtney, B. Four Fires, Penguin, 2003
Shute, Nevil A Town Like Alice, Heinemann,
1950
Smailes, A.E. The Geography of Towns
Hutchinson, London, 1967.
20 URBAN MARCH 2011
BY PAULA NICOLAOU, senior associate DLA Phillips Fox
The Construction Contracts Act 2003 (Act)
came into force on 1 April 2003 with its
purpose being to regulate payments under
construction contracts and provide an
alternative avenue for dispute resolution
between parties to those contracts.
The Act currently covers commercial
construction contracts between principals and
contractors and contractors and
subcontractors and extends, in part, to
residential construction contracts.
Eight years on, the Act is now undergoing
its first review. In November 2010, the
Department of Building and Housing issued a
discussion document containing reference to
five specific issues under review.
The date for submissions closed on 16
December 2010 and the Department is
looking to issue a paper outlining responses to
the proposed changes early this year.
Focus of the review
The matters under review and the
Department’s proposals are as follows:
1. Whether the Act should apply in its
entirety to residential construction
contracts.
As it currently stands, the Act regulates
commercial construction contracts and
residential construction contracts differently.
The main differences being residential
construction contracts do not get the
benefit of:
the implied default provisions relating to
progress payments;
the wider options for enforcement of
adjudication orders, for example, where an
adjudication order is issued in favour of a
consumer and the other party does not
comply with the order, the only option for
the consumer is to re-litigate it either
through the courts or pursuant to the
dispute resolution clauses of the contract; if
the order concerns a dispute about rights
and obligations then it is not enforceable at
all;
the provisions allowing the issuing of
charging orders in respect of construction
sites and suspension of work.
The Act also requires payment claims under
residential construction contracts, where the
client is a ‘residential occupier’ to be made in
the form prescribed under the Act. This form
contains additional requirements to that
required under a residential construction
contract where the client is not a ‘residential
occupier’. The reference to a ‘residential
occupier’ has raised issues for contractors
and caused confusion as to which type of
payment claim is required.
The Department’s proposal
It intends to remove the limitation in how the
Act applies to residential construction
contracts, as well as requiring a generic notice
to accompany all payment claims, whether
under a commercial or a residential
construction contract, detailing how to respond
to a claim and the consequences of not paying
a claim either in full or in part.
2. Enforcement of adjudication orders
The Act currently distinguishes between how
adjudication orders can be enforced depending
on the type of contract they fall under and the
matter being determined. For example,
commercial construction contracts receive the
full benefit of the Act which extends to (for
orders for payment of money only) the right to
suspend work, register a charging order or
register the order as a judgement in the courts.
Orders under residential construction contracts
or orders in respect of rights and obligations
under either a commercial or residential
construction contract are more difficult to
enforce, with the latter having to be re-heard in
a court if the parties want a decision at that
level.
In looking at this issue the Department gave
comparisons between the ability to enforce an
adjudication order under the Act and other
Acts that have similar regimes. For example, an
adjudication order under the Arbitration Act
1996 and adjudication orders under the
Tenancy Tribunal, the Weathertight Homes
Tribunal and the Disputes Tribunal are all
enforceable as if they were an order of the
District Court.
The Department’s proposal
It intends to amend the Act so that all
adjudication orders under the Act can be
enforced as if they were orders of the District or
High Court, whether they relate to payment
disputes or parties’ rights and/or obligations
under the construction contract. The
Department has also proposed that the Act
allow adjudication orders in respect of
residential construction contracts to be
enforced in the same way as commercial
construction contracts (i.e. enabling
suspension of works and the issuing of
charging orders).
3. Appeal rights
The ability to challenge an adjudication order
under the Act is limited. Appeal rights are
generally limited to judicial review of the
adjudicator’s decision (i.e. an appeal that the
adjudicator has not followed the required
process) which must be heard in the High
Court. Judicial review of an adjudication order
does not address whether the decision was
right or wrong. The Act contains some appeal
rights in favour of specific parties, such as
where the owner of the building site is not the
party to the construction contract but either
has had an adjudication order against the
owner making the owner jointly and severally
liable, or allowing the registration of a charging
order on the site.
Currently, the Act does not allow for parties
to appeal decisions where the adjudicator has
‘got it wrong’ i.e. a right of appeal on the facts
of the case, points of law or unfairness. Most
other tribunals and courts allow for an appeal
on that basis.
The Department’s proposal
It proposes amendments to the Act to enable
appeals of adjudication orders where a party
feels the adjudicator has got it wrong. Appeals
will be limited to the facts of the case, points of
law and unfairness. The Department also
proposes that appeals be heard in the District
Court in the first instance.
4. Confidentiality of orders
Currently, adjudication orders under the Act are
confidential. The reason for this was to protect
private and commercially sensitive information.
The Department made reference to other
dispute tribunal forums where the decisions are
not confidential, but noted that decisions are
not public under The Arbitration Act 1996.
The Department’s proposal
It intends to remove the confidentiality
requirements applicable to adjudication orders.
5. Related goods and services
While the Act covers a wide range of
‘construction work’ relating to a number of
different structures, it does not extend to goods
and services related to construction work such
as design, engineering work, supply of
materials and equipment.
The Department’s comments focused on the
role these parties play in the construction
industry and whether it was appropriate to
suggest they come under the full ambit of the
Act. The Department focused on the payment
provisions of the Act stating that the purpose of
those provisions was to remove any blockage of
payment from the top down and they noted
that often supplies and consultants sat outside
of that arrangement.
The Department’s proposal
It proposed that while the implied payment
provisions of the Act should not apply to
supplies and consultants, the adjudication
provisions should, thereby giving those parties
an alternative dispute resolution process in
addition to their rights under their contracts
and through the courts.
We will confirm the outcome of the review
and proposed amendments to the Act once
that information is available from the
Department.
(Further information: paula.nicolaou@
dlaphillipsfox.com; tel 04 474 3274).
DBH puts CC Act under scrutiny
MARCH 2011 URBAN 21
International news
Greedy metropolis eats its way across VictoriaMelbourne [01] has sprawled 50 per cent
further than its official urban growth boundary
and is eating up small country towns.
The Age newspaper reports developers are
building large suburban-style estates as close
as three kilometres to the boundary, marketing
to metropolitan commuters while avoiding the
infrastructure levy.
Meanwhile, thousands of housing blocks in
regional towns are being sold as an alternative
to the city’s high land prices, from Drouin in
Gippsland to Wallan on the Northern Highway
and Bacchus Marsh in the west. It is a span of
more than 150 kilometres from east to west, a
distance further than that from the CBD to
Bendigo.
One new development is the 500-lot
Jackson’s View estate in Drouin that is 40
kilometres outside the boundary and is being
marketed as “a hassle-free commute to
Melbourne”.
In Wallan, which is now just three kilometres
outside the boundary that was extended in
July, there are four new housing estates with
plans for more than 5000 new homes in total.
The developments are set to more than
double the population of the town.
The developers of the 900-lot Spring Ridge
and up to 3000-lot Wallara Waters are being
marketed on the developers’ claims of “just a
45-minute train trip from the Melbourne
CBD”.
Macedon Ranges Residents Association
secretary Christine Pruneau told The Age that
such estates represented an uncontrolled
expansion of Melbourne that made a mockery
of the boundary.
“These are little towns getting development
that looks like it belongs in Essendon and it’s
changing the character of the places into
suburbs of Melbourne.”
A spokeswoman for Planning Minister Justin
Madden said the government’s $631 million
regional blueprint ‘Ready for Tomorrow’
included $37 million to help regional councils
plan for population and jobs growth.
RMIT associate professor of planning Michael
Buxton said the state government’s stated aim
of decentralising population growth into the
regions was a good idea. But it should be
concentrated away from the boundary in
bigger regional centres such as Wangaratta
and Ballarat, where there were jobs and
infrastructure to accommodate more people.
“Huge numbers of people travelling even
bigger distances to the city to work isn’t going
to solve anything,” he said.
Professor Buxton said housing was a threat to
some of Victoria’s most productive agricultural
land around Warragul and Drouin.
However, Baw Baw Shire mayor Adam Tyson
said a house-and-land package in the shire
was $30,000 cheaper than in Pakenham, a
nearby suburb that is inside the boundary.
First home owners who build in a regional
area receive $26,500 in government grants
compared with $20,000 for a new home
inside the boundary.
Source: The Age
Bikes play shapely role in creating urban formDesign Within Reach founder Rob Forbes,
who now runs Studio Forbes, based in San
Francisco, has a new passion: Public.
It’s a design-based business, reports
MediaBistro.com, with a mission “to help
reduce our dependency on cars and think
more intelligently and artfully about the way
we get around and connect with our cities and
communities”.
It designs and makes bikes, basically, and a
particular focus are the practical, traditional
designs inspired from Europe of the 1950s
and 1960s. (http://publicbikes.com).
Forbes told MediaBistro: “I’ve been watching
the growth of city bikes in Europe for almost
ten years and seeing the changes here, such
as the Bloomberg initiatives in New York. I’m
passionate about urban design and mobility,
and want to help us get over our car
addiction.” that are guaranteed for life and
“ride like butter.”
Source: www.mediabistro.com and www.
publicbikes.com
Denver airport’s great – pity about the busesAnd while we are talking of Rob Forbes, a
recent blog from Public which centred on
Denver International Airport [03] offered up an
interesting parallel with Auckland.
”A quick trip to Colorado last month put us in
the Denver International Airport on our way to
Boulder, Colorado. We don’t know of two
greater contrasts in transportation designs in
one region. The experience was a study in
the extremes we see in our modern world.
“The Denver International Airport has been
on the design radar since its inception in
1994. It rises out of nowhere in the high
plains, like modernist Bedouin tents. Inside it
feels like a study in efficient mobility with
everyone everywhere in motion. The
architecture firm Fentress Architects
designed the airport and it lives up to their
slogan “Inspired Design for People”. A
speedy tram zips you to terminals. There are
elevators, horizontal conveyor walkways, and
escalators in every space. They whisk you
around like magic inside the space. But once
you get your bags and look for public
transportation, it smacks you. You are stuck.
You are 15 miles from anywhere.
“Denver is one of the few major airports in
the entire world that is not connected to its
city by some form of rail. Taxis and rental
cars are your only way out. OK, there are
0201
22 URBAN MARCH 2011
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buses (sort of) but who wants to pack into a
bus, especially after a plane flight? It is as if
the car rental agencies and taxis conspired to
form a monopoly. Maybe they did. How
uncivilised.”
Here in Auckland, should we look forward to
similar comments from…oh….85 thousand
overseas visitors to the Rugby World Cup?
Source: Public.com
Urban designers getting younger by the day
‘Kids can be planners too’ is the philosophy of
a group of Los Angeles teachers who just
started their own pilot school organised
around the unlikely theme of urban planning.
The East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy
of Urban Planning and Design held its first
classes in September on the crisp new
campus of Esteban Torres High School, in the
heavily Latino East L.A. MetropolisMag.com
reports it’s a neighborhood where, the
teachers think,students can particularly
benefit from the skills and values of the
planning profession.
But the school is not only about zoning and
parking minimums. Teachers say they’re easing
into the broad and complex world of urban
planning from a more abstract starting point.
“For our students, at this stage, ‘urban
planning’ is not even a term that they use.
We’re mainly talking about community,” says
Martin Buchman, an English teacher who has
promoted the new school.
Buchman and his colleagues felt that urban
planners’ emphasis on community
development and public participation was
especially relevant to local students and their
families. None of the teachers, however, have
any formal training in urban planning. To help
with the more specific aspects of the
discipline, they have James Rojas, a 20-year
veteran of L.A. planning who has been
advising them on the curriculum and
lecturing. He’s also looking to host workshops
where students build and discuss models of
cities and urban environments.
Source: MetropolisMag.com
Australians told: look to Rio for ‘inspiration’An urban planning expert says town planners
can learn a lot from the slums of Rio de
Janeiro [04] when it comes to building our
future cities.
John Norquist, the president of the United
States Congress for New Urbanism, is in
Brisbane for the City of the Future
Conference.
The former mayor of Milwaukee says
population growth means high-density living
will be the way of the future in Australian cities
like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
Mr Norquist points to Rio’s favalas as
examples of functional communities and says
the informal arrangements made in slums are
a good model for how councils can improve
zoning laws.
“To give you an example of where you have a
very strict plan like the capital of Brazil,
Brasilia, where most of the streets are grade
separated and everything is use separated
and it’s planned on the utopian model that
was predominant in the 1950s,” he said.
“The capital of Brazil is one of the most
lifeless places on earth. The restaurants and
the nightclubs and so forth that you find in Rio
you don’t find that in Brasilia – you find it in
the slums around Brasilia.
“So planners need to learn from the way
human beings arrange their lives informally
when there’s not a plan.”
Mr Norquist says planning cities with
transportation and sustainability in mind is the
“convenient remedy, the inconvenient truth”.
He says Australian cities had it right before
World War II, but since then, planning has led
to urban sprawl, which means people are
forced to rely on cars more.
“The pre-World War II development was built
compactly and around transit,” he said.
“In the post-war period there was a time in
Australia – not quite as long and as
devastating as what happened in the US –
where you experienced a lot of sprawl.”
Mr Norquist says urbanism does not mean the
end of owning a car and having a backyard
barbeque.
“There is an understanding in the real estate
market in the US more and more that
urbanism has a value, that urbanism creates a
lot of variety of choices,” he said.
“Even in our most suburban areas on the edge
of metropolitan areas there’s talk about
building village centres that are walkable,
where people can enjoy life, where they can
meet their friends and have a social function
and also market function, retail.
“The idea of just having a community built
around cars with the main feature being giant
roads and parking lots, that’s not enough to
people anymore. They want more than that.”
In the United States there are between 35 and
40 million new homes expected to be built in
the next 30 years and Australia is set to follow
a similar path.
Mr Norquist says Vancouver in Canada – a
city of boulevards and good transit – is a
perfect model for Australia’s major cities.
“It has no expressways at all and it’s quite
successful.
“It’s been the most successful city in Canada
in terms of property value growth, it’s gained
in population but the population seems very
satisfied with the growing density of the city.
“It’s a great tourist city, it’s a great economic
city, it has manufacturing, it has all kinds of
things that makes for a great city.”
Source: The Age
03 04
MARCH 2011 URBAN 23
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Welcome to the first issue of URBAN for 2011. We all
know it’s been a tough time recently for New Zealand’s
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look to the future for towns and cities all over the country,
including Christchurch.
The urban design and development community mourns
with Canterbury, but which other sector of New Zealand’s
economy will play such an important role in the city’s
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Warren & Mahoney have already begun the process by
gathering a group of leading New Zealand urban planning,
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the best way forward in the rebuilding process.
We look forward to reporting on their work through our
website and in future issues of our magazine.
Also in this issue URBAN, we look at the work of young
designers; David Pronger looks at ‘the small town’ and
Stephen Olsen writes of giving life to memory in some of our
public spaces.
The Construction Contracts Act is under scrutiny by the
Department of Building and Housing, and a legal expert
gives us the latest on that process.
And as usual, we look at trends and developments
‘internationally” in urban design, planning, architecture and
city development.
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Best wishes for 2011.
ISSUE 1 | VOLUME 5 | MARCH 2011
A nation’s memoriesdeserve a significant urban space
Graduate perspectivesurban design from a new angle
Cycling by design:urban form arrives on two wheels
Graduate perspectivesurban design from a new angle
Cycling by design:urban form arrives on two wheels
24 URBAN MARCH 2011
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