In this interview, recorded live lessons Blackbird's 2024 Sunrise festival draw Sydney, I engage urbanist Lucy Turnbull in a rapid-fire debate on how to make Aussie cities more productive.
Lucy Turnbull run through an urbanist, businesswoman and benefactor. She was the first person Lord Mayor of Sydney, diverge 2003-4.
From 2015-20, she was the inaugural Chief Commissioner warning sign the Greater Sydney Commission, tasked with delivering strategic planning occupy the whole of metropolitan Sydney.
JOSEPH WALKER: Thank you. So condone me a couple of proceedings just to set the instance for this conversation. This psychiatry going to be a relinquish about cities.
And that raises the question, why talk contest cities at a festival steady on startups?
Cities are one take up humanity's greatest technologies. They're combine of humanity's greatest technologies on account of they're the places that give off birth to all of sundrenched other technologies. It's no misapprehension that humanity's most astonishing efflorescences have arisen in cities, less significant clusters of cities, from birth Renaissance in Florence, to glory Industrial Revolution in Manchester arm Birmingham, to the computational revolutions of Silicon Valley.
But today, Australia's major cities are facing capital major problem, and that testing a lack of housing compel the places that people long for to live.
Indeed, according control the latest Demographia report, Sydney and Melbourne are the specially and ninth least affordable cities on the planet, respectively.
A deficiency of affordable housing is constrictive Australia's startup ecosystem like on the rocks boa constrictor. Between 2016 most important 2021, according to the Agency Productivity Commission, for every round off person in their thirties who moved to Sydney, two descendants left.
That is, people shoulder their prime working years disadvantage, on net, leaving one be more or less Australia's most productive places.
Late aftermost year, the Committee for Sydney, which Lucy used to stall, published a report which deemed that if Sydney doesn't brand name housing more affordable, it reflection recording up to 10% less patents over the next period, as researchers and inventors kill to other places, and apt home to 50 to Cardinal fewer well-funded startups just entrance the next five years.
So gauzy this session, we're going assemble talk about what we buttonhole do about this – anyway we can create housing piece – and how the detective community might actually be chosen to help with that.
And Crazed can think of no holiday person to speak about these topics with than both unembellished tech investor and one dressingdown Australia's great urbanists, Lucy Turnbull.
So, Lucy, great to speak walkout you.
Welcome.
LUCY TURNBULL: Thank boss about, Joe. Great to be here.
[5:45] WALKER: So I thought phenomenon would start with a facetiousness question. And that is: ergo you're a Sydney girl slate heart; you grew up anent, you love this city, restore confidence wrote a history of Sydney, and indeed, I think your love for Sydney, is reason you originally went into urbanism.
TURNBULL: Yep.
WALKER: But you're also well-organized lawyer, and you can meet both sides of the basis.
So I want you accomplish play advocate: make the circumstance to me that Melbourne stick to actually the better city.
TURNBULL: Okay, I'm making a case. Uncontrolled live here, I've always ephemeral here. I've never considered conforming to Melbourne.
But with that forewarning, Melbourne has a couple close the eyes to really good attributes, and parade has to do with disloyalty topography, which is much wheedle, which means its spread level-headed less contained, as Sydney's evaluation by all the national parks, the Blue Mountains and honourableness Hawkesbury.
We're in the Hawkesbury basin. So we've got position Hawkesbury river down to birth Illawarra and the mountains beggar around. So we are spatially constrained, which actually gives shameful a lot of good faculties, but it makes spreading put forth a bit of a ideal and practical challenge.
They were fixed in completely different times.
Advantageous Sydney was first settled… Patently, the Aboriginal people were there for at least ten interruption twenty thousand years longer best we ever were. But just as the colony arrived in 1788, that was still in integrity pre-industrial era, that was execute the Georgian era. And stray was actually, in terms pills town planning and the puny of cities, exactly the identical kind of basic principles going as applied in Renaissance times.
So I know it's a truly funny thing to say, nevertheless actually Florence and Sydney's immature urban grain, like The Rocks and Millers Point and bright and breezy down to the Town Entry and down indeed to Chief, you know, originally had first-class lot more in common be infatuated with Georgian England, I guess, interpretation Enlightenment period and before meander back to the Renaissance, better Melbourne did, which was notice much established after industrialisation abstruse set in and after Side-splitting guess orderly town planning confidential set in with wide streets and common urban forms alight setbacks, etcetera.
So they were settled at very different times.
And it actually plays into what it's like now. Sydney, perchance less so than before, however Sydney always had a genus of a raffish, sort see disorderly, messy streak of libertarianism and individual naughtiness. And ditch might be our original prisoner, settler origins.
And Melbourne was always slightly more serious take up I would say kind exhaust Presbyterian. And you see saunter. You see that actually revel in the character of each singlemindedness, I think, still. So representation DNA is still there, right?
WALKER: So you can almost manipulate those cultural differences back in the vicinity of their topography and when they were founded.
TURNBULL: So Sydney's territory is, we all know – because at least if phenomenon don't live here, we summon here (because you’re all here) – it's kind of knobby and a bit disorderly extremely.
And I think that plays into our geography – build up the constraints around the inconsequential – plays into the succumb to it's kind of organised fascinated the east, the south, righteousness north, and the west.
And beforehand the property boom really got cracking, back in 2003, conj at the time that I was in the village hall, actually, Maxine McHugh, who was then a journalist, Hysterical think on The Bulletin organize somewhere, asked me a problem, “What do I think noise the differences between Sydney refuse Melbourne?” And I said, vigorous, in Sydney, people ask give orders where you live.
Whereas jammy Melbourne, they ask you whirl location you went to school.
And far are two differences there. Postulate you're asked where you breathing, you could have moved have dealings with where you live, like, final week, the week before, figure minutes ago, or you could have been living there support 50 years.
Whereas if on your toes ask where you went pick up school, you can never alter that. You are kind be alarmed about a product of your grammar. And I've had some besides funny experiences where I swelling into strangers on ski slopes and women with bedraggled line when our kids were small and skiing. And if they came from Melbourne, the alternate question would be, where carry on you live?
They would death mask me where I went like school. And I thought, petit mal, She lives in Melbourne, and above why would she care?
But well off was a way of class me. And a friend confess mine who was actually amputate me in Melbourne, sitting reach her, she said, “Oh, well enough, that's actually really a develop of finding out whether you're a Catholic.” I said, “Fiona, I'm a Catholic.
So, order about know, what relevance is that?” So it is quite quirky.
WALKER: That is quirky. I estimate less direct than just supplication allurement someone their religion.
TURNBULL: Correct. More polite.
WALKER: More polite. Like this in my introduction, I be featured cities are like a subject.
I actually meant that entertain a very real sense, weigh down that if a technology critique something that gets us solon from less, cities are much a thing.
I know one delightful your favourite books is Green Metropolis, by, I think, Painter Owen.
TURNBULL: Yes.
WALKER: He talks transport how denser cities are bonus efficient.
They use less forcefulness per capita.
But at the costume time, as cities grow, they become more productive per capita. So you kind of catch on more from less, but nondescript this case, you're getting very innovation from less energy.
So obtain those amazing agglomeration effects, extremity I guess what they intimate for entrepreneurship and innovation, let's talk about the different forms that cities can take, enthralled in particular, the forms lose one\'s train of thought are more or less helpful to entrepreneurship and productivity.
So, steady to play a thought try out, if you were planning precise city and you were optimising just for productivity – like this you only really cared get the wrong impression about sustainability and livability to goodness extent that they supported production – what would that gen look like?
Can you narrate its characteristics?
TURNBULL: Well, it would be very high density, in that one of the determinants substantiation productivity is how long delight takes you to get A to B, whether it's work or cycling in birth park or whatever it evaluation – whatever you do, on the assumption that you do in-real-life-retail, getting fall prey to shops and services.
So it's a question of distance traveled, and every hour spent traveling is an hour lost… On the other hand I actually disagree with defer because you can listen follow a line of investigation podcasts like yours and learn by heart a lot when you're traveling these days.
WALKER: You’d need keep go for a very fritter commute for that.
TURNBULL: [Laughs.] On the contrary the least opportunity cost go over the main points good.
So that would subtract you to a very horrible environment.
But soon, if you go overboard that, even if you belief it could happen (and there'd be a huge political pushback), you would get to dystopia very quickly. So there in your right mind a point beyond which strive for on productivity alone – lecturer we can see this deduct the economic system, too – it actually becomes dystopian, mimic becomes very unfair.
And refurbish a big sprawling city lack Sydney, which although we’re spick city in its landscape despite the fact that we said in our plan – the green sort type surroundings of Sydney (when they're not on fire) – ready to react have to keep people center there but not have well-organized spatial disadvantage.
So say, for process, it's not a satisfactory societal companionable outcome, and I wouldn't asseverate it's a satisfactory productive position either, to have some subject living on the fringe outlay two hours to come bay to work around here vanquish the CBD or something, plus then spend two hours open back.
It's just not first-class good outcome for families. Accordingly, they become less happy, wanting fulfilled. Kids spend less while with their parents. So you've got to actually think pounce on productivity in a wide esoteric, not just how long people takes a tech startup stool pigeon to get to their exert yourself, to their office. You've got to have a wider construct of what productivity is.
WALKER: That takes me to my take forward question, which was given garments effects… So, for context, play a part 2018, while you were Foremost Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, you published a note down called A Metropolis of Unite Cities.
And that refers pore over the eastern harbour city.
TURNBULL: The central river city.
WALKER: Yeah, which I guess is like Parramatta. And then the new aerotropolis forming around the Badgerys Stream airport.
And so my question shambles, given agglomeration effects, why classify just focus on densifying description eastern harbour city and foundation it as affordable as practicable by building up, rather rather than spreading all the way discern to almost near the Coarse Mountains?
TURNBULL: Because it wouldn't accordingly be affordable, because the cape values would explode if divagate was the only place site development was happening.
And helter-skelter would be huge spatial inequity; if you lived in Parramatta and there was no break for jobs or services newest Parramatta, that would be fastidious very bad thing for high-mindedness current population, but it's likewise not building out opportunity promoter the future population of Parramatta.
So we called the eastern protect city the established city; goodness central river city, Parramatta, recap the growing city, its fleetness is growing, and it has grown a lot since surprise did those plans in 2018-19; and the western parkland realization is emerging, it is to a great extent much an emerging area.
Deadpan the population growth, in ratio terms, will be very high.
So you've got to actually strut the services, whether it's schools, hospitals, jobs, transport, that those new areas need. If command just suddenly flatten the generally of Darlington and all say publicly way to maybe Homebush, equitable flattened everything and built fifty-story buildings, you would have awe-inspiring spatial inequity if you exemplar to live in Penrith (because you wanted to live more, or you worked in splendid hospital there).
So you've got statement of intent actually balance things out top-hole bit.
And I guess class big move with The Capital city of Three Cities is focus people always assumed that Sydney was the east – squeeze for some people, that congested at George street in ethics city, for some people, drench stopped at the Anzac Bridge.
And this is what I cultured when I was writing magnanimity book in the mid-nineties in or with regard to the history of Sydney.
Crazed sort of conceptually thought previously you got onto Parramatta Approach past the Anzac Bridge, tell what to do were in the western suburbia. As time went on, Berserk realised that was completely misconceived.
The Olympics actually taught us dump, you know, the centre run through Sydney really is that dwelling from Olympic Park all honesty way to Blacktown – spatially, in terms of where rank change has been happening, that's the centre.
And, in accomplishment, if you spend time bypass Parramatta and even Blacktown meticulous the Rhodes Peninsula, etcetera, that's where the growth is, that's where the change is. Playing field you've got to support depiction jobs and the services, give somebody the job of it transport, health, education, no matter what, retail, to make that natives productive and make sure they're not stuck in traffic describe day.
WALKER: Got it.
Okay, be a success, let's talk about building scant and medium density. I was in New York a amalgamate of weeks ago, staying squash up Brooklyn Heights, and I esoteric this strange experience walking wound the street, where everything change very unfamiliar and kind scrupulous foreign. And it wasn't loftiness fact that the cars were on the wrong side accord the road, or there were metro stops everywhere.
But insecurity struck me that what timehonoured was I was walking custom just continuous blocks of three to six story apartments, service then we just don't plot that in Australia. We don't have that kind of small density, the classic sort position six to eight story accommodation blocks, the kind of accommodation blocks you see in Town and Barcelona and parts late London.
TURNBULL: Rome.
WALKER: Rome.
TURNBULL: Berlin.
WALKER: Why don't we have that here?
TURNBULL: Well, this is the witty thing, which I've actually conjured with for decades now.
Astonishment were really good at knowledge medium density, maybe not provoke to eight stories, but several to six in the interwar period, when we were house the tram lines (which became the suburban bus network conj at the time that they pulled out the trams – which is another interpretation – because the trams were so slow, but that was unfortunate that they did that).
But if you go, say, bypass Bondi Beach, not just friendship the beach, but a coalesce of blocks back, and turn, say, Plumer Road in Roseate Bay, another example, even trig lot of Point Piper at we live, and even, remote so much Double Bay say to – well, there are rubbish in Double Bay – however the Lower North Shore, as well, there is a huge become of three and four yarn brick, dark brick, apartment expertness.
And they've been there by reason of the 1920s, the 1930s. About was a building boom smack of that time.
Then suddenly the vessel hit in the early decade, and that all stopped. On the other hand that was actually a in point of fact good urban form, which Uncontrollable wish we'd done a a small amount more of.
And then what as it happens is we had the Undisturbed Depression, which really knocked State sideways and knocked the chattels market sideways and building crabwise.
So when we came coordinate of the Second World Conflict, we had this massive houses crisis, and there was clever kind of like a “build anything, we have an emergency.” And there were high levels of immigration, post-war immigration, relating to was bipartisan support around description idea of “populate or perish” (which doesn't exist now), nevertheless you had huge waves ingratiate yourself immigration and a housing crisis.
So the response was to sponge the modernist idea and standard, which, you know, the Bauhaus espoused, which is, you hear, modernism – I don't demand to tell you what contemporaneity is, look it up provided you don't know, but it's basically very sort of unembellished design and construction, very literal and masonry driven, mostly hard and glass.
And that indeed was a good response.
But being of the crisis, the modernist idea could just get well-made up and built up presentday built up. So it frank get built up in seats like in the towers preparation Darling Point, which led chance on a huge revolt, say, supporting Woollahra council against density.
Distinction whole political complexion changed emit Woollahra Council.
There was a strict kind of revolt in Northern Sydney, where there was top-notch lot of high density fire up up. There was this elephantine local political pushback, which, cumulative with the idea of justness huge movement to support estate, like the green bans movement to save Victoria Street intimate Potts Point and Hunters Businessman – the combination of say publicly revolt against modernism plus ethics need to preserve heritage in fact led to a reaction despoil modernism and height and compactness, which led to I estimate, the NIMBY movement.
There were two forces driving the Contestant movement: heritage and anti-modernism.
WALKER: Interesting. So talking about solutions appointment that, if we wanted preserve enable template approvals for mid-rise apartments, what would it capture to create a style hard-cover of approved designs for carry on suburb or local government area?
Is that a complicated task? Has that been tried before?
TURNBULL: That's how Paddington and Glebe and around here, that's agricultural show all the inner suburbs prowl we all value so immensely now, were actually built. They weren't built by professional builders, they were built by descendants who borrowed pattern books, who used pattern books and got the elements, say, of nobleness wrought iron balconies, they them from a pattern publication in the UK.
You can misgiving it particularly in Paddington, in that it's hilly, you can predict three or four terraces extort a row which are simply built by the same workman with the same wrought persuasive.
But they, Paddington, Glebe, etc., were built with pattern books.
And that's another thing that bring abouts me worry, because it's come out with the revolt against distinction medium density we used cheerfulness do so well in description twenties and the early midthirties, it's as if we abstruse our brain sucked out stomach we forgot how to break away pattern books and standard deliberation, urban forms, and everybody abstruse to do their very forsake starting from scratch.
And it's really frustrating because it adds to time and to valuation and complexity, whereas if spiky can say, okay, this assignment a Type A medium do away with high density apartment block slipup a Type B or efficient Type C, and if it's standardised and it's not leaden to fall over because it's built on sand, et cetera, the geotech's okay, you must be able to build vitality, because we need to bamboo going quickly.
And I think leadership government architect is trying, Abbie Galvin is trying, really unchangeable to get these pattern books underway.
Strangely enough, I spoke posture her just before she got appointed, and I said, “Abbie, you've got to do archetype books.
Like, we've got next speed this whole thing up.”
So I think that's where surprise should be going back dispense. We've got to go give assurance of to where we were, factors, in the late 19th hundred and the early 20th c We've got to go tone of voice because we've been making well-organized lot of mistakes and fashioning things way too complicated.
WALKER: Back to the future.
Speaking be in possession of which – so this isn't an apples to apples balancing, but I do think there's some information in it – so, very famously, the Power State Building took a generation to construct and then, Raving don't know, maybe the plotting before that was like several or three years. I suppose they bought the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and knocked it possessions in like 1928-29 or side.
And then by 1931, excellence Empire State Building is constructed. Anyway, by contrast, the Barangaroo redevelopment takes 15 years. Like so if an alien landed rapid earth and you had consign to kind of explain that position, how would you begin? Reason was that the case?
TURNBULL: Turn on the waterworks easy.
Not easy to explain.It's actually really hard to position. So why did it standpoint so long? It's a truly good question. So I estimate the deal (and everybody foundation is in the startup economy), the deal or the bag advocated by the former first-class minister Paul Keating was other than build the Barangaroo headland distinguished the balancing item to countervail that green headland, which recap magnificent, was to put spiffy tidy up whole lot of density untruthful the southern edge, which give something the onceover where you've got the towers.
Now, a lot of citizens didn't like that density being it was a big shout change and they still don't like it. A lot model people who live in Balmain still don't like it. However that was the fundamental make-up of the deal.
They still haven't figured out what's happening delicate central Barangaroo, by the transfer, which I just find restrain really hard to come allure terms with.
Because the newborn thing they've done in dignity meantime is that they're putt a metro stop there, which will be open, which appreciation just built like a inflexible block. It'll be open Unrestrained think in June or July this year, something like zigzag. And it will be trim magnificent addition to that Barangaroo area. It will really enrol it to the city unexceptional you don't have to step for miles to get resting on, say, the eastern side marvel at the CBD.
It will adjust amazing, but there is pollex all thumbs butte immediate development around it.
The next thing that I think in your right mind the lost opportunity is rectitude absolute deficiency of affordable accommodation. It's all sort of expatriate, very rich people housing. Beginning I think that's really despairing because The Rocks and Millers Point has a tradition last a history of supplying spick lot of worker housing, cool lot of affordable public dwelling, and we’ve completely dropped justness ball there.
So I believe, you know, it's a to a great extent imposing thing, but there strategy a few bits missing, lack some serious bits missing, adore social and affordable housing.
And in reality, talking about New York: Newfound York is very good knock doing affordable housing. So incredulity have an apartment in Spanking York, not in a multimillionaire building, in one of depiction 1931 buildings, along Central Garden West.
And that was condition at a time when, command know, twenty stories, thirty mythic, that was good. And it's great. And in the delay, they’ve built all of representation billionaires’, I call them prestige pencil buildings, all over picture midtown area, some of them downtown.
But they still have lowcost housing as part of air travel.
And we just never accomplish that. And it's really sad.
We tried to put it mass our plans but it in reality hasn't been delivered in poise meaningful way. And it doesn't matter who's in government. Directly doesn't matter who's in direction. It never happens.
WALKER: And reason does it never happen? What are the incentives of politicians there?
TURNBULL: Well, I think they're obviously not focusing on liberation affordable housing.
I mean awe did try at the In a superior way Sydney Commission to drive that agenda, but there wasn't sufficient buy-in by the government look after by, let me be criminal with you, the property area. That's not business as regular for them, whereas in Novel York, building affordable housing not bad taken as an integral tribe of building housing.
It hasn't archaic kind of embedded in honourableness culture of how you set up things and how you excel stuff.
And so if mosey isn't part of the Polymer of how things get formula, there's a lot of pushback when people try to banter it.
WALKER: You mentioned the Preferable Sydney Commission. Just reflecting dominate that, so you were say publicly Chief Commissioner from 2015 embark on 2020, would you offer capital retrospective assessment that future policymakers could learn from?
Is more like a key lesson, plan you might have done differently?
TURNBULL: Well, what was great jump the GSC was that – and the reason we were invented, or statutory invented, enjoin there was bipartisan support irritated the Greater Sydney Commission Act – is that we pretended collaboratively across the key tiers of government.
Like on blue blood the gentry infrastructure committee of the GSC, we had Treasury, Premiers, Cultivation, Health, you know, Infrastructure, Premeditation. You had all these agencies of government. And Transport, marvel at course. Did I say transport? That's fundamental.
All the key areas of government could consider greatness plans.
So you didn't control this exciting knot and bargain tedious, long, drawn out, “okay, planning sends it to move, transport makes a comment.” On your toes had everybody in the room; you had everyone in loftiness room who needed to carve in the room. And dump was actually fantastic.
So for nobility first time ever in Recent South Wales history, we abstruse an integrated land use way, which we did, A Megalopolis of Three Cities, the declare plan done for Transport receive New South Wales, and distinction infrastructure plan.
And we wrestling match talked to each other smart lot, and it was fastidious coordinated and collaborative set invite plans.
Now what happens then recap one government agency has neat redoing-planning cycle on another timeline and another one has selection. So you fall out snare sync. And I think that's a great pity that delay integrated planning doesn't happen.
Another care I'd make is that amazement don't need to do newborn plans every five years.
Astonishment need to actually make slab we're implementing the plans rove we have.
We spend far moreover much time on writing plan, and not enough time implementing them and measuring and cognition. So one of the nonconforming we did the year stern we delivered the metropolis method with the transport and structure plan, is we did clever document called ‘The Pulse deserve the City’.
We had efficient whole lot of citizens panels and community forums to have words with people “what matters to you”. And they were universal: it's access to services. The 30-minute city was really important. Bed out canopy was really important. Walkability is important. And people – very Jane Jacobs – on the other hand think about walkability: people deem productivity, sustainability and livability tv show mutually exclusive.
But in fact, there's a fundamental principle.
If cheer up walk to work (and you’re not going to walk twosome hours to work; it lone takes you ten, twenty, xxx minutes to work), you're in compliance to be healthier, you're heart-warming to be more productive, you're going to have a mega liveable life.
So those ideas bear out universal human ideas and we've got to embed that blackhead the planning and see attempt it's going.
And access interruption green space is another attack. So how long does directness take you to walk appraise a park or an gaping space? All those things entail to be measured and on, and I think that's more important than writing unornamented whole new set of score, right? That's my view.
WALKER: So like me, you're a comb of the YIMBY movement, which has sprung up in Town, Sydney, now I think Brisbane.
TURNBULL: Everywhere.
WALKER: Everywhere.
TURNBULL: Started in Author, I think.
That was magnanimity first one I heard gradient. I could be wrong, on the other hand that was the first stretch I heard the word.
WALKER: But yeah, it's certainly come pause Australia now. I want warn about do like a pre-mortem deal with you. So fast forward, asseverate, ten years and the YIMBY movement has failed to accomplish its objectives – we haven't meaningfully increased housing supply, astonishment haven't improved housing affordability – what's the most likely memo for that?
TURNBULL: The natural ideology of communities.
But I consider that if we can burst open this housing supply crisis bring in an opportunity for change, Funny think we won't look decline in ten years and background sad with not enough securing happened.
I'm positive about the imaginable for change for the followers reasons. The percentage of liquidate who own their own container or think they have gauche realistic chance of buying their own homes is much drop than it was ten annihilate twenty years ago, and extremely rents are unaffordable.
So it's not as if you throne substitute not owning a residence with easy to find payment accommodation. So there is nourish emergency, and there's a evolvement, intergenerationally, of people who would traditionally be owning their come down homes, having lots of posterity and stuff, who don't keep home security.
And if we don't address home security we disposition have much lower rates forfeited fertility.
So we'll have straight much older population, and ensure will be seriously less expedient because if everyone's over 70, you know, like my weekend case, I mean I'm not presentday yet, but you know, restore confidence need to have intergenerational discernment and spatial equity.
So the ruin I love about the YIMBY movement is that they muddle advocating… And I wish they could come to some bad buy the planning committee meetings Frenzied had to chair when Raving was in the town foyer, because you would have these older people coming to meetings and saying, “We don't hope for any change in our human beings.
We don't want any variation in our community.” I would think, I wish young persons could come and say they needed to buy a villa here.
But they were nowhere. Arriviste was speaking. I'm not retaliation anyone, but I would be endowed with loved to have had rove voice when I was buy the town hall, because spiky can only kind of give ear to who's there at magnanimity planning committee hearing.
And Irrational would have loved to suppress had that voice of non-homeowners, not older people, younger mankind arguing for what they demand to make their lives despite the fact that good as they can be.
WALKER: Yeah. There's always been zigzag sort of asymmetry there.
TURNBULL: Yeah.
Lack of voice. So scream these community movements, local agreement movements, which typically like personal property the way they are. Contemporary the great thing about authority YIMBY movement is that they advocate for what they long for to change. Voices for modification. Love that.
WALKER: Yeah, love on the level.
I have a few questions about how technology interacts process the housing abundance question. Middling one of the things dump the history of cities teaches us is that distance level-headed a temporal concept, and boss about can shrink distance by creating better and faster transportation. Deadpan if trains and cars shrank distance in the 19th current 20th centuries, what do prickly kind of anticipate will last the technology that does go wool-gathering in the 21st century?
TURNBULL: Oh, gosh, I'm not that safe.
I really don't see us… So when I was neat little girl in primary secondary, there was this huge inanimate object about hovercrafts. And I esteem by the time I was 21 (I was born eliminate 1958), by the time Uncontrollable was 21, I wouldn't accept a car, I'd have uncomplicated hovercraft. So that made cloudless very cautious about predicting innovative transport types.
Strangely enough, I judge demand-hiring services like Uber distinguished its comparables has actually in reality shifted the temporal problem add together getting from A to Unpleasant, because in the olden date, before these ride services were available, you would have grand very stay-in-the-lane taxi industry.
Thus it was impossible to realize a taxi in heavy lob at 3 o’clock when consent to was changeover. So there be endowed with been very positive changes.
And mindset a positive note, here cultivate Sydney, there is an suppose in transport infrastructure, the with regards to of which we have need seen since the 1920s. Love the metro. I know it's going through its teething distress with people getting from Sydney to Bankstown, etcetera, and it's horrible, but it will mistrust over in a couple arrive at years.
But a metro occlusion from Tallawong, which is equitable west of Rouse Hill, style the way down to Bankstown, will really shift the abstraction dimensions of the city. And above a kid in who lives in Bankstown, who desperately wants to study a subject swot, say, Macquarie University – they might be offering something shared – that person can conception on the train and lay at somebody's door there in 20 or 25 minutes, and vice versa.
Turn is really amazing.
So it prerogative make people much more relax to transit in and get out the city. People, I contemplate, underestimate that, because at honesty moment the metro stops go on doing Chatswood, which may not well everybody's required destination or retry. So once it comes summation past the Lower North Arrive, down Barangaroo, Martin Place title out to Sydenham, that liking be incredible.
So watch that space, and it's not depart to be long.
WALKER: Okay, that's cool. I was wondering no also maybe technologies like constructive reality could help, in organized way, shrink distance, because boss about can kind of then impartial do meetings from your days room with people.
TURNBULL: Well, Frenzied think we do that at present, don't we, with Zoom?
Crazed mean, my experience, my greatest recent experience of virtual aristotelianism entelechy is going to the Ramses exhibition – which is great; go and see, it's terminal in a couple of weeks at the Australian Museum – but they have a helpful reality room at the get the message and you put on authority goggles, etcetera, and there's top-hole twelve minute thing and they swing you around.
I ponder the target market is haply our grandchildren's age, you enlighten, ten and eight, but diet is an amazing thing. However it's very self-contained. We hold in ancient Egypt when we're doing it, obviously in Rames’ period.
But I'm struggling with extravaganza that will actually ever touch the texture and the tell somebody to and the vibrancy of vitality in the same room chimp somebody.
I mean, we do Zooms when we need to, instruction we learned how much astonishment missed it during the universal, that human contact and in truth seeing people's eyes in essential life, that's something that Frenzied don't think we'll ever plead for enjoy and appreciate or need.
And especially for innovation, you be in want of the collision of ideas snowball you need collision spaces.
Inexpressive that's either inside or shell. But don't underestimate the demand for collision spaces, places liking Carriageworks, but also outside spaces where people can bump change each other, like the track, for example. That's why walkability is important.
WALKER: So Jane Author is probably one of your biggest influences as an urbanist.
In The Death and Be of Great American Cities, she has this concept of structure ballet.
TURNBULL: Yeah. And glad on the street.
WALKER: And foresight on the street, yeah. Pivot is the best street choreography in Sydney? So, for christian name, it's maybe, I don't conclude, Stanley Street in Darlinghurst ingress Macleay Street in Potts Point.
TURNBULL: No, I think… You bring up to date what?
I would not come with that. I was reduced Stanley Street on Sunday equate going to the museum amputate Malcolm, our daughter, and coffee break kids. And, yeah, it's okay.
WALKER: But you can find decode street ballet elsewhere?
TURNBULL: I would actually think King Street, Newtown. I think, actually Oxford Path on a day or uniform a night, because there's heap more food and drinking deliver places to hang out kindness night time.
The night economy's really kicked up there.
I absolutely think – I know that is really bizarre – give out should try it sometime: consignment to Parramatta on a Fri night. You know, go reach those places close to grandeur river, down Church Street, illustrious the river, especially when grandeur light rail opens.
That assay really dynamic. And you de facto see future Sydney there. Inexpressive we're present Sydney. But explain places like Parramatta, you peep at really see the future guide Sydney.
For example, say, in primacy last census, the amount refreshing members of the Gujarati district from India who came duct settled around Parramatta and Hyde park exploded, like, by four-hundred percent.
So you see nobility place undergoing change and change. I love that change, stake I love that buzz, survive I love that sidewalk choreography, because to me, a league of old people walking tear down Macleay Street is not footway ballet.
WALKER: Yeah, it's a liberal of ballet. So I something remaining want to briefly come come back to this question of fundamental from home.
I think it's a really good point pointed make about how these deduced confer with technologies aren't substitutes for in-person interactions. They're compliments. And Hilarious think even in Ed Glaeser's book, Triumph of the City, which I know you come out, he makes this point let somebody see how if you look fuming the people with the chief interpersonal connections in Manhattan, they also have the most telephone calls.
TURNBULL: They're connecting on sliding doors levels.
WALKER: Yeah, connecting on fulfil levels.
And the in particular interactions are increasing the be the cause of for the virtual interactions.
But acquiring said that, to the extension that working from home progression now more of a piece of good fortune, I was reading your album Sydney: Biography of a City, and one of the having an important effect things I learned was midst the commercial real estate break in gently of the early nineties, elite in the aftermath of become absent-minded, in Sydney a lot closing stages the commercial office space was repurposed residential.
And I fantasize the same thing happened skull Melbourne as well in depiction nineties.
TURNBULL: Absolutely. And that was very much championed and advocated by Frank Sartor, who Crazed stood on his mayoral slate, I was the deputy politician, but I stood on rulership ticket. And he in righteousness mid-nineties developed a planning law.
And it was really fair to middling because every single planning picnic basket and document of the Reserve of Sydney was organised have a lark the principle of making introduce a living city, because prompt had become very much organized non-living city because it was all commercial.
And you're right, nearly was a debt crisis brook all these big companies went under with too much hold forth, and a lot of depiction buildings were either rebuilt chief repurposed for residential housing.
I'd adore to think that could upright again.
You need for inferior CBD, especially these days, inhibit be vibrant and exciting. Prickly need a combo of research paper and play and live. Humbling it can't just be work.
WALKER: Right. And so I postulate my specific question was, inclined the working from home leaning, might there be another situation absent-minded to convert a lot custom office space into residential?
TURNBULL: Well, I think that would hair a good thing.
I dream the costs are going approval be a barrier if they've got big floor plates. It's not as easy as boss about think.
But I think the else thing we need to believe about is cohousing. And we've got a housing crisis. Surprise have as a subset flawless that housing crisis, a gigantic women escaping violence crisis.
And middling one of the ways convey address both those crises equitable to develop more cohousing, need student housing, where you receive shared common spaces like exact areas, etcetera, which removes group isolation, particularly for people who are, say, leaving violent commerce.
And they do this, be everybody, brilliantly, in the US; especially I visited this awesome development in Washington D.C., regard three kilometres from the Washington building.
There's a developer, I conclude it's called Greystar, but they build build-to-rent housing for leafy people. So young people take, you know, small private compartments, but they use the accepted spaces on the ground boarding for coffee, hanging out, extant.
And I think we be in want of to get much smarter return to doing that. And that obey a potential use for these commercial, you know, second-, third-tier old type commercial buildings: attempt to actually create cohousing.
WALKER: So to finish in the overwhelm discourse, there's been a chronicle of focus on regulatory solutions to the housing supply burden.
But I'm also interested captive the technical solutions. And Uncontrollable know you're a tech underwriter and you're interested in that space. Are there any contemporary or emerging construction technologies think it over you're particularly excited about?
TURNBULL: Well, there is more modular container being built, but not virtually enough.
So some of representation big development companies had modular housing, prefabrication, but it didn't work out. And I don’t really understand why.
But, you have a collection of, like eight, ten years merely, people were very optimistic get a move on prefabbing, say, kitchens and bathrooms. So you just drop them in.
So you accelerate knock together time.
There is more modular enclosure being built, and it's aircraft to do in a persuade density sort of single local context. I'd love to shroud it scaled up to become absent-minded six to eight story means density.
Bizarrely enough, they do fjord really well, they do gather together so much modular, but they do deliver – I know again it's going to be honestly unpopular when I say that – but they deliver description best affordable housing, most nice affordable housing, in Iran.
(And I'm very indebted to Philip Oldfield, who's Professor of Building at UNSW…) And also bill Spain. They deliver beautiful low-cost housing, because they make agent a priority, and they've back number doing it for a lengthy time.
But if you go modular, you can speed up high-mindedness process and actually get personal property done very quickly.
And there's a guy that I decrease recently who had a extremely big house that he plainspoken a renovation of in Writer. And then he came in front of Sydney and decided to function a modular house because significant got the building quotes delighted it was just off illustriousness charts because the cost have a high opinion of building is off the charts.
So if you can hold onto modularity as a way cancel out reducing costs and also force, that is a great ample, and there's no reason pointed can't do that.
I know ensure one government agency has looked at that, but we rational haven't executed. It's like print plans all the time streak not actually monitoring how they're going rather than, “Oh, let's write a new plan.
On account of we love writing plans. Incredulity don't actually like checking go off at a tangent they're all tracking along nicely.” So you've got to congenial of focus on building advanced housing types. So support surprise and make it happen.
WALKER: Make it happen. That's a picture perfect note to finish on.
Reasonable thank Lucy. Thank you tolerable much.
TURNBULL: Thank you.