Hello, and welcome to this special edition of Talking Property with CBRE. The Lobby Series is a collection of intimate talks with industry experts that uncover how we can maximise the human experience in the spaces we frequent every day. Each episode takes place in the lobby of some of Sydney's most iconic buildings and brings together our very own in-house experts with market leaders who are shaping our future cities. We hope you enjoy these insightful conversations.
SC:
Hello, I'm Sameer Chopra. I'm head of Research in the Pacific and ESG research across Asia Pacific for CBRE. I'm delighted today to be joined by Doctor Caroline Butler-Bowden who's the Executive Director of the Cities Revitalisation and Place for Transport New South Wales. And look, we're here to talk about how purpose-driven businesses and communities create opportunities to evolve how we live, work, and play. The idea of creating sort of conscious cities that maximise the human experience. And I'm in great company.
CBB:
Nice to be here.
SC:
Great. Maybe Caroline if you could start us off, could you share for the listeners what does it mean to be a conscious city?
CBB:
From my perspective, it's a city that is aware. It's a city that is open to the data, the knowledge, the information that is being gathered about that city. How does a city use that information to improve that city for the experience of citizens and so forth? A conscious city is a city that can respond to whether or not it's things like the pandemic or climate change or inflation or whatever those kind of challenging questions are. It's also a city that is grounded in history and connected with nature. I think those two things are of fundamental importance. It's also fundamentally, a conscious city is a fair city. It's a shared city, you know, it's a city for all. And how does that play out and how do we all, as custodians and stewards of the city, play into assisting that? And I think the last thing I'd say is often when we're thinking about perhaps what a conscious city is, what does an unconscious city look like? And how we bear that in mind, in the way that we plan for design, manage. You know, revitalise, bring energy and sort of sustainability to our city centres.
SC:
What role does a cities revitalisation and place play in building this conscious city?
CBB:
Cities revitalisation and place plays a fundamental role. I think one thing that we crave during the pandemic was kind of community connectedness, feeling a part of something bigger. So the revitalisation program is very much dedicated to bringing people together. It's about how we might reimagine public spaces, our streets, our squares and so forth. And how we can create spaces that are both attractive, you know, healthy spaces for people to connect, but also that can boost local economies is obviously of incredible importance. So it is about walkable city. It is about a city a healthy city. It is incredibly important. So health and wellbeing. We've seen things like loneliness and other sorts of things on the rise in society. So what are those attractors through city revitalisation and place to bring people together. My team have led a number of projects across New South Wales, many in CBDs about re-imagining public space and streets. So we kicked off very early in Covid with Streets of Shared Spaces. Which is all about how do we give more space to people to come together safely, to dwell, to connect, to spend time with each other. And one of the projects, for instance, was Open Streets, where we worked with those councils in Western Sydney, most impacted by the 2021 Lockdowns. And part of that were kind of street activation, street parties, ways that through placemaking and other sorts of things, we could bring the community together safely. And I think the other kind of key area is how do we encourage both sort of systems reform as well as program design and how do we trial things? Like I think cities need to experiment pilot, do demonstration projects that might usher in a different way of appreciating the city and enabling citizens to come together to do things differently. And one last program that I think is worth talking about is the Al Fresco restart package. Which of course has been seeing that explosion of outdoor dining and people being able to use their streets perhaps a bit differently to how they used them before. So how we could work with local councils and across state government to enable those types of activities. And I think we are really seeing the results of that, and some areas being really brought to life through those types of schemes.
SC:
Definitely noticed it in Sydney in the last couple of years. These outdoor dining venues whether it's in The Rocks, and other locations.
CBB:
The Rocks is a very good one. And it was one of the first ones.
SC:
Oh , it's brilliant.
CBB:
Absolutely, in terms of working with placemaking to be able to do that. And borrowing some of the road space from cars and use of cars to putting people at the centre of that and maybe involving creative industries - artists and others to help do a range of programs that some of them might be temporary. Some of them might be longer term. We've just opened the Big Picture Festival in Newcastle, which is a series of giant murals throughout the city. So that's since the artists being connected with place and expressing their creativity, but in a holistic program across that city.
SC:
How can the property industry support your longer terms of place making and city activation strategy? What can we do?
CBB:
Great question. The property industry can do a lot. We have released the New South Wales Public Space Charter. That charter calls the signatories from state and local government of course, but also from the property industry and from community. Any groups or people or corporations that plan, design, manage or evaluate public space. So that takes in quite a lot of people. So we're asking people to sign up. There are ten simple principles to that, things like community. It's designed for place. It's resilience, it's sort of health and wellbeing. There are all sorts of aspects to those principles. And then three values. And the idea is that people sign up to the charter and then they become part of a community of practice. And we share case studies. They report on what they're doing, and it's a way of building momentum. Obviously. It's entirely optional for companies to sign up, but they become part of something, and it can shine a spotlight on the property industry where there's leadership being demonstrated. The charter is one great opportunity, I think, for the property industry to come on board with us.
SC:
One of the interesting points you made was this connection with the past, at the start of the conversation. Could you just elaborate a little bit about it? What are we talking about when we talk about linking with our past?
CBB:
The idea of linking with the past is fundamentally connected to how do we create distinctive places? Places that cross time and might change, but you know, we are sitting opposite apart with extraordinary Morton Bay Fig Trees and so forth. So they've been there for decades and decades and decades. You know, cities are full of places and precincts that are changing. So how do they respond and adapt to the needs of citizens and so forth. But always have an understanding of history at the core. And of course, important to that is connecting with country.
SC:
Dr. Caroline, thank you so much for your time today. I've certainly learned a lot. Thank you.
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