How To Build A City | CANBERRA | FD Engineering

How To Build A City: Canberra | FD Engineering

Watch ‘How To Build A City – Seattle’ here: https://youtu.be/5MN6AXC4Z7k
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This documentary explores the captivating story of Canberra, tracing its journey from its early beginnings to its status as a dynamic modern capital. Through a blend of archival footage and expert commentary, viewers are taken on a journey through Canberra’s rich history, highlighting its architectural marvels, cultural significance, and unique urban landscape. From its founding as a planned city to its present-day status as a hub of political and cultural activity, the documentary captures the essence of Canberra’s charm and allure. With a focus on its iconic landmarks, vibrant culture, and natural beauty, it offers a compelling glimpse into the soul of Australia’s capital city.
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[Music] cities are theaters for Change and Innovation seats of power and crucibles of culture a city is a place of transactions habitats of human civilization they are places where people from all walks of life commute commune and compete anytime you’ve got a city with a highly educated Workforce it’s going to be more productive by 2050 68% of the global population will be living in cities that are already bursting at the seams or moving into others that are yet to be conceived the art of planning is in the doing you have a vision it’s got to be robust but it’s got to be flexible enough to change without losing primary intent and then you’ve got to totally commit to delivering it never before has it been so imperative to get the recipe right to create sustainable livable cities that Inspire and excite us all you’ve got to make sure that you have aspects and elements that you know people are going to enjoy and the only way to ensure that is to make them part of the process of Designing the city as we race towards a more urbanized future there is much to learn from the present and the past from the now the how and the wow of building the greatest cities in the world in a broad Valley near the foothills of the Australian Alps stands Cur Australia’s national capital I just love the fact that Cambra capital of Australia is also the bush Capital the natural environment is all through CRA it’s everywhere and it’s not Parkland as such it’s Bush untouched it’s like a work of art that you get to live in I love the benefit of Cam being both big and small at the same time you know it’s not as vibrant as some of the bigger cities but my day-to-day quality of life is unparalleled it’s a really calm City it has Repose it has Grace and it’s a place where you can make your mark to my mind it’s one of the few places in Australia where if you want to you can contribute to the city and anything you do you will see physically or intellectually blossom in this city that’s Adventure so this is canra a City built in the 20th century and thoroughly planned from the get-go you could be pulling the best out of other cities around the world but we seem to have everything amazing setup of the lake with the National Gallery High Court palous National Library beautiful architectural buildings sitting in the landscape we’ve got something that can always be exciting to the camera citizen to quote Edmund bacon a highly respected 20th century urban planner from America canra is a statement of world culture that belongs among the greatest creations of man cber was ranked by the oecd as the world’s most livable City in 2014 people clearly come for the culture and stay for the lifestyle you cannot beat the Drop dead beautiful landscape this sort of vastness that stretches out to what we all think of as quintessential Australian bush that is an Exquisite landscape that completely surrounds the city from any vantage point for me being in a city that offers me everything from an urban lifestyle in culture and understanding but always having that connectedness to landscape is tremendously important it’s seductive Beyond Imagining the purpose-built capital of Australia is little little more than a century old in City years that puts its development somewhere between adolescence and early adulthood cities are like us as individuals as people we have a past we have layers we have signature experiences can we’re still very concerned about what other people think of it we’ve got through the growing pains we’ve got the bones the structure of the city and now we’re INF filling I suspect you know both physically and culturally this is a city that’s coming of age not unlike many of its residents you know canra is one of the main centers of higher education in Australia and a lot of people have come from overseas to study at places like the Australian National University or university of CRA which is just driven a a very large number of you know individuals who have come gotten a degree and then looked around seen that life is pretty good and decided to stay I think there’s five universities all told so it’s a university town and I guess with all it comes with with that there’s a lot of um dynamism and ideas it’s a very very Innovative place for example patents per capita is double anywhere else in Australia it’s producing ideas information knowledge knoow we live in the information World someone has to come to it someone has to produce it someone has to know it someone has to show it someone has to maintain it and move it forward and Camber is a big part of that story 30% of the CRA population has a University degree or higher as a go to about 16% for the nation as a whole so that’s a big difference also economically so median incomes and Camber are far higher than they are in almost anywhere else in Australia adding to that Advantage the cost of living is 10% cheaper than Melbourne or Sydney and where housing is concerned can Barons get 15% more bang for their Buck the city and its districts which are slowly becoming micro cities in their own right are laid out out in a wheel and spoke pattern rather than a Manhattan style grid they cover an area of 8814 Square km and boast a density of fewer than 550 people per square kilm it’s fair to say CRA is a city of suburbs sub divisions we’re incredibly spread out I think from end to end we might be 30 40 50 km in terms of cities we’re incredibly not dense if you like bike tracks are plentiful congestion is negligible and Peak out is often just a matter of slowing down to 80 km an hour I know people talk about the 20 minute City or the 30- minute City we have it we’ve had it for years and it’s because we’ve been able to plan our development with our transport canra Australia’s young federal capital city was built on beautiful castal land designed by men who visualized a city of beauty and symmetry the location and layout of the landscape were key considerations in cra’s creation a city that was thoroughly planned from the outset the Australian colonies Federated in 191 and so there was a need for to be the capital city where the federal Parliament would be and there were a number of places were put up as options 35 sites were suggested and quite vigorously contested by the powers that be and we ultimately get a seat of Government Act in 19 that says it’s going to be yes cra cra came almost out of nowhere started as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne who could not decide on where to put the capital and so they wound up putting it kind of in the foothills of the Australian Alves the Federation of Australia’s founding fathers were sticklers for the Democratic process they had a vision for their Capital but well understood the role consensus would play in bringing it to fruition well this is the making of a grand idea you know it it’s the full art of Planning and Development this is the politicians taking on this extraordinary idea at the start of the turn of the 20th century the practicality the functionality the transport where people live where people work etc but the most important thing was that it was trying to inscribe culture into space and values you know who the hell were we what was Australia and what should this place do in the middle of the [Music] bush with round one of how to build the city successfully completed Parliament moved to Source an appropriate design it’s a time when International thoughts about planning are flourishing and they decide to have an international competition the competition is a runaway success entry number 29 comes from Chicago from Walter and Maran Griffin from a city that would ironically establish itself as the home of the skyscraper came a series of beautiful lowrise renderings inspired by ezer Howard’s Garden City CRA has rightly been called The Garden City she has adopted the advantages of other great cities whilst avoiding those features which are not in keeping with the principles of modern town planning the Griffins pulled off an act of incredible foresight that without visiting the site they were able to read the maps and read the photographs so intuitively that they truly understood the landscape they Enis a city that reflects the politician brief this ideal city and they pick up with remarkable sensitivity the notion of taking a very robust geometry spatial plan with beautiful Simplicity and layering it on this landscape and the act of making the city subservient to the Natural land form was I think is the true of Genius on the 12th of March 1913 the city’s Foundation Stones were laid extraordinary thing about CRA is what they achieved in that first 20 years of federation they select the site then they select a winning design which is an extraordinary one then they name the city of CRA and they lay the foundation stones and they get on with the construction of the city can you imagine achieving all of that now in less than 20 years in the middle of a bush setting in 1914 the Griffins moved to canra to oversee the realization of their vision for the nation’s capital but they locked horns on a number of occasions with the meddling bureaucracy of the day when the Griffin plan came in it was viewed by some as a bit too idealistic and not very practical So the plan for the first few years was ignored as much as it was followed they wanted a democratic City for a democratic people they said themselves that they had bold new radical ideas but as we know only too well and every architect is always going to tell you the difference between the design and its its realization are often very very vastly apart but Walter holds on to that and certainly the idea of a democratic Capital he won’t let go so when you finally come out of the Great War years and Australia is massively in debt we’ve lost 60,000 uh the highest per capita rate of any participant nation in the Great War there is no money there’s certainly no money to to build the national capital that’s when Walter is basically told either you’re a member of a committee or you leave and and Walter says well I’m out the door and [Music] is in the time that Walter Bly Griffin was appointed to the commission to plan canra he was only able to establish the road system and a a radial Road system has given us a a structure a framework that you know even we are able to work with and respect and it delivered benefits to us that we we couldn’t even anticipate at the time the common wisdom is things stopped between the wars I think the truer story is the remarkable manner in which many things happened that underpinned the future development of the city so between the wars what you get is the development of key service infrastructure the the PowerHouse for electricity The Brick Works the cter dam for water we have the parks we have the public places we might not have the population yet but we have all those in place they’re ready for the audience and we have the connectivity between our homes and our places of work in 1927 when the provisional Parliament House finally opened the population of canbar was still relatively scant just 5,915 souls in a sense was a country 10 with the Parliament House this sense of isolation that must have accompanied people’s everyday life I almost can’t comprehend how that would have been to experience it of course more people came once the seed of power had been established with the first of what would eventually amount to 106 High commissions and embassies opening in the late 1930s and more again in the wake of World War II after the second world war there was a move for some national development an irrigation scheme to improve the irrigation capacity of the nari system and to produce some electricity by hydrogenation at the same time one of the world’s largest Earth and Rockville dams when completed would be the heart of the scheme from which water could be diverted either to the maray or Marin viy systems the snowy scheme was a Monumental undertaking the largest civil engineering project in Australia’s history a quarter of a century in the making it employed more than 100,000 people 70% of whom were immigrants 16 dams there were seven Hydro power stations two of them deep underground there was a pumping station and 225 km of tunnels pipelines and aquaduct all built for a total cost of $820 million yet worth infinitely more in terms of what it did for the nation so transferred engineering skills to Australia built Australia’s infrastructure developed a multicultural aspect to Australia so very important project for us and I think for Australia’s pride in what can could be done in Australia too the snowy Hydro continues to feed into the national electricity grid that runs from rockampton in Queensland right down the East Coast of Australia to Adelaide and Tasmania providing 4,000 megaw of renewable electricity and 2,100 gigal of water for irrigation every year and moves are a foot to expand the scheme further the idea is to expand Australia’s existing Snowy Mountains hydropower system to allow for Pumped Hydro energy storage which essentially uses two reservoirs to move water from the lower point to the high point at a time of cheap power and then essentially run it back through the turbine at a time of scarcity uh when the prices are high so the idea is that that will obviously allow for significant amount of new energy storage that will then support quite a high amount of renewable generation of variable reable generation particularly in Australia Southeast I find it difficult to realize that all this has grown up in 50 short years it is a wonderful achievement and an inspiring sight to see a great and gracious City taking shape almost before one dies there wasn’t until 1960 that the population of CRA reached over 50,000 people and that kind of marked a very quick change in CRA that sort of late 50s early 60s where population growth just skyrocketed in the 60s there was a lot of activity and Australia was really enamored of the English new town planning and we imported a lot of arets and planners and we saw a value in the idea around satellite cities where you have the mothership and then smaller entities great idea at the time when we’re in the Thro of the vehicle the creation of Lake Burley Griffin on the flood plane of the mongalo river came to pass in 1964 it was one of the first major projects undertaken by the ncdc the national capital development commission the organization charged Ed with overseeing the buildout of canra between 1958 and 89 covering an area of 664 hectares and forming the immediate foreground of the Parliamentary Zone it is the jewel in the capitals Crown the lake is our element of drama in a city of subtlety and Nuance in the competition they talked about an ornamental water fetcher which Griffin then translated in the Magnificent way that he did of this major Recreation space at the Heart of the City connecting it all it was changed in the sense that the Griffin Lake wasn’t all at the one level and it had much more of a geometric shape so it’s still recognizably the same but it’s softer edges it has less of what would have been required for the civil engineering part to to make it as geometric as it was that said it was still quite a complex undertaking utilizing Technology and Engineering science that was at the time Cutting Edge the scheme required the construction of a dam complete with hydraulic floodgates to regulate the level of the lake and several pre-stressed concrete Bridges to facilitate Inner City to Suburban connections changed it from being two half places separated by a flood plane and a river that sometimes had water in it and sometimes didn’t to being a unified City so it was a major achievement and there’s no question that if you start to look in my mind at the great moves in camra post that early establishment the lake is one of them and the building of the permanent Parliament House is second once that happens it pretty much affirms the plan and in affirms camra as the seat of government around the same time the lake was receiving approval another equally remarkable engineering Wonder landed on the landscape of canra the home of the Academy of Science or in today’s parlament the shine Dome The Academy of Science it’s fun gorgeous building that celebration of science the importance of it people meeting to discuss matters of import is a wonderful building in camra the relatively blank canvas of canra at that time was the perfect place for modern to flex their architectural muscle it’s a low do shaped reinforced concrete structure with a moat around the outside and a series of archers around the edges of the dome which allow you to look into the m so it’s a really fleing unusual building created in the era of Sputnik the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth it was lauded for its futuris IC demeanor it’s got various nicknames including the Martian Embassy designed by architect Roy GRS many doubted the Dome could be built was it possible for 710 tons of concrete to perch on such slender supports would the Dome collapse when the scaffold was taken away it was a much flatter Dome than the traditional domes and so there was the question of making sure that it was going to be self-supporting and and structurally S and and so there was physical modeling done to ensure that it wouldn’t drop too much and it worked out precisely the way it was designed getting the roof right was one small step for man and the lecture theater beneath it one giant leap for mankind when it opened up first few lectures in there people were motion sick and they realized that the way that the lecture theater had been designed had created a an optical illusion that you were moving like you’re on a ship to counter a problem the theater had with its Acoustics Engineers had installed a series of wooden baffles into the wall panels which rather unexpectedly created an optical interference that made people uncomfortably nauseous they had to insert a whole lot of basically strings of wire and I think cotton other materials down between all these wooden battern around the electure theater so that you didn’t feel like you were sitting there a little bit queasy while you’re in your lecture the shine Dome continues to amuse locals and visitors alike and while martians are yet to seek asylum in the city the search for extraterrestrial life continues on the ridge above it m stromlo Observatory canra a national Lookout post where men keep watch on the sun solar observation is of great importance in the study of weather prediction and the vital problem of drops space has been a part of the integral nature of Cambra since its birth one of the benefits of being in camra is less people less lights darker Skies that’s what we want in astronomy places that are not only dark but also very radio quiet Mount Strow is the world-renowned headquarters of the Australian National University Research School of astronomy and astrop physics started as an observatory uh back in 1911 actually before camber was even built and since then we’ve done all sorts of things even through today and have turned from a solar Observatory to monitor the sun to nighttime observatories to being the center of testing and designing satellites for the Australian government and all sorts of groups in Australia because ultimately if you need to go into the southern part of the Skies or southern part of the universe you have to be on the bottom part of the world depending on your angle that’s why the observatory was set up but that’s also why the camber has grown as being a big space [Music] player one of the tracking stations was instrumental in broadcasting the moonlanding in 1969 an extraordinary piece of technology that enabled mankind to watch man walking on the moon now still in use at the canra Deep Space Center it was one of just three tracking stations following the moon landing and the one that worked at The crucial moment the Apollo 11 moonlanding was seen from camra because of this being capital city in the bush that decision 61 years before was what led to seeing that first moonlanding one of the things camber has is lots of institutes doing lots of things in space we have people who are looking upward but we also have groups looking downward trying to understand the environment and how drought can affect it and this has created kind of a an ecos system a way where people want to come in and work the canra deep space communication complex just 35 km Southwest of the city is a vital listening Post in NASA’s deep space Network that continues to contribute to the international profile of the capital so we regularly are working with our overseas Partners in NASA or or the Japanese space agency or now India or Europe or SpaceX and because we have that benefit of being the capital and being let out and being set up so people from overseas can go get the government decisions and go do the work all in One-Stop shop we’ve really been viewed in space as the you know southern hemisphere equivalent of what DC would be to NASA the space Community contributes significantly to the intellectual orbit of canra but an even greater portion of the Smart City populace have hitched their wagons to the star that is the Australian public service this city was designed as a government place and government used to be the only industry of the city we don’t make those kind of like equipments we don’t have a manufacturing base we are not a Part City we in this city make knowledge educate students invent things and more importantly we make decisions and policies with national influence and Global Outreach the public service while proportionately diminished in recent years still accounts for around 40% of cra’s Workforce most are employed by government departments located in Fairly non-descript buildings throughout the city and its satellites but a select few get to spend their days here in the hallowed Halls of new Parliament House it is the symbol of the capital and it works and it is a beautiful Parliament House opening in 1988 the building replaced the provisional Parliament House which was no longer big enough to accommodate the nation’s politicians population had grown to the extent that the provisional Parliament House was very over Creed by the 1980s I think there were 3,000 people working in a building designed for 300 as Adept as politicians are at pressing the flesh the ACT had become uncomfortably literal it was a diabolical to work in people were absolutely on top of each other and so they decided to build something a little bit bigger was this massive huge expanse of a building the Australian people flip-flopped about the the location the sighting of it an elevated Hilltop location or down on the Lake Edge ultimately Capitol Hill was chosen the site where cra’s Foundation ceremony was held and the city duly named and then there followed some national conversation about the characteristics of the building and that culminated in the international design competition the $600,000 competition to design a new Parliament House behind the existing building will run over the next 12 months and be open only to Australian registered Architects the quoted price of the building is $151 million but do we face the prospect of another Opera House 99% of those submissions were incredibly prosaic and Incredibly unexciting they were basically all varieties of of an office building and one competition entry was outstanding in its difference in its freshness its ability to draw connections with the Griffin plan and its Supreme connection with the landscape so not only did it answer the brief best but it also created a fundamental dialogue with the Griffin’s plan 10,000 Australians were involved in bringing Mitchell geoga and thorp’s winning design to fruition working tirelessly over a period of 7 years welding 20,000 tons of steel pouring 180,000 cubic M of concrete handcrafting thousands of unique pieces of furniture and elaborate fixtures for the interior the people that worked on those Interiors it brought the concept of Art in architecture back to Australia cra’s Parliament House is the largest building in Australia it cost £500 million it’s also twice the size of the Palace of Westminster and it’s a project much criticized for its extravagance I think one of the most important characteristics of canra is that the the built form and the web of infrastructure is constantly subservient to the Natural land form the new Parliament building is of the Hill it recreates the hill and the fact that the building in itself does not appear Monumental it sheer Capac is actually disguised through how it’s embedded into the hill but the fact that the people retain dominion over the building is the ultimate expression of democracy yes it was massively over budget but several decades on there is little to fault the building is so fullsome it is so designed every aspect of it every room every finish every element is designed and I can get architectural exhaustion you know within a couple of meters of the front door I find that level of design integrity and the tireless exploration of the philosophy of the building and bringing it to fruition it’s almost Beyond Comprehension so for me the the building delivers opportunity it delivers aspiration it never constrains or never holds down and when I go to the Parliament building now it’s like tucking in for a degustation [Music] meal I think that the way that the Parliamentary Zone’s been used over the years full of controversy the v8 car races was a great one cir the was there uh there’s been equestrian show jumping in the Parliamentary area but that’s the way it should be used I mean it’s an equitable space it’s not a precious space and provided it contributes to people coming together of all walks of life and interest why not isn’t that what it was intended to do and so you got a very formal composition put in NE galarian use and there’ll be more of that over time and it’s Fant fantastic indeed it’s probably one of if not the only Parliament House on the planet you can glide over in a balloon full of hot air and irony the majority of canb Barons clearly relish it’s gorgeous first that we can use the heart of our parliamentary area to heat up hot air balloons and great jokes around that they’re obvious but to be able to do that and have all these people come down at dawn to watch them inflate and then take off in this Big Sky immediately over our city and stretch off to that landscape beyond that beautiful setting is magical it’s full of sort of brashness and brightness and fun sheer fun and it happens right in front of our pmet house perhaps the most iconic feature of the building is its gargantuan flag pole and the impact that had on the profile of the city visible from multiple Vantage points the pole is 81 m tall weighs 220 tons and is still one of the largest stainless steel structures in the world the flag is enormous 12.8 M by 6.4 which is roughly the same size as the side of a double-decker bus there was controversy about the flag pole was it an American symbol do Australians raise their flag you know would it be too high and of course it established a benchmark for Heights throughout the Central Area the infamous RL 617 which is the base of the flag pole a nonsense idea in my view uh not a good way to control height but nevertheless it had a marked impact on [Music] planning structures within cra’s parliamentary and Central City precincts are not permitted to rise more than 617 m above sea level which given the altitude and topography of canamera generally limits residential and Commercial blocks to around 14 stories depending on the site and ceiling Heights so you get flat roofs and you get them all at the same height it’s such a disappointment and what would be a better planning construct would be to look at well what are the primary Vistas that need to be retained what criteria can we put in place to protect primary views and Vantage points and then look at the environmental impacts of overshadowing and do those as performance criteria and make judgments accordingly that would be a far better model and I really hope that happens very soon because to not address it with the amount of development happening in the central areas would really leave us with an incredibly mediocre boring Skyline so if you’re going to do density let’s do it well that’s the real topic for Campa not whether we should have it or not it’s how how we do it well every city deserves the opportunity to consider the drama the density the excitement in the city I think and highrise is a big part of that I mean it can work for us in so many ways it’ll work for us in in doing the heavy lifting of accommodating people and providing those fundamental [Music] facilities as the population and clearly popularity of canra continues to SW well a tsunami of urban designers are clamoring for the abolition of the RL 617 rule their caveat however is that developers respect and maintain the Green Space you have great Vistas as you drive it’s a great environment as you drive but those green spaces often aren’t used I can’t think of any other city in the world where you look to the left look to the right mainly you just see grass and trees we have a no Billboards policy so there’s no advertising there’s no fences it feels like you’re in the great open expanses of the [Music] appac this balance of light and space courtesy of the Griffin’s plan and its deference to the Garden City movement has left canra with an enviable Legacy its inner city suburbs feature wide treelined verges magnificent Gardens and parks that were created to act as windbreaks we’ve got the great bones of green infrastructure and I think we’re on a great journey to um to maximize its use or to get more value out of it this will become an increasingly important issue as densification inevitably intensifies our sort of the stated planning Target to cater for our growth is through 70% infill 30% greenfields so really probably changing the dial on what Cam’s done for the last 100 years which is predominately greenfields [Music] development the news is not all bad for the city’s hard carrying Tree Huggers who need look no further than the new Acton Precinct to see what the future holds that entire precinct on the edge of the municipal cor of Civic was surrounded by Chain wire fence for many many years it’s a great example of a Precinct scale development they’ve integrated great landscape architecture Urban design ideas about vibrancy access to amenity human scale laneways little Parks not everything has to be you know huge that’s what I like about what we’ve could do in the future is just more human scale development more local scale it’s become a major pool for tourists but more importantly a major place for C Barons to go and celebrate and enjoy just living here and it’s really an Exemplar I think of Precinct development densification doesn’t mean encroachment into Green Space you build more levels and you have more floor space but the green space is still there the new technology can bring the building itself so the definition and the standard of green space is also changing we don’t have to make things contradictory conceptually and we try to find how those seemingly contradictory elements can actually balance or work together to create an interesting and organic PL you want every city to be different to be unique to be idiosyncratic you want a city to have an identity the green is connected there are walking networks and cycle networks it’s a fundamental underpinning to the physicality of canra that’s an indelible part of our fabric 2/3 or so of Curry’s national parks or reserves which is fantastic to go and explore however of course with the drying of of the climate and the heating up of the climate bush fires becoming more and more of a danger until Saturday this was a Suburban Street straight out of an Australian soap now most of the houses in appalock Road CRA are charred ruins in 2003 500 or so homes were obliterated by a bushire which came over the brindabella mountains from cra’s West into the BBS cber wasn’t quite ready for it we never thought that could happen there always had grass fires around the place grass and small bush fires the Christmas fires of 2001 and then the major fire which was just um catastrophic for camber in 2003 the whole place just went up there quick it was ridiculous everything was on fire I mean everything just just the the fences are on fire the houses were were starting to ignite it was just a sea of Ember it was just awai personal losses were profound 435 people were injured four lost their lives there was just total devastation as far as you can see it just uh it was like a war sign almost 70% of the act’s forests national parks and pasture lands were burnt and key pieces of infastructure destroyed including the mount stromlo Observatory no other observat or space Research Center has has undergone what we went through we are the largest Insurance claim in Australian history just to put that scale we lost multiple buildings and instruments and houses but it wasn’t the end it was a way to to [Music] reset people here are reacting to This Disaster with a resilience that is frankly astonishing but the initial shock is not yet over and a long and painful period of rebuilding lies ahead it’s a cliche but it does come with the territory if you’re going to be have push around you then you’re always going to be you know be aware that you’ve got to have fire policy to to protect your home the structure of our suburbs provides almost an invitation to fire we have fingers of bush coming right into the suburb and then many lily pads of bush within the suburbs and we didn’t realize it at the time but we now can see that these are potentially Landing spots for Wildfire well I think the building code changed after that with houses and properties that are on the uh the batement Zs but that as it may those changes did little to quell the fear in canra during the summer of 2019 2020 this summer we spent in in fear of Our Lives not even a week into 2020 and already this is a year no Australian will forget a pole of smoke blanketed the city for days on end up to 26 times higher than the Hazardous levels for human health going forward we need to think about our footprint for sustainability reasons but we also need to think about it in terms of capacity to deal with environmental elements that never occurred to us that could happen that fires of of such ferocity could sweep across our city where transport’s concerned canra is starting to notch a few winds we have amazingly high level of service I think across a lot of our infrastructure because of good planning a good engineering good design because we’re a planed City it’s a very easy place to get around recent improvements in the public transport sector are finally giving cber more incentive to ditch their dependency on cars in the government’s new climate strategy there is a commitment to Electrify the bus fleet by 2040 Light Rail is obviously the biggest thing that’s happened in CRA in terms of Transport over the last 50 years or so and that was absolutely groundbreaking it gave a really visible and trustworthy public transport system the initial 12 km line from gangan the fastest growing suburb in Australia to the city center set a benchmark in sustainable design and delivery $32 million under budget it is powered by 100% Renewables and features a state-of-the-art storage system inside the trams enabling them to operate without catenaries in terms of our journey of d ification it makes perfect sense to invest in light rail Light Rail does something that the bus network doesn’t do it attracts investment it attracts people and we’ve seen that on our light rail Corridor if government spent $700 million on the light rail I think the private sectors invested way more than that in terms of residential and Commercial infrastructure on the route and people are choosing to live next to the light ra route because of the advantages that brings them so the proof is in the footing I think in terms of how people using it how been received the covid-19 pandemic threw a spanner in the light rails works but since lockdown restrictions were eased its ridership is back on track not withstanding the fact that many canb Barons are choosing to continue to work from home thus negating the need for any form of commute this is One Moment In Time where that comfortable density delivered a dividend to us in that it was relatively straightforward for canaran to isolate to work from home that we do have good internet access that people do have relatively comfortable homes that they can occupy that there are many parks and those Hills and ridges all those decompression spaces the rugs just been pulled from under our feet and how we assume we work I think it’ll change our ways of thinking for the better CRA is sprawling cra green space cameras low density that has been criticized in recent decades proved to be a contributory factor to our fight against the pandemic and the message is clear though stay home don’t travel don’t go away we can’t let up now in dealing with sort of a disease threat like covid where it’s being passed personto person density is not a good thing so you think of a place like New York where most people are getting around on mass transit Subway systems Etc that’s great from an environmental perspective it’s great from an economic perspective it does not work very well when you’re trying to keep people from getting a highly infectious disease and the sort of canra model that we have been treating as somewhat outdated where it’s based a bit around the car with some walking and some biking is actually a quite safe way of living through a pandemic like this because you limit your face- to- face contact with other people ways of how we can make density safe is going to be a big challenge of the future but thankfully living in canra it’s one that we’re not going to have to worry about as much as as sort of much denser places the pandemic is actually teaching us that you know human connection is so important and you know I think CS are obviously the a great place to do that and and this has probably taught us or reminded us that we need to sort of lift our gaze from the phones and listen and and talk to the people that are around us and with luck that will help us solve some of the challenges that are in front of us I’m very hopeful that we can still grow and get better and better as we grow so what I hope to see is that as we densify in our town centers that idea of a walking City becomes more prominent more available to people and does have the potential to really be sort of an important city in the knowledge economy Regional Offices of companies that probably 20 or 30 years ago would have been in Sydney or Melbourne are starting to pop up in camba a bit more because they can draw on a very highly educated Workforce the way in which we establish our suburbs is probably the singular most important challenge in our planning I think in the next 10 to 20 years because we don’t want suburbs that our he sinks we don’t want suburbs where all the houses look the same where you don’t have privacy where you don’t have character what people really love about canra is the sheer amount of open space and we need to arrive at an understanding that we will curate those green spaces in perpetuity that they will have a connectivity they’ll have a relation to the land form and the landscape I want to see us build more on those those incredibly subtle connections to landscape and to land form the tricky part is that we need to achieve a balanced development of economy environment and Society because certain elements of them are intrinsically contradictory so the balance is the key and is also the trickest part of building a resilient [Music] City