Saving our cities with suburbs - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 2: Dreams of Land
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Patrick Troy
TOWN-PLANNING SCHEMES INTRODUCED IN THE 1950s sought to capture some of the advantages of centralisation while minimising its disadvantages by fostering the growth of suburban centres. Initially, these were planned to take advantage of "natural foci" developed around public transport nodes. While the restructuring of the city resulting from the range of new technologies occurred, it did not always take place in the locations favoured by the town-planners. Moreover, the vibrant new shopping malls that developed did so usually in locations selected because of their easy access by motor vehicle and because they had sufficient space for parking. A major reason this new "decentralisation" within the metropolitan area did not deliver the advantages planned for the suburban centres is that there was little decentralisation of public administration or public facilities and virtually no devolution of political responsibility. Residents continued to be forced to travel to the city centre for most of their dealings with government. The decline of retailing in the traditional centres left many of them depressed and run-down. The privatisation of public space that accompanied the new malls led to further decline of the traditional centres, except in a small number of locations that have been able to develop as recreational or tourist destinations.
The original decisions on the layout of the settlement of each colony and subsequent decisions on the siting and layout of later towns have had a strong continuing effect on their structures. The original and subsequent subdivision patterns developed around transport and access routes established and then reinforced the structural centralisation of Australian cities. The impotence of the urban-planning system to overcome the limitation wrought by these historical elements has created a situation that has meant that when radical changes to their structure have been visited on cities by the adoption of new technology, especially in transport infrastructure, the rigidity of the planning and development control system has resulted in inefficiencies in the operation of the city. This rigidity and predetermination of the course of development is called path dependency.
The path dependency effects of the development of other infrastructure services have similarly led to inefficiencies as the cities have grown. The historical investment in major infrastructure services (water supply, sewerage and drainage) and the institutional arrangements created to develop and manage them provide a brake that also prevents too rapid a changed response to new technology or short-term "fashions" in economic or financial systems. These inhibiting forces may have negative effects in the way urban services are delivered. For example, the "big pipe in – big pipe out" water-supply and sewerage systems based on 19th-century technology and administration had undoubted benefits in terms of public health. However, the water-supply and sewerage authorities and their political masters have been slow to recognise the need to change their approach to the delivery of hydraulic services in the face of increasing evidence that we cannot continue with a profligate attitude to the use of water.
Probably the most important predetermining effect has been the incremental extension and accretion of the centralisation of political, economic and administrative power. Governments and their bureaucrats have continued and strengthened the centralisation of power and administration long after it was clear that the major cities had grown beyond the scale where residents could have easy access to "the centre". This has meant that government and its administration has become distant from citizens and produced a centralisation of city structure that further entrenches the separation as the city grows. The centralisation of investment in cultural facilities is one example of this process. Path dependency is also enshrined in the rights and privileges codified and vested in private property.
The form of city development has also been affected by similar path dependency. In part, this flows from the durability and longevity of investment in housing. It also stems from the persistence of aspirations, expectations, conventions and ambitions of the population. We have seen this in various periods in the stubborn resistance of people to attempts to change their cities. We saw it in the 1930s in the resistance to "flat" developments and we see it currently in resistance by communities trying to save their suburbs from the effects of consolidation. While the need for domestic production might have been reduced, households continue to demand a living environment where they can attain the privacy they desire, where they can pursue home-based leisure activities, where their accommodation is flexible enough to enable them to accommodate visitors and children, and so on. The suburban form of Australian cities and towns was enshrined in them from their beginnings and was not something arising out of the adoption of particular transport technologies at various times, although it is clear that Menzies' view that the ideal form of housing was for a single house on its own plot of land heavily influenced much of the suburban development of cities until recently.
The more recent attempts to re-form the cities by setting the suburbs up as some kind of "straw man" target comes from a number of policy failures including:
- Failure to develop a population policy including one related not only to the total population but also to where the population might be accommodated;
- Failure of our federal system to acknowledge that the states need more financial support if they are to develop and maintain a high level of basic urban services;
- Failure of the states to properly plan the development and operation of the cities;
- Failure of the infrastructure authorities to re-examine their roles and the technologies they employ in meeting community needs; and
- The tragic race to the bottom indulged in by federal and state political leaders to show who can make the lowest commitment to raising taxes to pay for public facilities and services.
It also comes in part from pursuit of architectural and lifestyle fashions imported from other cultures that are not grounded in the lived experience or aspirations of the majority of Australians. The influence of fashion in a consumer-driven economy is not confined to products such as clothing, food, recreational equipment, toys or household goods but is also manifest in the popularising of architectural styles and the selling by politicians. The desire to be "modern", "with it", "in touch" or "up to the minute" is exploited in the projection by those who seek to influence the behaviour of others. Lifestyle trendsetters and politicians both energetically project themselves as having some understanding of fundamental truths. When this applies to matters ephemeral it is of little moment but when it is expressed as support for some imagined "urban life" or city form the very permanence of the concrete expression of the notion can have long-term consequences that are not consonant with the ambitions of residents.
I do not argue here that path dependency is the dominant effect in the trajectory of development of either the structure or form of the city, although it clearly is important. Points of inflection and discontinuity in the development trajectory may occur as a result of natural disasters, economic failure, major technological changes or the determined pursuit by governments of policies to change social aspirations and mores.
Some argue that path dependency provides the framework for continuity, stability, familiarity and security without which we would not have civilised life. Others deride this as being old-fashioned or conservative. Yet others claim that it is possible to so organise urban life that cities achieve economies in their operation and facilitate a democratisation of engagement while preserving the significant elements of their histories. They would further claim that the structure of the city could be developed to serve these ends by devolving power, decentralising administration and investing in public facilities and services.
When opportunities are seen for new business or investment the same appeal to continuity, stability, familiarity and security is not so much in evidence in relation to the form of the city. Defenders of suburbanisation may mount arguments based on these concerns but proponents of change tend to minimise their significance.
THE RECENT HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN URBANISATION provides a paradoxical commentary on the growth of Australia's cities. Although "progress" has been seen in terms of the connection of dwellings to a variety of networked services that are highly centralised, the need for them to continue to be connected is now increasingly being questioned. Innovations in communication technology, for example, have reduced the need for telephones to be connected by buried copper, encouraging households to collect their own water may greatly reduce the need for households to be connected to a reticulated water system, etc.
The inherent inefficiencies of centralised systems have begun to lead to redirection of growth away from the centre. We do not yet have the development of "edge cities" but centrifugal forces that produced such outcomes in the United States, where major commercial centres develop on the urban fringe (usually at major road interchanges), are evident in Australia.
Pressure on resources, especially on water supplies, and pollution loads on receiving waters, are increasingly leading to reconsideration of the way urban water supplies are provided and maintained. The populations of all major cities have reached the point where, at current levels of consumption, the limits of water supplies have been reached. Initial responses were to pursue pricing policies designed to reduce consumption. More recently governments, local and state, have encouraged the local capture, storage and use of rainfall as a way of meeting demand. Simultaneously, governments have explored the possibility of recycling wastewater for domestic and commercial use to reduce the pressure on resources and to reduce the discharge of wastewater into the oceans, rivers and bays in or near the cities.
The rapid inflation in real estate prices over a relatively long period appears to have fuelled the pressures to change the form of development in large areas of all major cities. Increasing prices of housing appear to be leading to rapid increases in mortgage burdens that in turn may lead to further downward pressures on family size. They may also lead to emigration of families with children or householders of childbearing age seeking to reduce housing costs by moving to lower-cost towns. The consequences of falling family size and such migration for changes in city form and structure are yet to be revealed.The paradox is that as pressures mount for housing to be made more energy– and water-independent and as communication systems have less need for a "wired" network, Australian cities could become less dependent on highly centralised systems. The path dependency of the conventional form of housing thus may well be the saving of the city in terms of reduction in environmental stress because its adaptability and flexibility gives it the capacity to adapt to new approaches to the delivery of urban services.
The virtues of suburbia may yet turn out to be the saving of our cities. ♦