The world’s great cities are exciting and dynamic places rich in experience, opportunity and potential. They are hubs of social interaction, commerce and culture, boasting exceptional places that we love to experience.

As the default metric for our cities has become the strange notion of ‘liveability’ (as if the alternative would be acceptable), it is important that we go beneath the surface to investigate not just the ability of our cities to support life, but their ability to nurture an abundance of health, vitality and well-being for the whole population.

The performance of our cities for the majority of the urbanised population should be alarming. It is a fact that we are not creating healthy cities. The World Health Organisation, the United Nations and others have established a clear and determined focus upon the threats and challenges presented by the prevalence of chronic preventable lifestyle diseases now – and the fact that well-established patterns of city life are expected to make things much worse.

Driving to our detriment

Many great city centres are flanked by fragile outer-urban and suburban communities with limited resilience in the face of change and limited potential for investment. Over past decades, city design has been guided by the need to drive. This functional view of the city as a mechanism geared to efficient transit has kept private car use in sharp focus. This form of transit has implications for social connectedness (isolation within the car and separation brought about by roads), for climate (urban heat island), for the use of limited space within cities (opportunity cost) and the health of drivers and their passengers who are physically inactive on their daily journeys.

The statistics are damning. The 2011 Census of Population and Housing released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that nationally, over 65 percent of people travel to work by car. If we examined our major cities, the percentage of those electing to cycle or walk to work in Melbourne (4.2%), Sydney (4.9%) and Brisbane (4.1%), was low and showed meagre growth in the five years between the 2006 Census and the most recent collection of data in 2011.*

In combination with poor diet – in the whole population, not just particular socio-economic groups – our ‘driven’ lifestyle reflects a broader reliance upon an industrialised model for different aspects of how we design, build and function within cities. Typically, we have viewed the city as a mechanism, designed to enable different functional layers to work, and to enable efficiency upgrades and technology to be applied to the different layers in isolation. This attitude is reflected in the ways in which we organise and fund the fabric of our cities.

Making a city safer and more attractive to cyclists can have many benefits.

Creating a healthy city

Great health and well-being should be non-negotiable objectives for any civil society. Over the last decade we have observed resurgence in the notion of place-making, as a plea to reconsider the role of the city as a more balanced environment for people. People thrive as active, healthy and engaged participants in a community.

We need to shift the way we plan and develop our cities to better facilitate a healthy, active community.

A more appropriate framework to address health and well-being at the highest level would be to adopt a holistic view of the city as a complex organism, where the connection between elements can be embraced within a more sophisticated understanding of places. Humans are inherently creative and adaptable. We have the ability to embrace and manage the complexity of city environments in exceptional ways, particularly if we engage communities in their performance.

It is not all doom and gloom. Encouragingly, we are seeing significant efforts in some cities to counter our malaise towards active living. In the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the municipal council has decided to ban vehicles from the city centre by 2019, a move that has prompted a massive boost in public transport investment, including 60 kilometres of bicycle lanes.

Oslo’s decision is the first permanent vehicle ban for a European capital’s city centre, and arrives on the back of trial bans in other iconic cities, including Paris. In London and Madrid, authorities have introduced congestion charges as another way of limiting traffic.

City Hall in Paris has recently declared the ambition to become the ‘World Capital of Cycling’. The ambition is supported by a €150 million ($164.5 million) program over the next five years that aims to make Paris safer and more attractive for cyclists. This approach also offers opportunities to address the character of the urban environment where car domination is reduced.

The Change Imperative

Adjustment is hard, but risk for communities in cities now needs to be understood more directly as the significant risk of doing nothing in the face of compelling evidence. If we have taken more than a generation to acknowledge the challenges of an unhealthy urban environment, then it may not be unreasonable to assume it could take a further generation to achieve a shift in the way we plan, design and build our cities. We should start with a clear and determined focus on education and immediately embrace the exceptional community experience that could be unlocked across our vibrant cityscapes. Our metropolitan centres have enormous potential and we have the creativity to express what is special about those places.

Embracing positive change

In the short term, we need to shift our thinking from ‘liveability’ as an abstract concept, to an evidence-based ‘healthy city’ on the whole community within the city catchment. There are many significant examples of positive change, mostly borne of a collaborative approach that acknowledges the difficulty of achieving change in isolation.

If we can lift our eyes from the function and performance of single layers within a city, then we can embrace a more ambitious vision of healthy cities with integrated and beneficial community infrastructure. Whilst cities are hugely complex organisms, the first steps to making change can actually be as simple as acknowledging the need and seeking collaboration across established boundaries.

Let’s remember that in 1969 we visited the moon, when to many it may have seemed out of reach. Two generations on from that sparkling achievement, it is time to recognise that we have all of the knowledge and tools we need to create healthy cities and a healthier future. We just need to understand that that is our shared objective.

* Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2006 and 2011.

Read more at www.archtam.com/seeingmore and continue the conversation online #seeingmore

Alastair Leighton (Alastair.Leighton@archtam.com) is an Associate Director in Design + Planning at ArchTam, and is based in Brisbane.

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We opened our doors to 60 international conference delegates, including a wide range of landscape architects, students, policy makers, clients, and those from other disciplines and allied areas of practice. We also welcomed a glass box full of bees! Morning tea consisted of fresh and organic locally-sourced food, fresh bread and – thanks to local collective ‘Bee One Third’ – honey from hives placed on a rooftop across the street from our office.

We are passionate about urban food and particularly the compelling co-benefits not only for food security, but also for health and well-being, community participation and future economic diversity.

The title of the event was chosen carefully. The infrastructure reference captures the value of understanding a bigger picture and connected systems. ‘Small bites’ represent the many small-scale changes and evolutionary steps already being taken all over the place – to make clear the collaborative nature of urban food. ‘Big places’ remind us of the potential, and of the transformative potential of big picture thinking. We were interested in scale and particularly the scale-ability of collaborative urban food production.

The first thing that struck us as we prepared for the event was the huge value in drawing together different ArchTam activity related to food. For the first time we assembled a passionate international group of people working around the edges of these themes to foster a dialogue, understand synergies and imagine potential. This process yielded the framework for the first half of the session.

We set the scene with some big picture headlines. These all provide compelling motivation to address some very real and pressing challenges.

We then gave a concise overview of a number of ArchTam projects, conference papers, activities and emerging initiatives. These included an understanding of the significant value (economically and socially) of small-scale urban food production, the emerging policy context through Gold Coast Local Food Feasibility and Redlands Rural Futures strategies and physical input into urban food production in Brooklyn, New York and Christchurch, New Zealand. To bring this back to a local context, Brisbane City Council provided a snapshot of community gardens within the city.

We explored concepts of the near-future, such as the Urban Food Jungle, the integrated potential flowing from a strategic infrastructure approach to climate adaptation (Townsville example) and the power of statistics relating to land area, productive potential, water consumption and employment creation (Jeddah Plan Food Strategy). We demonstrated the simple steps required to turn existing places into productive urban places.

The second session began with morning tea and was an informal and energetic honey-fuelled discussion about ideas, innovations, priorities and opinions related to ‘what next’? We captured the different views and have committed to producing a paper to explore the role of the profession in defining a step change in urban food production, in what will be a tangible step towards creating a transformative moment.

The collaboration has yielded great potential. We now need to hold ourselves to account for taking the next steps. The carrot? That has to be the truly compelling and tangible benefits to be harvested from big picture edible infrastructure within our towns and cities.

My simple conclusion from this is that urban food production just requires intentional steps, but these need to influence the process at different stages, through a determined approach. Most of our cities adopt a strategic, finely-tuned and well-funded approach to transport infrastructure. We largely take for granted the benefits and value of good transportation. Our provocative question for our audience: using the example of transport, why don’t we create a ministry of urban food infrastructure as the next step towards harvesting the benefits of local food production?

Alastair Leighton (alastair.leighton@archtam.com) is an associate director with ArchTam’s Design + Planning practice in Queensland.

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For those not familiar with the city, Townsville is a well-established and distinctive regional centre half way up the eastern coast of Queensland. As the ‘capital’ of North Queensland, it is located in the dry tropics, with an exceptional setting to the west of Cleveland Bay on the edge of the Coral Sea. The city is framed by the distinctive topography of the iconic Castle Hill, Magnetic Island and surrounding ranges.

Photo by Megan MacKinnon.

The current population is c.189,000. The growth trajectory even to the first million is therefore a leap of some 520 percent. This is huge by any standards, so questions therefore focus upon ‘how?’ and ‘when?’  How would the growth be supported? In light of that, when could that population threshold be achieved? What would Townsville’s growth over that period mean for the region generally, and what would national growth over the same period offer Townsville?

Here was a challenge that blended thinking far into the future with our established understanding of Townsville today. In response to the challenge we established a loose think tank to capture a potent blend of local knowledge, innovative ideas and international experience.

The current population of Townsville is spread like warm butter. City density is low. Despite the exceptional setting and climate, the city suffers from what could be described as cultural dilution. Beginning with the CBD, a more concentrated focus therefore has real potential to quickly establish energetic centres for growth, with the ability to create more diverse opportunities and significantly increased amenity for the existing community.

The format of the city reveals the framework for growth. The regional airport is close to the CBD. The CBD is very compact and currently straddles the neglected Ross Creek setting with a wonky gait. Established commerce, research, administration and industry – combined with a policy shift towards regional decentralisation from the south east – provide the platform for economic growth. The hospital and James Cook University sit on the southern edge of the city, but within range of a better-connected urban environment.

Our focus became Townsville in 2100. This kind of timescale meant big issues had to be addressed. After all, this is tropical cyclone country; the flood risk from a coastal storm surge is already significant. Townsville is a strategic location for defence, for transportation, agriculture and for cyclone recovery. The projected re-shaping of the coast due to incremental sea level rise means that ‘no change’ for the city is not a viable option.

At this scale it is possible to embrace challenges as opportunities because integrated large-scale infrastructure can be anticipated as multi-functional layers within the enhanced growth framework. This is a game-changing viewpoint for the exercise. With an integrated strategic view of the future, many things that are normally too hard to imagine become tangible and transformational. Large elements can be defined as the setting for finer-grained development. Of equal importance, we can consider the cost and value of big changes for a growing city over a much longer timeframe.

A key objective was enhancing Townsville’s existing assets. With an ambitious view of Townville’s future we defined a canal system as part of a network of waterways for flood mitigation. Tidal flows were harnessed for flushing, energy production and for aquaculture. This all taps into the local setting, climate and an established research focus to establish a sustainable approach – harnessing existing potential. The canals then became distinctive and valuable aqua-boulevards, carrying people, connecting places and cooling the environment. Solar farming and research-based living systems created symbiotic links for urban food production, water security and economic diversity within mid-density growth. As a development of the existing place, Townsville in 2100 becomes the water capital of the dry tropics. The risk has become the opportunity.

It’s easy to forget that we know a great deal about making sustainable urban environments to promote and enhance future health and well-being. Whilst this is a glimpse of a possible future, there is something compelling about an integrated multi-disciplinary approach to big-picture thinking. The opportunities and advantages of future growth were simply aligned as layers over the strategic framework.

It’s intriguing that councils are keen to know more about how the future may look. This need not be crystal ball gazing. We should have the confidence to assert the potential of this approach and to engage with others to explain and explore real solutions that can unlock latent potential. We should also recognise  the process starts with innovative and imaginative strategic thinking, today.

The primary test: could I see myself embracing this vision and joining the growing population of Townsville? Yes, I could. The most important thing now is ensuring that an ambitious and strategic framework is embraced to create a series of distinctive and concentrated Townsville flavours to claim the future we have glimpsed.

Alastair Leighton (alastair leighton) is an associate director with ArchTam’s Design + Planning practice in Queensland.

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