Tag: Urban Design

Brilliant City Sydney Manifesto

Creator

“AECOM is the world’s premier infrastructure firm, partnering with clients to solve the world’s most complex challenges and build legacies for generations to come.” (website)

Purpose

This manifesto is a comprehensive proposition for future Sydney with 8 million residents. Intended to guide business and government, it offers ambitious reforms to plan for the larger population size, which could be reached as early as 2050.

Manifesto

10 Big Moves

  1. Evolve Sydney’s governance model
  2. Rethink future procurement and delivery
  3. Embed a smart city approach to planning
  4. Value green infrastructure
  5. Optimise Sydney transport
  6. Deliver next-generation corridors
  7. Reform Sydney’s freight network
  8. Make housing more diverse and affordable
  9. Turn Sydney electric
  10. Create a water-sensitive city

Source

Brilliant City Sydney Manifesto

Comment

In the early 1990s, I was selected to speak at two international Ecological City conferences.

My topic was to talk about my proposed strategy for the design of my home city – Geelong.

In particular I was suggesting we needed to create public Design Goals. This was to counter the closed planning process that favoured projects that promised short-term jobs and tourist projects but ultimately did not enhance the public amenity of the locals.

I’m pleased to say the Brilliant City Sydney Manifesto adopts a similar approach – it presents a series of general goals and then specific ones to Sydney.

The visual diagram on this page from their report highlights this.

This manifesto is best read in partnership with the AECOM Brilliant Cities manifesto.

Together they present a great way to lead the conversation by offer three tiers:

  1. A unique context
  2. A set of rules or principles for winning in that context
  3. An application of these principles

This example of Sydney demonstrates part three in this process by applying the principles to a real-world situation.

More

AECOM’s Brilliant Cities

Vancouver – Greenest City in the World 2020

Trevor Boddy – Hybrid City

AECOM’s Brilliant Cities

Creator

“AECOM is the world’s premier infrastructure firm, partnering with clients to solve the world’s most complex challenges and build legacies for generations to come.” (website)

Purpose

“Cities have never been more important, nor the competition among them more intense. The cities that are positioned to excel are pursuing visionary, integrated strategies to tap hidden value, attract people and investment, and overcome financial and operational challenges.”

Manifesto

Brilliant cities are globally renowned for being prosperous and highly liveable.

They allow residents to live close to where they work, and enjoy housing security and easy access to services, amenities and open space.

Crucially, infrastructure, services and technology are deeply integrated with people’s lives.

Digital applications and the sharing economy operate around the clock, giving residents seamless on-demand access to transport and other services at any hour of the day.

These technological innovations connect communities; they also enable remote work and sharing of ideas. In addition, a greater mix of housing types provides residents

with more diverse, equitable and, in turn, liveable environments.

Achieving this vision (in Sydney) will take more than just spending money. Governance, planning and procurement settings are crucial.

All three tiers of government, as well as other stakeholders, must also collaborate to identify goals and prioritise funding, and they must be held accountable for delivering these commitments.

Source

https://www.aecom.com

https://www.aecom.com/au/brilliantcityinsights/sydney-manifesto/

Comment

This is a very clever piece of Thought Leadership.

AECOM build infrastructure. To create demand and ultimately pitch their expertise, they have the created their own opportunity and conversation about what is needed: Brilliant Cities.

That’s a simple and power two-word phrase. ‘Cities’ is the context and ‘brilliant’ is their unique descriptor or niche term.

Together they ask the questions:

  • What is a brilliant city?
  • Is my city brilliant?
  • What would we need to do to make it brilliant?

Historically, this type of discussion document was created by government entities. Instead, I believe this document is inspired and created by AECOM. That’s being a leader in your market.

Even better, they have created a context that can applied to different situations – in this case to different cities.

Separately I have posted Brilliant City Sydney Manifesto. I suggest you download the pdf – it’s a beautifully designed document that outlines the principles they are pursuing and how they would go about this. From the three tiers of government (Local, State and Federal) that could enact the plan, AECOM has highlighted the goals and some broad projects that could be implemented to achieve these goals.

This sets up a three-tier Thought Leadership approach:

  1. Define a unique context eg Brilliant Cities
  2. Write the rules for success – what critieria do you need to achieve to become a Brilliant City
  3. Applications of your rules – in this case, Sydney

More

Brilliant City Sydney Manifesto

Vancouver – Greenest City in the World 2020

Trevor Boddy – Hybrid City

Trevor Boddy: HybridCity

Trevor Boddy: HybridCity

Creator: Trevor Boddy, a former architecture critic for the Vancouver Sun.

Purpose: To kick off the Design Thinking Unconference in Vancouver and to stimulate a health debate around the design of the city of Vancouver.

HybridCity Manifesto (edited)

Vancouver thrives when it embraces its many origins, peoples, ideas and forms. Vancouver falters when it strives for purity, isolation, unity of function. We are a city of hybrids, so integrated they slide into each other as hybridcity. Our metropolitan strength, our urban engine’s power is creative diversity—without it, we become brittle, uncaring and dull.

Inventing hybridcity: This city was invented at the stroke of a pen. In utterly no sense did vancouver evolve organically—as in standard urban narratives, be they of Etruscan Rome or Homer Simpson’s Springfield—but rather conceived in a single business and political contract for the Canadian Pacific Railway …For our hybridcity, I proclaim the Pentecostal potlatch, and celebrate Equinox, eid and easter with bubble tea!

Forgetting and denying hybridcity: …Vancouver will never be at peace until it reconciles with its indigenaity, a cornerstone of hybridcity. Vancouver must also confront its history of apartheid. Early ‘racial zoning’ mandated asians’ residences and businesses to be located in Chinatown’s few blocks, and nowhere else…

Building hybridcity: Vancouver now grows never before-seen hybrids of building forms and types: thin condo high rises set on townhouse podia (a hybrid of mid-levels hong kong with Brooklyn Brownstones); towers laminating office with residential with hotel; four condo skyscrapers erupting up out of a costco; a village for 400 residents set on the roof of a home depot, itself set on a save-on foods…

Hybridcity now: Real estate is Vancouver’s civil religion, and marketers, politicians, developers and planners are the descending ranks of its priestly class. …Vancouverites need to understand that their Hybridcity—as artifact and idea—is the creation of public policy. …To make ours the greenest city will require a lot of greenwashing. Hybrids can be sterile, or they can flourish—the choice is yours.

 

Source

Post by Jenny Uechi on the Vancouver Observer website: Trevor Boddy on how to design Vancouver into a better city – 16 August 2011.

Image edited from photo by Parisa Asadi from the above post.

 

 

Vancouver Greenest City in the World 2020

Vancouver Greenest City in the World 2020 Manifesto

Creator: Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Greenest City Action Team.

Purpose: To make Vancouver the Greenest City in the world by 2020.

Vancouver Manifesto: Greenest City in the World 2020

Targets for 2020

Green Economy: Double the number of green jobs in the City over 2010 levels.

Climate Leadership: Reduce community-based greenhouse gas emissions by 33% from 2007 levels.

Green Buildings: Require all buildings constructed from 2020 onward to be carbon neutral in operations and to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in existing buildings by 20% over 2007 levels.

Green Transportation: Have over 50% of trips take place by walking, cycling and public transit. And, reduce motor vehicle kilometres traveled per resident by 20% from 2007 levels.

Zero Waste: Reduce solid waste going to the landfill or incinerator by 50% from 2008 levels.

Access to Nature: Ensure that every person lives within a 5-minute walk of a park, beach, greenway, or other natural space. And, plant 150,000 additional dares in the city between 2010 and 2020.

Lighter Footprint: Reduce Vancouver’s per capita ecological footprint by 33% over 2006 levels.

Clean Water: Meet the strongest of British Columbian, Canadian, and international drinking water quality standards and guidelines. And, reduce our per capita water consumption by 33% over 2006 levels.

Clean Air: Have the cleanest air of any major city in the world. And, meet the most stringent of British Columbian, Canadian and international air quality standards and guidelines.

Local Food: Increase city and neighbourhood food assets by a minimum of 50% over 2010 levels. That means increasing all residents’ access to food that is fresh and local, grown without harmful chemicals, and fairly produced and harvested.

 

Source

Website with full details, documents, videos and more

Video Overview of Greenest City in the World program

Image from Vancouver Greenest City Website