WSP’s People and Place Podcast is sharing a mini series in 2022, titled Women Who Shape Cities. Join our host, Sara Stace, as she speaks candidly with some brilliant women from around Australia and beyond, who have made a significant contribution to shaping the places, communities and cities we live in.
In our third episode, Elizabeth Mildwater, Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Cities Commission, shares her interesting career spanning private, public and not for profit sectors. Previously, Elizabeth was Deputy Secretary of a number of portfolios at Transport for NSW where she was responsible for operations and planning for all modes of transport. We discuss collaboration and engagement within the Commission and how they are focused on working closely with First Nations people. We also cast a look back over Elizabeth’s career highlights and her advice to women who are looking for a career in cities, places and precincts.
WSP’s People and Place Podcast is sharing a mini series in 2022, titled Women Who Shape Cities. Join our host, Sara Stace, as she speaks candidly with some brilliant women from around Australia and beyond, who have made a significant contribution to shaping the places, communities and cities we live in.
In our third episode, Elizabeth Mildwater, Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Cities Commission, shares her interesting career spanning private, public and not for profit sectors. Previously, Elizabeth was Deputy Secretary of a number of portfolios at Transport for NSW where she was responsible for operations and planning for all modes of transport. We discuss collaboration and engagement within the Commission and how they are focused on working closely with First Nations people. We also cast a look back over Elizabeth’s career highlights and her advice to women who are looking for a career in cities, places and precincts.
[00:00:00] Sara Stace: Hi everyone, and welcome to the People And Place Podcast by WSP. My name is Sara Stace, and I'm the Director of Cities and National Executive of Planning and Places at WSP Australia. This year on the People And Place Podcast, we're running a series on Women Who Shape Cities. I'll be speaking with some brilliant women from around Australia and beyond who have made and continue to make a significant contribution to shaping the places, communities and cities we live in.
Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm joining today from the land of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora Nation on land that was never ceded. I pay my respects to Elders, past dating back more than 30,000 years on this land, present, and emerging. Today, we're very pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Mildwater, Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Cities Commission.
Thank you for joining us today, Elizabeth.
[00:01:03] Elizabeth Mildwater: It's terrific to be here, Sara, thanks for asking me.
[00:01:05] Sara Stace: So Elizabeth, you've led a wide range of senior executive roles spanning the private, public and not for profit sectors. Over the last few years, you've been Deputy Secretary of a number of portfolios in Transport for New South Wales, including the Greater Sydney Division where you were responsible for operations and planning for all modes of transport, including trains, buses, ferries, the road network, and active transport. And previously, you were General Manager for Transurban in Victoria. It's an impressive CV spanning so many areas, and today we'll dive into how these themes come together in the place aspects of your work as part of this People And Place Podcast theme.
So let's get into it. Elizabeth, in January 2022, the New South Wales government announced that the Greater Sydney Commission would be expanded from the three cities of Greater Sydney to a broader area, covering six cities, including Newcastle, Wollongong and the Central Coast. This now covers an area of nearly 6 million people I believe, and in addition, a new Minister for Cities Infrastructure and Active Transport was also announced with Rob Stokes as the Minister. Can you tell us more about this change to the commission's mandate from the Sydney Commission to the Greater Cities Commission and how you see this playing out over the next year or two?
[00:02:25] Elizabeth Mildwater: Yeah, certainly Sara, it was a big announcement in terms of short words, but means a lot for, I think our city and our region. The context was for some years, I think some of our key stakeholders outside government and within government, we had been talking about the fact that the city of Sydney was pushing out into the regions, and also we saw internationally the concept of city region planning. So groups of cities coming together as a region, rather than working on their own, the Pearl River Delta, the Randstad in Holland are examples of that. And so it was increasingly discussed about how our region should address that, and the Premier's announcement to form the six cities region and with us as the Greater Cities Commission seems to make a lot of sense, and that's the response we've had from stakeholders everywhere. Following the announcement, was that it just makes sense. If you're going to do statutory planning, then you need to look beyond just the boundaries of Greater Sydney. So that was the gist of the announcement. Since then, there's been a fair bit of work to determine what that means exactly. A bit of a high point was a passage of new legislation just before Easter, where the Greater Sydney Commission was abolished and the Greater Cities Commission was put in place. But along the way, what we've had to do is work out where the boundaries are of the new region, how the commission will work within that, what some of our key focuses will be. And so we've spent a lot of time engaging with stakeholders, particularly local government, but with others as well in business and community, and to get their views before we actually put that legislation through, there's now a lot more stakeholder engagement to do over the next couple of years as we go into true region planning.
But at least at the starting gates, I guess we feel like we've shaped the idea based on what the feedback was externally, even prior to the Premier's announcement, but more significantly over the last few months.
[00:04:13] Sara Stace: Great, and you've significantly grown your executive leadership team and have appointed some new Commissioners with a diverse range of backgrounds. What do you see is the role of the executive leadership and the Commissioners to achieve that city's vision?
[00:04:29] Elizabeth Mildwater: We're a really interesting model, Sara. I think we are unique in the world. So it is a bit of a bespoke model as to how the Commissioners are appointed and how they work with the executive. At the highest level, I guess you could say, you know, the Commissioner's role is to set the vision and decide the key parameters of how the six cities model will work and the Executive's role is to make it happen. But it's not as black and white as that, we're not for example, like a public company where you have a board and an executive with very separately, clearly defined roles. Our Commissioners are non-executive, but they also work a few days a week or up to a few days a week each on the commission work.
So it varies. We have a Chief Commissioner, and then we have two types of other Commissioners. The ones you just referred to Sara, I think that we've recently appointed our what we fondly refer to as our thematic Commissioners, our environment, economic and social Commissioners, who, their remit covers the whole of the work of the Greater Cities Commission.
So they don't represent just one particular area, they cover the whole of our work. And then the second category of commissioners, are the City Commissioners, who represent each one of our cities. So we will have six of those soon, and they are appointed jointly with local government to represent the area they're chosen from, and they do, our new legislation says they also have to reside in that area. So they, the City Commissioners have dual roles. They have to lead and represent their city, but they also sit on the full commission. So they have equal input into region planning. They know all of the other matters that come through the commission.
[00:06:05] Sara Stace: That sounds like an amazing transformation of an organisation. I like the way you described that transformation over time. How does that report to the minister?
[00:06:14] Elizabeth Mildwater: Yeah, again, it's a very interesting relationship between us and our Minister. During the time I've been Chief Executive, we've moved from the Premier's portfolio into sitting under our new Minister for Cities and Active Transport, Minister Stokes. Minister Stokes is of course, very familiar with our work and way back when we were first conceived, he was the minister who thought of us and was largely behind our creation.
Our legislation does not make us independent in the way, for example, the audit office or ICAC we're not in that pure independent agency category, but nevertheless, we have some very specific powers and a very specific role to advise government. The minister can ask us to do things and we can advise and give independent advice.
So again, it's a bit of a bespoke model. We do some things very independently, it depends on what piece of work we're doing, what the relationship with the minister is, but it's like all of our work, I guess it is relationships that matter. It doesn't matter if your legislation gives you power to do something. You want to do it collaboratively and with all the right stakeholders involved. So we take an approach of briefing as many people as we can, both inside and outside government, because we are intended, you know, to be leading a city forward. That needs to be with all the stakeholders. We can't sit in an ivory tower and just come up with ideas.
[00:07:34] Sara Stace: I love that idea of the collaboration and engagement, and certainly the commission has been really leading on that front and expanding that sort of engagement and with the community. I guess that leads me to, how does this fit with designing with Country and working with the Indigenous community?
[00:07:51] Elizabeth Mildwater: It's a great question, Sara, and I think it's something we are pretty focused on. Well, I think we are pretty honest. We didn't do that as well as, or as full as we would liked to have done in the first round of planning, but all of government has learned a lot over the last five or so years. So we are very focused on working with First Nations People over the coming years to make sure they have a stronger role in the planning system. I don't know that we know the answers to how to do that, but the first step is actually working with them to do that. The challenge for us is I guess we are small. We are a small agency. We're about 120 people. We will never grow much beyond that, and we don't want to add to the burden of First Nations People by us setting up a whole new thing for engagement. We've heard well, and truly how First Nations communities, in fact many communities, are a little bit fatigued with different organisations coming to them and consulting or asking for their views. So we are in the process of working out what the best way to work with First Nations People is. We're well aware that colleagues around government such as DPE have done some great work already.
So if there's ways for us to work alongside them and leverage off the work they've done, we will, it might be that we need to set up our own First Nations advisory group. For example, we've done that with youth. So we have a youth panel that has been in place now for a few years, and we've learned a lot from working with them about how you select them, how you craft their role, how you give them a place to have a real voice.
If that's the way forward with First Nations People, then we would be very open to that. But it's early days for us, we've identified that we need to do it. We have a Social Commissioner now, Nat Walker, who's really well placed to lead that work. And we've started recruiting some Indigenous staff, but we're well aware that we'll only ever be small and this is a very large task. So we are in the early stages of working out how to do it, but collaboration is the key, and we just know we can do better.
[00:09:43] Sara Stace: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess with everything we have to start on that journey and continue to learn, and I think we're all doing that as we go, right? I've got one more question about the work that you're doing before we turn to talking about your leadership role and past CV. I guess one of the things you flagged at the AITPM conference was about working collaboratively with the other agencies. So you've touched on that with DPE, but how do you see the work that you're doing integrating with transport in particular, given that's your background?
[00:10:15] Elizabeth Mildwater: Yes, I think you heard me mention the feedback that we've had from a lot of places is obviously we've done better over the last five or so years in state government of collaborating more. I think there's been a very big push across, particularly the key agencies involved with infrastructure and land use planning.
So DPE, what was the GSC, transport, Infrastructure New South Wales. I think we were very focused on collaboration over the last five years. When the first round of region plans came out in 2018, there were three big plans alongside of each other, the metropolis of three cities, the state infrastructure strategy and future transport.
They all came out together and had been drafted together, engaged on together. I think what we are hearing is communities and customers now expect a whole level above that, again. They're actually after integration, collaboration is terrific, but if it means that communities need to engage separately with various different departments on their plans and then delivery is fragmented, then that's still a step short of integration. So I think that's the challenge for us over the next few years is how we actually integrate. So one step might be that when we put out region and city plans in late 2023 and 2024, we sort of integrate into those plans, all the key infrastructure and transport pieces as well.
[00:11:36] Sara Stace: Yeah, I really like that agile approach as well, Elizabeth, it sounds like what you are saying is that the commission has evolved and continues to evolve over time to adjust to the different settings that we have. But always with that long term view of where are we trying to get to.
[00:11:51] Elizabeth Mildwater: Yes, that's right. Our job is to set longer term visions and look out, you know, 20, 40 years. Delivery needs and more agile approach, as you said, and do something, and do something more and do something more, but with a plan along the way. I think that's one of the other pieces of feedback we've picked up in recent times.
You can't reset strategies too often, or that's just silly. So having five year strategic planning makes absolute sense. But that doesn't mean that perhaps everything needs to be locked in just in every five years. So I think we will challenge ourselves this time around to make the region plan really strategic, but not necessarily everything's locked in there. It might outline things that need to be done over the five years so that it's able to respond to shocks that come along. We've had a few of those in recent times, like COVID, they don't necessarily change the high level strategy, but maybe they change the order of delivery or the pace of delivery along the way, and you need some flexibility to do that.
[00:12:50] Sara Stace: I love that description. So we're going to turn the focus now away from the work that you do to some of your past professional history and how this has brought you to your current role. So you've studied law and economics and have worked as the head of The Children Fund Australia.
[00:13:07] Elizabeth Mildwater: It was the Head of Australian Programs, yes.
[00:13:10] Sara Stace: Head of Australian programs, also as General Manager of Transurban, and more recently as Deputy Secretary at Transport for New South Wales to name just a few. Can you tell us what inspired you to take up your current role as Chief Executive of the Greater Cities Commission?
[00:13:27] Elizabeth Mildwater: It was probably a few things. I mean, these things for me are often serendipity. I've always been up for taking a bit of a risk and making changes in my career. So timing is often just, you know, fortuitous and there was some of that in this one, but there were probably a couple of deliberate elements.
Whether I could articulate it or not, I think, I've recently come to realise that my career has been driven by a couple of things; purpose, I always need roles that I think have purpose to them. And I guess as you get more and more senior, you're looking for more and more purpose and a way to achieve that. And the other aspect is learning. I'm just constantly driven to learn, and I really only came to understand that very recently. So those two things are sort of the things generically that I look for in roles. But in terms of the Greater Sydney Commission, as it then was. At transport, we had been working very closely with the GSC and heading up the Greater Sydney team.
As you explained, we had reshaped ourselves around the metropolis of three cities, which I guess I was completely sold on. I think the metropolis of three cities was the right model for the right time for a whole lot of reasons. But above all else, equity. Sydney was developing into a very unfair place if we didn't intervene, and that's what the model did. All the good jobs in the, what is now the Eastern Harbour city, the old city by the Harbour, and more and more people were living in the Western part of the city, and the west was stretching further and further west putting huge strains on infrastructure and transport. And if we did nothing as government, fast forwarding, that's not a very happy future for a lot of people. They would've spent hours every day commuting. It was raising big questions of resilience and social cohesion. And so I thought the metropolis of three cities, which was designed to rebalance that, put jobs and everything people want, closer to homes, the concept of the 30 minute city, I just thought was terrific.
And when you're in startup phase, whether it's in technology, in government, in anything, you're just running really hard at getting yourself going, achieving wins, proving your worth. You know, keeping going. That turn into a more resilient organisation, means not only do you have to keep delivering, but you have to start focusing on the organisation itself and it's longevity and it's resilience.
And that's something I really enjoy doing. I've done it a few times now, and so that was the other appealing thing to me. It's one of those things you never, until you move into the role, you never quite understand the size of it, but it's always quite a fantastic challenge to consciously move an organisation from one phase to another.
[00:16:02] Sara Stace: Yeah, I like that again, it's sort of the fact that it is, or was, very much a setup when you're moving into consolidating. You've moved staff from being a lot of people on secondment into creating more permanent positions now, is that right?
[00:16:14] Elizabeth Mildwater: That's right. Again, I think it's very natural when you're putting an organisation together fast as the GSC had to. You tend to pull in good people that you know, from anywhere, and so it leads to a lot of contractors and consultants, and you'll see this in any sphere of life. That's just what you do way back when I once was a secondee into a startup and then moved into a permanent role. So I know that's just what you do. You just pick good people and get going, but that's not sustainable because those people, firstly, they might just like that startup phase and want to move, and some of that happened in the GSC or secondly, if you're building a more sustainable organisation, you start to focus on different things as well.
You need more of the underpinnings, the corporate services, the HR, the IT, the finance, which you can sort of just pull together quickly or beg, borrow, or steal sort of in your first early days of an organisation. But if you're going to be permanent, you do need to deliberately recruit into those. So yes, we've moved quite deliberately from a large number of contractors and consultants into now a fully permanent exec team.
[00:17:16] Sara Stace: Yeah, and I guess that's about creating that corporate culture as well and signaling to the rest of the world, that it is something that's been established and is now in place, and so on. So changing direction a little bit, a couple of years ago, you were interviewed by Michelle Batsas from UITPANZ, which is now the Public Transport Association as part of the Women Who Move Nations podcast series, which has actually inspired us to create this series here. In that interview, you said that one of your guiding principles for taking up any role has been to follow a leader with a strong vision, and that certainly seems to be the case with your current role as well. Can you tell us more about this? Is this a guiding principle that other women should consider for their career path?
[00:18:03] Elizabeth Mildwater: So the answer is yes, but I, it's probably a matter of degree for different people. I wouldn't say it's the only factor as I mentioned before, purpose drives me. So probably it's almost unspoken that the organisation has to have a purpose and that's, sort of, the first step. But then it's often because I don't mind taking a risk, and in fact, I quite enjoy it going into an organisation that might need a significant change or needs some help shaping its own future. That's where the leadership piece comes in. And you both want to be inspired by whoever it is you're reporting to. And that may be a board, you know, in my case, a board and a Chief Commissioner, or it might be a manager.
I've done it with both, but that is where that inspiration piece comes in because you want to be working with, and for, people that do have some sort of vision, and it's a shared vision as well. If you don't share that vision, then it's going to become quite difficult at some stage. You'll want to take the organisation in a direction they don't.
But if you've got that trust and sort of shared values, you can work it out together from there. So I do think, yeah, for me, it's always important that I really respect the person that I'm reporting to and I've made great leaps of faith moving around the world or moving into whole new industries based on a very rough vision, a general understanding of the organisation and that relationship with the person that's recruited me.
[00:19:28] Sara Stace: Elizabeth following on from that, how do you try and create that leadership yourself? So you've obviously just been recruiting a whole lot of people into your team that we just discussed. What are the steps you are taking as a leader to build that?
[00:19:42] Elizabeth Mildwater: It's very deliberate. This is the only time I've ever really had the chance to build a completely new leadership team, and that's an enormous opportunity. Like it's quite a privilege. Usually when you move into a role, you might pick one or two new leaders, but in this case to sort of recognise from the start that it had to be a whole new team and not because anything was wrong, it was just, we didn't have a team.
So it has been quite deliberate. The first one was giving the organisation some shape, I think. And so before I started, the GSC had been asked to undertake new work, but not really articulated for itself, how that worked out. So we'd been asked to lead some innovation districts, as well as do our strategic planning. So early on with the team that were in place, we worked up something called our three pillars just to give ourselves shape, which was thought leadership, strategic planning, and innovation districts or precincts. That was just really to say, look, we have three key pieces of work now, and that's how we're going to shape the organisation.
And then the organisation structure that I developed very high level flowed down from those. And immediately that started giving our existing staff, a bit of a structure and clarity so that we could then step into recruiting. And from that, the leadership team shape sort of fell out quite clearly, and then I could work out what capabilities we needed in each box.
[00:21:00] Sara Stace: That's a really interesting insight and really appreciate that Elizabeth. So the listeners on our podcast include a wide range of professionals. Some of which you've described there who are interested in cities and places and precincts, they include land use and urban planners, transport planners, engineers, architects, and policy makers. Do you have any advice, particularly for women who might be mid-career, looking to shape their career into a cities or places or precincts role?
[00:21:33] Elizabeth Mildwater: Yeah, I guess the first one would be just back yourself. Cities and places are about people in the end. So I don't think there's any particular discipline that is better than any other particular discipline. If you want to move into city planning, I think, or city shaping, it needs all sorts of backgrounds and expertise to do that because it is about people.
And I think historically we were very infrastructure focused, so there was a lot of, you know, focus on roads and buildings and the like, but more and more, we are coming to understand that people are far more rounded than that, and the social aspects of life are more and more important. So I do think that means that you can come from a lot of different backgrounds and you should really back yourself. If you have an interest, you probably have a skill that's relevant. And so that would be my number one piece of advice.
And then the second one is just to work out; so where do you fit in? Having acknowledged that you absolutely have expertise to bring and that you fit in somewhere, work out where's the right place. And, you know, there are lots of different people who have a role in city shaping, both government and private sector, and lots of different types of organisations. So maybe look around and see where's the best fit. And it might be that you move from one to another, and I'm a big believer in that as well.
I think, one of the reasons I was selected for this role is that I have moved between sectors and the government could do better at working with the private sector and vice versa. So having people that have moved between sectors is really valuable and I would encourage people if they are thinking of moving into city shaping or place planning or any of that, that they do consider how they can do it moving between sectors at the same time.
[00:23:18] Sara Stace: Yes, certainly that's been part of my career as, you know, I've sort of jumped between different roles in different sectors. And I agree, I think it creates a more rounded understanding of who your stakeholders are and the different situations who your clients might be if you're working in the consulting sector and vice versa, I guess, as a follow up to that question, were there any perspective changes or things that you've learned in the public or private sector that helped mold your career into your current, highly influential role?
[00:23:48] Elizabeth Mildwater: Oh, that's a very good question. There's probably a lot that's baked in that you don't realise. Often I think I haven't realised what I've learned or what value I can bring until I move. And then you realise, you know something because you've been in another environment that you just took for granted in that environment, but when you move environments, it's a bit more obvious.
So probably one of the times that most struck me was when I moved from the not-for-profit sector into government, and they really have some great grassroots learning to bring into government and also insights into what people are feeling in a lot of different environments. Back to your question about first nations, Sara, I had never really worked or engaged with First Nations People until I had that role at Save The Children as Head of Australian Programs.
And then I felt like I got three years of absolute privileged experience, you know, insight into remote communities, into communities all over Australia and working with Elders and other people in community. And that's where I learned about, you know, the sort of fatigue in communities from being constantly consulted and engaged with.
I learned of some of the challenges in those communities, but also the amazing opportunity, you know, just how much most communities actually know what's good for them and they want to shape their own future, and, they have terrific ideas. So that's some of the insights that I got working in the not for profit sector that I would love to be able to even still leverage off more in government, that ability to give communities much more of a say, and a role in planning their own future.
[00:25:21] Sara Stace: Yeah, absolutely. And I do love the way that your, sort of have that background in different sectors brings you a different perspective of the community's understand or the community appreciation as well. So a really big question to finish with. Tell us about the future of cities and places, what do you think truly visionary city shaping needs to take into account?
[00:25:45] Elizabeth Mildwater: Wow. That is a big question, Sara! So maybe a couple of principles, and I don't like speaking in wishy washy terms. As people know me, I can be a little blunt, but I think a couple of themes that we are hearing. So firstly, post COVID challenges I think are still unfolding, but the absolute given I think is that COVID has shaped our generation and those that will follow.
And that's not just COVID by itself. COVID has changed work practices, changed lots of things, but I think we can see that there will be unfolding consequences that follow - economic, social, you know, all sorts of challenges, social unrest. All of these things end up shaping cities and the way we live. And so back to the start, the region, city region idea, I think is a very good start because it accommodates and I think works with some of these changes rather than fighting them, trying to drive everyone back into one CBD or one place.
It allows people to make choices. It allows different cities to have different strengths, but still work together, which is what the idea of the six cities is, the delightfully different cities, but working together to make a much greater whole, a place that everyone would want to live in one of those six cities. But they're working together, not competing. So I think the consequences of COVID, while still the specifics are playing out, I think that sort of region and city shaping and recognising that there is an impact is one of them. The other one, and maybe it goes with it. This theme of sort of fluidity and poorest boundaries and flexibility, we're hearing quite a lot. The idea that a city does not have hard boundaries. And so when we did the planning for the metropolis of three cities, you have to have statutory boundaries, right?
So you have to plan for something on a map that has statutory impact, but somehow you have to more and more acknowledge the populations that come to and throw into and out of a city. And also within every place that we've spoken to want to have a say in the planning that's adjacent around all their boundaries. They want to have a say in those areas and they want those areas to have a say in their planning. In a broader way, there's no doubt, we have to set some rules within specific areas. We also have to allow the boundaries to be a little more flexible. So I think an example is our legislation now is more flexible, which is great in terms of in future, if we need to change boundaries within the region, we can do that by regulation.
Not that you would want to do that every week, but it's there. So over the coming decades, if boundaries needs to change, that could be done, but we still need to work out actually how we do that planning and also, it's not only the process, it's the outcomes. So a lot of the facilities we have in our cities are actually designed to serve people well outside those boundaries.
And it's how we capture their views. Health is the classic example. You know, the Westmead health services, people in regional areas look to those. That's their sort of go to place. They want to know that they're there. They want to know that they're strong. So again, how we capture that intermingling between region and city.
I think it makes our jobs as planners really interesting, but really challenging, right? There's no, if there ever, maybe there never was, but maybe it's not regional versus city. It's not any particular LGA and another one, it's a much more fluid task for the future.
[00:29:11] Sara Stace: Yeah, I like that. And it's about people's lived daily experience, isn't it? So there is the fact that there is people moving from one region to another, whether that's for work or to access health services, or education, or visit family, tourism, et cetera, that is people's lived experience.
[00:29:26] Elizabeth Mildwater: That's right. We don't live in little boxes defined by a town boundary or even sometimes a state boundary, right? And people generally expect us to be aware of that going forward. So, it's probably just an opening up of our eyes and our boundaries and how we plan for that in the future.
[00:29:42] Sara Stace: And is there anything else that you'd like to add or finish up with before we finish today?
[00:29:49] Elizabeth Mildwater: Oh, Sara, I'm delighted to be here, chatting with you. I think it's just so exciting to see how many people are now interested in the issues that we've been discussing. The future of cities, the future of planning, how they're changing. It's becoming a much more democratic process, isn't it? Which is right because cities are about people.
So I guess I would encourage people to just keep doing that. Whether it's in a personal capacity or a professional capacity, like there's a lot of professionals involved in this and we need all views involved, but hopefully over the coming years, we also give people in their personal capacity to have more of a say, because I think, yeah, our communities and customers often have great ideas.
We need to bring together the bottom up ideas with the top down vision and that will get the best outcome possible. So we need to keep challenging ourselves to come up with processes that can allow that. But yeah, just keep it up is what I would say. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:30:43] Sara Stace: Oh, you're welcome. And look, I've loved this discussion about democracy and both having that really top down view that you've been talking about, where you're bringing together some very complex and wicked problems and challenges. And then also about how do you listen to the communities who are affected, and what are their real experiences out there.
So we'll wrap up from here. Thank you so much for joining me and thank you to our listeners for tuning into this interview with Elizabeth Mildwater today.
[00:31:12] Elizabeth Mildwater: Thank you, Sara.
[00:31:13] Sara Stace: You can listen to our other Women Who Shape Cities podcasts, where we're interviewing a series of inspiring women. If you'd like to know more about the work we are doing in this space, please get in touch. Our links are in the podcast show notes. Thanks and goodbye.
[00:31:30] Music and Outro: We hope you enjoyed this episode of People And Place. To hear more, find us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and Google podcasts. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Facebook at WSP in Australia and on Instagram and Twitter at WSP_Australia.