In this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into Masterplanning and fostering innovation in places.
Join host Hannah Bleyerveen, as she chats with two subject matter experts about how we can plan for social, environmental and economic outcomes in places.
Our guests will be drawing on insights from the Fishermans Bend urban renewal precinct in Melbourne and discussing why vision setting is important.
Special guests:
Show-notes
00:59 - The importance of having masterplan
02:40 - How urban renewal and masterplanning can help us achieve better outcomes for the communities
04:49 - About the Fishermans Bend urban renewal project
08:39 - The visioning for Fishermans Bend
11:26 - What success looks like for innovation in the 21st century and Fishermans Bend in 20 years’ time
19:42 - Bryn and Niall’s innovations in the way they planned for Fishermans Bend
22:26 - Changes in the way we masterplan in light of COVID-19
In this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into Masterplanning and fostering innovation in places.
Join host Hannah Bleyerveen, as she chats with two subject matter experts about how we can plan for social, environmental and economic outcomes in places.
Our guests will be drawing on insights from the Fishermans Bend urban renewal precinct in Melbourne and discussing why vision setting is important.
Special guests:
Show-notes
00:59 - The importance of having masterplan
02:40 - How urban renewal and masterplanning can help us achieve better outcomes for the communities
04:49 - About the Fishermans Bend urban renewal project
08:39 - The visioning for Fishermans Bend
11:26 - What success looks like for innovation in the 21st century and Fishermans Bend in 20 years’ time
19:42 - Bryn and Niall’s innovations in the way they planned for Fishermans Bend
22:26 - Changes in the way we masterplan in light of COVID-19
You were listening to the people in place podcast by WSP Australia. Over the next few weeks we'll be talking with WSP experts, clients and leading industry figures to dive into people in place. What does place and placemaking mean and what are some of the challenges and opportunities we face in creating places for people to live, work, learn, play and thrive. In here's your host, Hannah Blaine.`In today's episode we'll be talking about masterplanning places to thrive. We'll be drawing upon insights from the Fishermans Bend urban renewal precinct in Melbourne, as we discuss why vision setting is important, how we can plan for social, environmental and economic outcomes and how it can foster innovation in places. Today I'm joined by two wonderful guests. First Bryn Davies, a Principal Urban Economist with the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions Victoria and also Niall Cunningham, Director of our national Cities Advisory team. Why is it important that we have a vision for place and a master plan rather than just letting growth happen in any which way it would otherwise happen? Niall.
Niall:I guess for me there are two ways a city can grow. One is individual plots of land developments, buildings working within a, let's call it a statutory planning framework. And certainly it's not necessarily a bad outcome. You do wonder then if there was a more structured plan or vision around a cluster of buildings or plots or whatever it might be, is there a better outcome to be achieved in collectively considering what's possible in terms of that cluster and perhaps putting some governance framework, I guess around the vision for what that could become. That for me then is where the sum of the parts is greater than individual exploits, be they at the building or individual plot level and I think that's where the merits of broader precinct, district master planning come into play and the benefits are there, so it's not that one is necessarily bad and the others good, it's just different outcomes depending on the approach.
Hannah:Bryn, is there anything you would add to that?
Bryn:Yeah, maybe just change is always happening in the city irrespective of whether urban planners and government are intervening in that change. But when we think about urban renewal and we think about actually having a specific agenda or vision really for a precinct, it is an active process of intervention. You've got to know where you're trying to go to to try and get there and I think a lot of the time we may be jump to the tools of intervention before getting really, really clear on what the vision is, testing that vision with enough of the partners that will be critical in realizing it and importantly asking ourselves routinely why are we aspiring to that kind of alternate future for a place? Are they the right reasons to be intervening in place?
Hannah:If I can jump on that why question Bryn, how do you think urban renewal and master planning can help us achieve better outcomes for the communities? Whether it's sustainability outcomes, economic outcomes, social outcomes? How does doing a master plan help you realize those outcomes?
Bryn:I think it's really because the sum of the parts is greater than the whole when it comes to cities. It's kind of why cities exist in the first place in that by bringing a whole bunch of individual resources together and using them collectively, better outcomes from a sustainability or environmental perspective, that can mean shared services, shared heating, shared transport, shared backyards. In the case of public open space from an economic strength and innovation perspective, a lot of innovation comes from the coming together of different ideas and ways of working. These kind of vibrant mix of different skills and people you just don't get working on your own and as we can now all work from home, it still can be quite hard to get that external input from somebody else that unlocks an idea in your own head. So I think precincts in places and coming together is the big driver of economic growth in the city era.
Niall:I think Bryn or I, have worked a bit on this, that whole idea of participation and really knocking the barriers down around who can participate. And again going back that idea of why are the sum of the parts better than the individual perhaps is is that idea of a cluster and breaking down the barriers to ensure that participation is not the gift of the elite let's say, but actually it's all sectors and sections of community that can participate. When we talk about master planning and placemaking, I think one of the fundamentals of that is to ensure that everybody can participate in place.
Bryn:Yeah, and i think that adds a whole other layer when you think about master planning and then you think about precinct planning or precinct championing is that it's not just the built form and its distribution of road networks and open spaces. It's the culture and the attitude and the aspirations that you're also trying to embed in that urban form that ultimately will lead to it being successful or not. You can have a really fantastic, perfectly designed street with no life on it whatsoever and it will not be a useful or productive or attractive employment precinct or an innovative place for people to be.
Hannah:Bryn, could you tell us about the Fishermans Bend urban renewal project? What is it and what is it trying to achieve?
Bryn:Collectively, 485 hectares of land right on the edge of Melbourne's CBD just on its South Western edge. It's got a long industrial history, stretches back to the kind of thirties prior to that was obviously an indigenous landscape to look very different to how it does today. But in 2013 four of the five precincts had the kind of infamous overnight resigning from industrial land to what we call capital city zoned land, which is kind of, you know, high intensity commercial and residential development. So we're, I've been on a long planning journey for this precinct since 2013 but we're starting to see the vision come to life in some select pockets and that it really is Australia's largest urban renewal project. It has quite a diversity of precincts, including the employment pricing, which is a Holden name. You'll be pleased to hear, that's a precinct where we very much see the rich legacy of manufacturing. Carrying forward into the 21st century. Really see an evolution in that sector with the introduction of universities and other institutions. And major industry partners to catalyse an innovation system, but still centered around production and manufacturing and prototyping and those big engineering and physical production challenges that we'll face going forward.
Hannah:You mentioned the vision as an employment precinct. It's centered around jobs and innovation, but apart from jobs, what kind of place are we trying to create in Fishermans Ben? Can you talk to the placemaking kind of elements that you've considered
Bryn:As Australia's largest urban renewal area, you know, 485 hectares? We used to talk about that a lot, but now we're realising that people don't connect with such a huge area. People connect with something that's much more tangible and relatable to them at the human scale. And we've had a pivot towards really thinking about these intimate little spaces that we need to create in this vast urban renewal area to really embody what the vision means for people in their daily life. So in the Montague precinct of Fishermans Bend, for instance, where they already have built Victoria's first vertical primary school. So that's kind of a good example of using scarce land wisely. It's complemented by a park directly across the road. Elevated tram stops that run into it. That's where we're now starting to focus placemaking efforts to show developers and potential residents what the future of this place could be and use more of the carrot than the stick. We've got the planning controls in place. They're kind of the stick, but how do you entice the types of development outcomes and incentivize people to come and move here by showing them what an exciting opportunity it is and placemaking is a really important part of that. Not only because you can do it in t argeted little areas, but in that you can do it in such a way that it involves people so that they can see how do they impact on the outcome and the materialisation of place? Because it is an area going through a massive transition. And it won't be j ust be government that determines the outcomes of place. It will be developers, it will be communities and p eople. So we're trying to unlock that kind of energy wherever we can.
Niall:And I think building on that theme of inclusion, it's also about I guess the legacy piece and making sure that whatever we create as a community breaks down barriers in terms of people being able to participate and I think to create place then there needs to be social inclusion across all groups. For me, the most interesting experiences I have of city is where there's a good cross representation of all community types and there's, there's that dynamic of all types of community being visible and present on the street and interacting with that. I think perhaps some of the district planning of old financial districts for example, where there's almost kind of this inherent elitism and how the precincts are built for a particular section of community perhaps don't translate into the best places and I think we're very conscious of that to make sure that whatever we build or whatever we set as the vision absolutely considers no boundaries, no barriers, but it is all about community. Being able to participate in the legacy that will become fisherman's bend.
Hannah:How have we done the visioning for the Fishermans precinct? How did that start? What voices did we listen to? How did we come to the vision for the precinct?
Bryn:Uh, the vision for the employment precinct is for the precinct to be internationally renowned as a centre for innovation in advanced manufacturing and design. That's a vision that's really been born from its history it in many ways is and has been for a very long time, a renowned innovation precinct. Just been an innovation precinct in different areas of manufacturing's life. The first production line automobile ran off in Fishermans bend in the 1950s before that, some of the first aircraft that Australia ever produced came from runways that now resemble the road network. The vision for the precinct of, for the future is really very much built on the foundations of its past. But I guess acknowledging the world's changing and Melbourne's certainly changed from 1930s and the role of the CBD and role of universities innovation have certainly changed. So in thinking about the vision, we've certainly engaged pretty heavily with our industry and institutional partners and really trying to tap into not just the kind of sector approach around what types of manufacturing, what types of engineering, but more also the level of their aspirations. How high do we want to, aim here, and that simple line of internationally renowned as a centre of innovation and advancement manufacturing and I think is really important. It sets the aspiration that it's not about just competing with tons Lee or Western Sydney, but it's about competing for talent and good ideas with the Berlin's Barcelona's and Milans of this world, which I think is a really exciting prospect presented by the site.
Niall:Yeah. As master plans go, we tend to look for the DNA, so there's sometimes a false security and trying to copy other districts or the master plans and tribes to force their fingerprints over places like the employment precinct of Fishermans Bend but as Bryn has said. There's such a long history of what was at the time, advanced manufacturing and innovation. Really the DNA are already there and all we're doing is trying to kind of re-imagine those in a more contemporary manner and get them f uture-focused and make the vision future proof in that sense. But building on that legacy, a nd I think that's the exciting thing about the employment p recinct. So yes, there's a policy objective set by government to establish a national employment and innovation cluster. There are several of those policy objectives around the state of Victoria. The question is then what does that specifically mean for the employment in Fishermans Bend and there really is t hat rich history that we can build on r e-interpret to a more sort of contemporary setting and build that master plan vision around t hat. S o it's incredibly exciting to be able to tell that story about what was, but also then how we're essentially reimagining that through a future lens.
Hannah:You've both touched on the history of innovation in Fishermans Bend. If we jump forward to the now, what does success look like for innovation in the 21st century? What sorts of outputs of Fishermans Bend would you like to see in 20 years time from now?
Bryn:What excites me so much about this as a precinct. I mean, you know, all employment precincts across Melbourne and all the.. are interesting and unique and really important to Melbourne's longterm economic health and structure. But what I really love about the employment precinct is that it's still centered around production and the biggest challenges you can find from a technical perspective, whether that's about renewable energy or next generation building materials or getting things into space, removing heavy leads from deep in the ocean. It's this kind of an epic nature to the types of global challenges that a precinct looks to combat. And that's really heightened by the University of Melbourne in the first instance. Moving down there to have a really aspirational and visionary teaching syllabus to confront these big challenges that as a society we're going to be faced while we are already faced with the instance of climate change or global pandemics or any number of massive challenges before us at the moment. But this is a precinct where the aspirations to confront those challenges are front of mind to the participants that choose to locate there, which is a really exciting kind of energy to try and bottle up and work with.
Niall:Yeah. Success for me, you know, 20 years time I think the government are showing courage in defining what the precinct is. So it's a precinct of engineering excellence and innovation. So that's what they want down at the employment precinct. And I think that's good because it speaks to the world. I guess that if this is your area of interest and if you're interested in innovating and being part of a vibrant, innovative culture, then this is the place for you. So 20 years from now we'll have the University of Melbourne there and hopefully industry will have clustered around that to really fulfil that vision. So the government role in all of that then is to stand firm and curate the right type of industry and partners into the precinct and as master planners to ensure that we inject that magic sauce to create that sense of place where people want to be, people are excited to be there. They see that interaction between industry, academia, government, and they see it being positive. And I guess the outcome of all of that is we aim in our innovation districts to create these higher value jobs. Which are great for GDP, but also great for that knowledge economy and being able to really brand yourself internationally as a hotbed for people to come and seed ideas and watch them germinate and grow and make successes of it. For me, success in 20 years time is to have achieved that brand internationally where people are talking about GMH at Fishermans Bend or the employment precinct or whatever it's going to be called in the future but it is that internationally sort of branded and recognised innovation district.
Bryn:And certainly from my role in all of this on the kind of government side would be that, you know, in 20 years we're attracting the world's best talent in these fields because they see huge opportunities to be impactful on those 21st century global societal challenges. And they see Fishermans Bend and the ecosystem that's being created down there is that Avenue for them to plow their energies and their smarts into.
Hannah:So you do this visioning exercise with the stakeholders that are there at the time, but often these master plans are for 20 years, even 50 year horizons. And a big point of the master plan is to try and attract investment into the pricing. To get more players in there and more great things happening. How do you try and guide the future investment to make sure that it fits the vision that might've been started by a different group of stakeholders?
Bryn:Yeah, it's a toughie to strike the right balance between rigidity and some aspects that the vision and the plan in that you need to be able to say what it is. There's so many visions out there that are so generic that you could blank out the name of the precinct and not have any idea which one we're talking about. So you need some rigidity, I guess. Well founded rigidity in the vision and the direction that you're heading. But I think you also need to acknowledge the immense uncertainties of the future, particularly in a sector like advanced manufacturing. I mean I live and breathe this on a daily basis and I would never hand on heart tell you what the sector is going to look like in 15 years. That would be professional suicide. So how do you build in enough flexibility to allow for all the unknowns but still generally feel like things are heading in the right direction and that's quite a challenging thing to do. But there are generally, particularly on the design front and the physical transformation of place, there are some reasonably sound principles that will hold in perpetuity around human comfort, around good quality, open spaces and civic squares to mingle, getting a decent coffee, being protected from the elements. So in that kind of public realm I think is a great opportunity to embed the vision. Whether that's by you know, having innovation in the public realm, it might be internet of things, sensors that provide live real time data that promote this idea of data led innovation. Or it might be through a public open spaces that are very well designed to encourage people to loiter and mingle. I think the public realm presents that opportunity to carry a vision forward, even if the world around it changes quite a lot.
Hannah:I love that. If I can reflect on my experience with Westmead and one of the stakeholder workshops, we had one of the representatives talking about the vision as an innovation district and said they see learning as the glue of the precinct. And I really liked that description. And what that meant was that when you get off the train station and you're sort of making your way to the university campus all along the way, you're going past the water sensitive urban design features and there's a plaque that tells you what it's doing, what's therefore how it's helping protect the environment. And then you get into the building and you've got your exposed pipe work and you're learning about the mechanics of the building. I love this idea of innovation isn't just discreet in buildings, it's the whole experience of traveling through the precinct. I really liked that.
Bryn:Yeah. And that's, it's most easily maintained in perpetuity in some ways through the physical public realm. But the big step for Australian innovation precincts when compared to some of our European and American counterparts is how do you maintain that vision through innovative governance models that allow, yes, the people change, but the general spirit and intent of why people sign up and how they interact with each other and how they want to be participating in that precinct and jurors with the governance.
Hannah:Niall, did you have any comments to add to that?
Niall:For me, vision absolutely sets the scene and it should be broad and often vague enough that allows for that adaptation is kind of decades roll on. But within that, then having a few sort of key anchor points and perhaps it is public realm, that's the logical geographical landing spot for a few of those anchors. But we talk to your point, Hannah, about that experience almost the economy being visible on the site. So you walk in and you're experiencing, so almost like a marketplace where it's all about the sensories and walking in and you see things around you and it's that interaction with vendors, and stalls and what not. It it's kind of that similar type experience that we're trying to promote through. Once you arrive you have that sense of arrival and then it's all about the experiences you've traveled through. So it's not necessarily just about where you're getting to in terms of destination. So if I'm going to office whatever or commercial, whatever, it's actually about your experience getting there once you come into the district or the precinct I think is critical too. You want people when they leave the precinct to kind of say, yeah, I got the vision, I can see the vision. I've experienced it as I've come to the precinct and experienced what it has to offer.
Bryn:Most of the international literature and best case examples from around the world, curation is at the forefront of realizing the vision, curating our connections and outcomes. Considering that the role of public realm plays in supporting innovation and economic outcomes, but importantly like adapting it over time as needs change, which obviously has a cost to it, which is different to how we've done urban renewals a s city governments or state governments previously where it's normally seen as you know, the initial upfront capital cost is the main driver rather than the ongoing management costs. But I think in commercial precincts in particular, if you can demonstrate the value of curation and care for the place that benefits all and helps companies attract talent, helps companies connect with other companies, et cetera. You know, this is where the kind of curation, public realm and governance all start to overlap in their own Venn diagram to realize the vision, but in perpetuity I guess, or offer as long as there's still the energy for that vision.
Hannah:You've talked about the vision for innovation for the place. Has there been any innovation in the way that you've planned for the place itself?
Bryn:I guess what I'm probably drawn to is more my personal journey around what my job is as a place champion for Fishermans Bend and stepping away from necessarily the master plan and the precinct plan is the single point of truth and the only deliverable of my position, but heavily influenced by the Brookings Institute and their foundation piece really on innovation precincts, I think it's called something along the lines of the rise of innovation districts in America in that they have this framework for what defines a successful innovation ecosystem and they say a successful innovation ecosystem is the coming together of a place as economic assets. So that's the companies, the institutions, the organisations that drive innovation. It's physical assets, so that is the, you know, the publicly or privately owned spaces that the public realm, the streets, the open space, et cetera, and the network in assets, the glue really often they're spatial, but the networks that hold together these different actors and connect the dots and find synergies and opportunities where they weren't otherwise. It's a simple framework, but it's really changed the way I think about pricing planning because it got to invest kind of in all three at once. If you want to say the outcome materialize and a lot of the time I think we focus on the plan, but are we doing enough on the network? We focus very heavily on the public realm, but if the public realm is not supported by the right economic anchor tenants or a supportive network that brings the best out of organizations and people, then it's, it's just really good public realm. Guess that's a long answer to your question, but I feel like my innovation in master planning has been that I haven't just focused on master planning.
Hannah:Niall.
Niall:I'm not sure whether you'd call it innovation, but a unique approach that I've witnessed particularly on the General Motors Holden site and how we're creating this strategy is about not thinking about things in isolation for the site itself, but actually looking at the broader precinct and really leveraging partnerships and relationships to think about how we might be able to share. So shared infrastructure, shared facilities, shared networks. Speaking, I guess to those three pillars that are economic network and physical assets. Looking at how as a collective we can share and create this idea. I guess that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual and I think we're starting to see that even in the early sort of design stages for GMH in terms of how the team are operating. It is very much that as a baseline principle and how then do we kind of imbue that into the design and the vision and take it through into delivery. I think while it's at its early stages in terms of that planning the signs that we're seeing there are quite encouraging both in terms of how the approach has been accepted by government, but also then how the neighbors in the neighborhood are coming and actually contributing and really giving up their time to ensure we get that mix correct and get it embedded into the vision for the site.
Hannah:Niall, earlier you touched on how the way we used to plan for financial districts, is sort of different to how we're planning for employment districts and we've seen the way we do masterplanning change over time, certainly. I grew up in Campbelltown in Sydney'`s Western city and that was one of Sydney's first master plan communities but very much put all the sort of social housing on one block or the sort of civic stuff in one block. That very blocky approach to masterplanning and I think what we're seeing now is very different, much more of a mixed use environment trying to create microcosms of cities within cities. I'm interested if you think that the current things we're experiencing now with COVID-19 pandemic are going to change the way we master plan for future cities and particularly thinking about things like open space requirements. Do you see any changes in how we master plan in the light of this pandemic?
Niall:Interesting question. I'd start with an observation. So I was talking to my sister the other night and I always think kids are a good barometer, so she has three teenage kids all heavy into their tech. And I guess the criticism of parents might have been that the kids spend a lot of time on tech and don't really engage with their peer group. Now that everybody's locked in their homes in effect and rely almost exclusively on technology to connect. There is a real yearning in that teenage group to get back out and actually engage physically with their friends. I that it's a really strong signal that everything's changed, but actually nothing has changed. It's still that sort of human to human interaction that we crave. I sat on a call this morning where we were talking about people from different sectors of the construction industry talking about how staff are yearning to get back into offices. It's not that we can't be productive working from home, but we missed that connection. I think we've seen ghettoising of our cities by sort of saying well a particular section of communities should be here and put them all together. And quite frankly, that's a ghettoisation of in financial districts where it's a particular cohort in a particular part of the city at the exclusion of everybody else or clusters of social housing for example, where that more traditional label of ghetto probably sticks. And I think what we're seeing is about that social cohesion. It's about connectivity and it's about actually it being quite cosmopolitan and diverse in any precinct. I keep talking about no barriers to participation for me, I think what I'm seeing through COVID is that really the human values that inform how we do placemaking really haven't changed. We sometimes forget about them. We sort of delude ourselves into thinking that it's something different. But I think there's been a real recognition on my part, at least that it is that human interaction that we crave and is absolutely critical that we get that magic formula right and how we place make.
Bryn:Yeah. And I think that human interaction is fundamental to building trust, which is, as we've spoken about already, the kind of the name of the game. I think with precinct delivery and vision realisation, you can definitely build trust better than you could over Teams and Zoom and Skype and I think this has been a huge catalyst for a lot of people, including myself, realising that this is quite possible to work like this and I will work like this probably one day a week, but I don't want to work like this all the time. There's a lot of interaction and conversation that you miss by not being in an office. You have to call everyone about everything because you don't have any via osmosis kind of in your periphery conversation going on and it's very draining and challenging in its own way. It's good to have the additional option. I think it will affect maybe 20 or 30% of someone's work life. They may work from home for a day or half a day, stagger their commute, but I am very careful about jumping onto an idea that this means we should decentralise or that we should all work from home or that we should abandoned the fundamentals of what has made cities really prosperous, vibrant, but also culturally rich and accepting places for people for millennia, which is that they cater to such a diversity of interests and allow for that melting pot that benefits us economically and socially.
Hannah:Bryn would you like to tell our audience where they can learn a bit more about the Fishermans Bend project?
Bryn:Sure. Well, thank you first of all so much for having me on the show. It's been a really interesting discussion and a nice time to reflect on the macro of what we're doing, why we do it, but sometimes they don't spend enough time reflecting on that, so thank you. Try at the Fishermans Bend website is a good starting point for a lot of information, including the Fishermans Bend framework. But we've got a lot of work that we've been behind the scenes and with our key partners working up to release publicly and we will be releasing things in the coming months that we'd really love to have a discussion and engagement with the broader community about just a bit of a watch this space. Certainly some exciting stuff coming.
Hannah:Thank you to our guests for joining us today and thank you especially to Bryn from the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions in Victoria. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a rating on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and Google podcasts.