Join us on a Global Ideas Tour mini-series where we take a deep dive on key elements of cities, places and spaces with our global WSP colleagues as they share learnings, experiences and thoughts on the future as we start to look past the COVID 19 pandemic.
We are all social creatures, but how can we support a stronger focus on social outcomes?
Join Deepa Nair, Jim Coleman and Lucy Greig, dialling in from the UK and Sydney, as they discuss the importance of our changing cities and communities, with host, Sara Stace.
They will be discussing what we have learnt about our global cities over the last two years, including a growing trend of movement to regional areas, how this affects affordability and access to housing, the opportunities Net Zero provides for a fair transition of jobs and skills and how we can reshape our use and thinking of city and regional centres.
Join us on a Global Ideas Tour mini-series where we take a deep dive on key elements of cities, places and spaces with our global WSP colleagues as they share learnings, experiences and thoughts on the future as we start to look past the COVID 19 pandemic.
We are all social creatures, but how can we support a stronger focus on social outcomes?
Join Deepa Nair, Jim Coleman and Lucy Greig, dialling in from the UK and Sydney, as they discuss the importance of our changing cities and communities, with host, Sara Stace.
They will be discussing what we have learnt about our global cities over the last two years, including a growing trend of movement to regional areas, how this affects affordability and access to housing, the opportunities Net Zero provides for a fair transition of jobs and skills and how we can reshape our use and thinking of city and regional centres.
Hello, and welcome to the People and Place podcast. Here's your host Sara Stace Director of Cities for WSP Australia.
Sara:Hello everyone. I'm Sara Stace and you're listening to our Global Tour mini series within the People and Place podcast, where we take a deep dive on the three elements of cities, spaces and social life. I'm joined by WSP colleagues from around the world as they share their learnings, experiences and thoughts on the future as we look past the pandemic and its impact on urban life. Today, we'll be discussing what we've learned about our global cities over the course of the last two years, what this means for our regional communities and some hope for the future. How can we reshape our use and thinking of city and regional centers? I'm hosting today's session from the land of the Gadigal and people of the Eora nation in Sydney, Australia. I pay my respects to elders past dating back more than 40,000 years present and emerging. And I welcome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners. Today, joining us as part of our tour is Deepa Nair who's joining us from London. Welcome Deepa.
Deepa:Hello.
Sara:And also in London is Jim Coleman. Welcome, Jim.
Jim:Hi, Sara.
Sara:And Lucy who's based in Sydney. Hi, Lucy.
Lucy:Hi, Sara. Hi, everyone.
Sara:Today we'll be covering the topic of cities and particularly the huge shift in focus on local neighborhoods and regional towns. But first, we'll start with an introduction from each of our panelists. Deepa, could you introduce us to who you are, your role, and we are joining us from today. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on today's podcast.
Deepa:My name is Deepa Nair and I am the corporate social responsibility and social value lead at WSP. And I'm joining today from London in the UK. What my role involves is a focus on our corporate strategy. Looking at all the different corporate social responsibility programs that we provide in the UK. So that's focusing on net zero, our charitable programs, social value as well now. It's looking at what we're doing as a business, but also what we're doing externally as part of our community as well.
Sara:Fantastic. And Jim, you're also in the UK. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?
Jim:Sure I can. So like Deepa I'm based in London in the UK, so I'm head of economics for WSP. So I lead a practice which focuses on basically the economics of places and understanding how to improve economic performance, but increasingly in a net zero emissions context. So we do a lot of economic analysis, economic modelling. We're looking at trends. We're looking at patterns and local and regional, sometimes national economies. I do a lot of work on industry sectors, industrial transformation, looking at where growth can come from. Again, big focus on low carbon sectors at the moment. And we use that to provide new strategies for places, but we also do a lot of work around infrastructure. Working very closely with our colleagues across all the different infrastructure sectors, transport, renewable energy, increasingly looking at natural capital as well. And we do a lot of business case investment appraisal, looking at trying to get money into the right projects. And then we also look at the impact of a lot of these investments, the economic, and like Deepa, sometimes the social impact of projects and how to maximize that. And we're probably always looking at the interface between how the private sector gets a return on investment from either infrastructure and real estate and how we maximize the economic and social benefit for everyone else basically. And we do it everywhere. We do it in the UK. We do it in the Middle East and Africa, and we even do that in Australia.
Sara:Great. Thank you, Jim. And Lucy, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Lucy:Thanks, Sara. name's Lucy I'm an associate director in the strategy community place team here in WSP and Sydney. Jim, you both discussed various elements of some of the things that we do from our Sydney team. I would describe us as being that specializes in all things social, whether that be social research, connecting with communities through engagement with stakeholders as well across government and different sectors. And really our role is to understand how people behave, what people value and what kinds of places and policies we can put in place to support communities as they grow and change. and Jim, you've alluded to that aspiration toward net zero, and we really are looking very much now at economies in transition. Really looking forward to our discussion.
Sara:So regional cities and towns are enjoying an influx of new residents leaving major city centers. We're seeing this both in the UK and in Australia and likely happening in other countries as well. I guess the question that raises then is how can we support a sustainable shift of population towards regional cities and economies through job creation? And also, how can we ensure these cities aren't impacted by housing affordability challenges that we've seen affecting our major cities. So let's start with Jim. Is this shift towards regional jobs, sustainable in a longterm?
Lucy:That is a great question. Sara, I think this is probably one of those shifts which had been going on anyway, even pre COVID has probably been accelerated. And I think one of the interesting things is our relationship with work has changed over the last two years.
Jim:So it's now possible to move to a different city, but have the same job in another city, headquartered in another city because of the way we work. It's not something that's available to everyone. I think it's available to some people in some sectors like our sector, for example. So there are some importanct socioeconomic. equity, equality issues in there, but it is a trend that's happening and people are making choices about quality of life, essentially about quality of schools, for example, quality green space, maybe more than the job, because they don't need to be tied to the place where that job is. So I think there's more flexibility in the choices that people are making. And certainly anecdotally I'm aware of lots of people who are making that choice. I think it's a little bit early yet for the data catch up with that. But I think we'll see that has been happening. That doesn't mean though, that we shouldn't continue to focus on job creation in regional cities. And certainly in the UK, that's been a focus of policy for quite a long time with mixed results. And we're still trying to support the economies of some regional cities which have not performed well. The government has just introduced a new policy called leveling up, which is trying to address again, I think regional inequalities. So we still, we need to find the balance, I think, between the ability to be remote from a job that somewhere else and the ability of cities to keep continually creating new high value opportunities and particularly in future sector, some of the sectors associated within net zero, with new technologies, et cetera. But it's a dynamic that's playing out as we speak.
Sara:And Deepa, what are your thoughts on this?
Deepa:I think it's quite interesting. Similar to what Jim has said so far around leveling up. I think that in itself is quite a complex ambition given just how many different factors really are at play to achieve leveling up as a whole. It's almost as though, certainly through social value and through policy that's now coming out of government, we're starting to see that there is the shift in the way that procurement is being carried out and in the way that, essentially, local authorities and central government are actually creating not only more opportunities in the way of jobs and skills, but also looking at the growth of the local economy. That's a fairly big area, I would say in the way of social value. So that's really focusing on the small, medium micro enterprises that are out there. Women owned businesses and various other sorts of diverse players, let's say in the mix. The focus really of that is looking at the local. Across all the different bids that we receive and across all the different projects that we see, the social value priorities are always different and it's always very tailored and let's say relevant to the local area that's at hand. But I would say, yeah, it's definitely shifting the thinking almost in terms of how are we going to serve these particular individuals and organizations in our local community. And how is it that they're going to benefit ultimately from this project or from this particular procurement that's being carried out? So, I see almost through social value that there has been that shift in how we are looking at the local as well and how we are looking at the priorities of residents.
Lucy:And Jim you spoke to that idea of it raises an equity issue. The census data in Australia indicates that there's about 35% of people in the workforce who have jobs that are amenable to that working from home or working from anywhere, if you like, who have the ability to from the cities to the regions and do that in a very kind of sustainable and reasonably straightforward way. But I totally agree that it won't serve any of us if we see the shift of those highly skilled people moved to regions and that not have flow on benefits for the regions themselves. And certainly in Australia where saying that, now more than ever we have more people leaving our major cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne for the regions in Victoria and New South Wales, but also moving to places in Queensland as well. There is a real investment and a real sort of looking at that trend from local and state governments to look at then, how do we benefit and create value in those communities for the people that live there? You mentioned Deepa that this presents opportunities, real opportunities for people who are doing small scale things or businesses initiatives that haven't necessarily had the foundation to spring from previously. And we're seeing in places like Northern New South Wales, the growth of the film and television industry, for instance, which is something the government has money into at various points in time. And yet there hasn't been the significant take up that we're seeing now in business relocating here, coming out and investing, not just in ways that are limited to a particular sort of community, but really trying to invest in up people in the surrounding areas, developing new infrastructure, like film studios in the Hinterland in that area to really bolster this as something that will sustain into the future.
Sara:Yes, I think one One the interesting things we're seeing, you just mentioned the move to the film industry. So you've got Chris Hemsworth or Russell Crowe getting a private charter jet to get you up to Byron Bay. But is that actually resulting in jobs or helping people with that sea change or tree change in their lifestyles?
Lucy:And that's absolutely why you need to be looking at community and, investing in that community, upskilling people so they can participate in that industry. So it's not just a closed door and you've good point, Sara, which is about affordability. And that is one particular area where we've seen an incredibly acute problem with housing affordability that really is crying out to be addressed.
Jim:I think that's something we very much have in common with Australia right now. Housing affordability. And it's one of the drivers for people choosing to move to other places from London, for example. But it's also one of the things that constrains movements as well, not everyone can afford to move to a different place to take advantage of opportunities. And again, there are very kind of serious equity, equality issues in there. We're working on several projects at the moment around housing how central government can support local government to facilitate the delivery of housing, whether it's direct delivery, which we haven't seen much of in the UK for long time, but it's starting very slowly to come back or whether it's facilitating the markets to deliver housing. And I think. a lot of the dynamics have to be addressed together. Creation of employment or the creation of an environment that enables people to generate new economic activity. Whether it's creating jobs, working for yourself, SMEs as Deepa as said, but alongside that, we need new ways of thinking about housing as well. And I think fundamentally when we look at the relationship between big cities like London, regional cities, we look at delivery of housing, we look at the environment for sustainable economic activity. I think inevitably it's about the relationship between the government sector and the private sector working together in different ways. Rather than each standing back and letting the other do its own thing. I think we need much more in the way of good quality partnerships, new business models, new delivery models to try and get all of these things to work properly.
Sara:And are you seeing a shift in those sort of delivery mechanisms to help achieve those outcomes?
Deepa:Definitely. I think there's something that we also need to remember, which is that obviously during the pandemic and lockdown the charitable and voluntary sector was something that we relied on so heavily. It was the one kind of sector that really sprung into action in reaction to what was going on. So I think it's super important that this particular sector is safeguarded for the community and essentially has the same kind of opportunities as others within the economy to keep going. And during this year we've had a complete shift in policy. Back in 2012 the public services social value act came into play in the UK. And really as part of that what it was looking to do was to ask central and local governments to consider social value as part of the procurement process. And that is now mandated within our central government procurement processes. It is 10% of the total score within the majority of our central government public sector services. So it's now taken effect and it feels as though it's a new focus really as part of procurement. It's the one thing, it's the differentiator in what we're doing. And we found that it's slowly coming out as part of the project, but I think moving away from that considered to mandate, it's changed the opportunity almost to demonstrate the ways in which we can create social value. And just generally sorta bring that about as part of our work. It's definitely shifted. And I see this year being almost like the acid test, and how it's going to go, how the different authorities are going to adopt it as part of their own procurement process. And then how that is then going to cascade and impact the various communities that're being worked with.
Sara:And Lucy, do you think in the Australian context we're seeing, for example, shifting economies in regional Australia, particularly as we try and adjust to a zero carbon or reduced carbon economies. Do you think that's part of the regional shift?
Lucy:Yes, I think it's certainly something that we absolutely need to be factoring in. And just at the moment we've been looking at west of Sydney and a stone's throw from the incredibly popular world heritage Blue Mountains. And that's an area that has traditionally been powered by coal in terms of it's historic industry. So certainly government at the moment is really looking at how they can support that community to make the transition as we move towards net zero. Beyond just looking at renewables they're also looking at, as you said each place really needs to be thought of in and of itself and the kind of appeal and then the natural assets and the, social elements of that community that are its strengths. So they're really looking at what other opportunities are there. And whether that be through tourism, that hasn't been there previously, creative industries and beyond I noticed over the weekend that they currently have a beautiful art deco theater, which has been unused for a number of years for sale. And I think as we that go, which is currently a reasonably disadvantaged part of the world. I think this is the sort of thing we change. We see people taking new steps towards different kinds of jobs. And that's where government comes in and at the moment they're looking to work very closely with new businesses that are starting to spring up with existing businesses and importantly with that community to look at a roadmap for the future. We have seen the New South Wales government recently announced its plans to have greenhouse gases by 20 30. So yes, this is all really important, a very important consideration for the future of jobs.
Jim:I was just going to say, Lucy, you mentioned on transition there. And again, I think this is something that's very common, it's common to all types of cities everywhere, UK, Australia, and beyond. And it's that process of transitioning to net zero, which will be a challenge obviously in some parts of the world, as they leave behind fossil fuels, which might've been the whole economy at one point and move towards alternative ways of doing things, but that should create opportunities, new types of jobs, new types of technologies, new types of services. And the important thing will be to get the whole community to move in that direction and to make sure we hear the expression of 'the just transition'. I think is vitally important because we've had shifts in economic structure in the past. We had a huge one in the UK when we de-industrialized. Arguably the transition wasn't just some parts of the country benefited. Some parts remained de-industrialized for a long period. I think the role of education, the role of skills are vitally important. One thing I keep talking about is when we look at our high streets and we see retail departing should we be reoccupying the high street with things which were much more about learning and education, maybe other public services, but things which help gear up the whole population to this new net zero future and the opportunities that it might create for us.
Lucy:I was really interested, Jim, in your paper, when you talked about that idea and lifelong learning and we're using some of those high street spaces. that something that's starting to happen in London?
Jim:We see it. We're seeing almost in the form of pop-up spaces, which were retail spaces and the chain retail has departed. It's all gone online. Space is available. And depending on the ownership structure, depending on the relationship between the occupied, the landlord and the local authority, some things do spring up. We see universities taking spaces and turn centers for arts students, for example, visual arts start displaying things, get the community involved. So it's happening. We're seeing a lot of meanwhile type activities. But maybe it needs to be a bit somehow coordinated differently or funded differently. There's always a question about money. And I think maybe a lot of retail building owners are just waiting for that all retail to come back and I don't think it is necessarily. Things have changed how we use those spaces in town centers for other things. And it's very important, but a lot of it comes down to the business model. It's the same thing with having things like shared workspace, flexible, shared workspace. A lot of it's really the business model's sometimes very challenged. So how do we get maybe public and private sector to work together to make this work?
Sara:I think that's a really good point and I guess that comes back to our point earlier around the local places. So a question for that corporate social responsibility component is it possible for businesses to support that hyperlocalized use of those shopfronts or is that something that really needs to be a government intervention?
Lucy:It's certainly an indicator. As part of social value we have a measure within there, which focuses on this idea of use of unused spaces or sharing space. Because that's also another area which has come up quite strongly as we emerged from lockdown. You know, obviously the use of office space, for example, and sharing that with local organizations or those that maybe don't have access to those kind of central working spaces, let's say.
Deepa:So it is definitely present in the way of social value and it's something that I certainly see that's only set to grow as we start to see real estate change in its purpose and the way that people are actually using, not only their working space, but their living spaces as well. As well as shops on the high street as we've heard. I will also add that co-design, community co-design, is something that is also on the rise. It's again, another measure within the sort of space of social value. And that for me, feels as though that's the only way that you're going to get something that is very much needs based and relevant and useful for the local community at hand. So hopefully as we start to get comfortable with social value and its applications, that feels as though that could be the strongest way to really take things forward and collaborating with the community as much as possible.
Sara:And I do wonder that. With what we're seeing here in Australia at least is, little local shop fronts have closed down because of the of the economy. And is that a direction that local governments or businesses or state governments could take is to try and encourage that hyper localized return to the shopfront? What do you think Lucy?
Lucy:I'd like to see it happen. Um, there's something that I think is incredibly social and incredibly healthy about the local high street and we all aspire to live in places that are walkable that provide those opportunities to run into people, to connect with someone that you're familiar with when you walk into a store. I how important that is for our mental health, as well as just our general quality of life and taking pleasure from those small things that we've been able to do over the last few months. But certainly, I think there is a place for the return of the high streets. And going back to some of the earlier discussion about equity, if we're going to think about that in regions. I think one of the key things in regional areas is that there needs to be more done in the way of transport and more done in the way of providing communities so that people don't need to hop into their car to go off and buy the things they need and those sorts of things.
Jim:One of the interesting things we were seeing in UK cities and maybe more in London than other places before the pandemic hit was that the high streets, which were doing really well and remaining vibrant and remaining occupied, tend to be high streets with lots of independent retail. And lots of retail which was really a reflection of the community. So multi-ethnically owned retail, for example, retail which looked like the community it was serving. Those were the high streets that were doing well. And the ones which were suffering a bit were the ones which maybe had more of the chain related corporate retail, which very quickly went online. And that just accelerated over the pandemic. So I think, the role of retail's important in kind of creating the look and feel of a high street. It's important in, I think, social impact and social engagement by looking like the community and feeling like the community. And that also acts as an attractor to people from outside to come and I think it's finding the basis for that. And again, the business model that makes that work for everyone because someone needs to make money out of this at the end of the day for it to work. So what's the business model. What's the shared responsibility. Deepa mentioned office, which I think is a key thing, obviously for town and city centers. And that's also a sector, which I think is going to change a lot. We're not using office as much as we did, and we're not going to use office as much as we did. So the nature of the office as the workplace, it needs to be a destination workplace where you want to go. One of the trends we're seeing a little bit in London is now a preference, for a lot of occupiers, really to go for the top high-end office, with the best sustainability credentials. Very flexible floor plates so that it does become this destination. And then it's going to be a question around the next tier down of office, the office that isn't such high quality. Some of it's been converted to residential development in towns and cities across the UK, but with very variable results in terms of the quality of that residential development. So I think we need to keep an eye on these things as well.
Lucy:Yeah, really interesting. The idea of the CBD questions, so people thinking about our city centers in our major cities as necessarily needing to be much more expansive than perhaps having that strong concentration of businesses, but really looking at cities as places as destinations where local communities and visitors from further a field once we can all travel again are really strongly drawn to. And I think we're seeing lots of outdoor activities spring up understandably, but I think people increasingly will want more spaces that they can eat and socialize and do all of those kinds of things outdoors. and I would love to think that some of those historical challenges of affordability could be addressed with opportunities for perhaps co-living, or housing, or student accommodation, or social housing in our city centers. That would be pretty exciting.
Sara:So I'm going to have a question about, where do we go from here? We'll start with Deepa. What are you most excited about when you look at the future of our cities and regional towns?
Lucy:I think that it's really interesting because it feels as though, through these past sort of 18 months that, I think at the start of the conversation Jim mentioned that sort of merging of home and work life. And I think that to me is really significant because it feels as though
Deepa:it's the biggest shift in our sort of way of working probably since the fifties or sixties. The standard working model is no longer the case. And it's almost as though it's the pandemic and it's this process that's forced it to shift. So I'd be really interested to see how this now adapts as we start to maybe explore hybrid working or as we start to move into this new place of balance almost, where we have our home life, we have our work life, but the two kind of sit together in a very kind of neat way. So that to me is quite exciting. And I feel as though it's an important shift that's happened and hopefully it's here to stay. The other thing is also, what we've touched upon which is, the local, I guess you could almost say 30 minutes. Which has obviously very much trending right now. And I hope that this has almost created a recognition that we need to create this accessibility to all regions. It's not just, as we've talked about, the magnets, the cities, the soup cities, like London and Sydney. And I hope that there is that continued recognition that we need to create healthy, diverse places for people to live, to work, and to continue accessing whether they're at home or away. Yeah that's what I look forward to.
Sara:And Jim.
Jim:I agree with Deepa. I think it's an exciting time. It's a time to rethink the nature of the city. Particularly the city center. They don't have to be places of offices and shops anymore. We can have more in the way of green space, more cultural activities, more experiences. But I think the emphasis has to be on the city for everyone or the city center for everyone. It's usually the city center is the most accessible part of any city by public transport. It's a bit of the city most people can get to fairly easily. So it should be a place that provides opportunity for everyone really. And I think given the challenges that we have around achieving net zero and the transition and the shifts we need to do, the city needs to provide the opportunity for everyone to do that. Whether it's through learning or training or starting a new business or getting a job somewhere, but it's also around the innovation. I think one thing won't change necessarily is the role of the city in the way that it agglomerates ideas together. So although we might have a hybridized work environment now, and we still use cities as these fulcrums of the new ideas, the new innovations that will help us to deal with climate change, that will help us to deal with all the other societal problems. And I think it's time to think about these things that we might need to replan cities or rethink cities. But I think we also need to govern cities differently. Give cities more control of their destiny. In the UK. We have a lot of debates about the devolution of political control, the devolution of fiscal and financial control, which is always very controversial. But I think unless you give cities, and probably more likely city regions, these kinds of controls you need to put the destiny in their own hands so that they can serve the needs of the whole community.
Sara:Absolutely. I learned so much from being part of these podcasts. So Lucy where do we go from here? And what are you most excited about?
Lucy:I'm excited by the changing nature of our cities as well. And also our centers. So the idea of having more cities, both the sort of larger cities that we've thought about and talked about today. Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane, but moving beyond that to think about places like Newcastle and Wollongong and and all the other smaller places that are springing up become viable places for people to live and work and have that quality of life. I'd love to think that there would be more opportunities for people to live without the burden of an enormous mortgage and to businesses in the regions to flourish with new audiences that help them get their groove on. And there are absolutely challenges that face our cities now, but I think there are lots of opportunities to look at and look at what we haven't got. Poor quality housing or congestion, think about how we can address some of those issues and for who. So thinking about essential workers or young people who have not had an easy time on the property ladder and often living in those cities. I think we're at a time now where we're really having much more of a dialogue between cities and centers outside of them, which is very exciting. And thinking about perhaps, some people moving between those spaces as part of their ordinary day to day. But really also building in some placeholders because we're looking at economies in transition. I think we need to keep that flexibility. We'll see regional economies transitioning from coal based businesses to cleaner industries, but we'll also see economies and communities again and again, and diversify time. So building in some flexibility to adapt.
Sara:Absolutely. So again, I guess we have seen this pattern emerge before where we see this devolution of people from the huge capital cities or the major the regional cities and then back again, .and as we've said today, we've seen this happen before in the UK and we've seen it happen in Australia. So there are some parts guess one of the big factors that has changed is that we have learned from previous experiences and we have got a much greater use of technology and that can help us to do that. And I guess this pandemic has created a whole new benchmark for how we do that globally as well. So thank you very much again for joining us to Deepa Nair, Lucy Greig and Jim Coleman. It's been absolutely fantastic listening in and tuning in and thanks also to our listeners. Please keep tuned for our future People and podcasts.