What does a billboard
advertising the Bay look like to a passenger on the tube on a grey London
morning in thirty years time? How does it stand against the competition as a
beacon for capital and talent? Designer and urbanist Anthony Vile argues we
need to filter all decisions around our built environment in Hawke’s Bay
through that image.
“Modern life demands, and
is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and for the city.”
Le Corbusier, 1931, one of
the modern era’s greatest architects
Eighty years on, modern
life is even more demanding, and the need for a ‘new kind of plan’ more urgent.
By 2050, 70% of the world’s population, or over 6.4 billion people, will live
in cities – the ‘urban revolution’.
Coincident with threats to
energy supply and the environment, the urban revolution is a catalyst for a new
way of thinking about cities and how we occupy and use them. We are living in a
time of massive change, yet it is still possible to understand and derive a
path based on knowledge, intuition, tools at hand and perhaps a little
dreaming. That is what designers do every day.
What does this urban
future mean for Hawkes Bay?
To some extent I am a
refugee from the GFC and the Auckland housing crisis, in the Bay for the last
two years, my connections here via genetic memory. With kids in tow, mum and
dad seek refuge from the challenging elements of big city living, bursting with
experience and enthusiasm for the promised-land and the opportunities it might
afford – open space, big sky, no traffic, affordable housing, good schools,
fresh produce, friendly people, less stress.
The new California, ripe
for and welcoming of new talent and ideas to help deliver a better future to a
culturally rich, diverse region growing to be confidant of its place in
national and global affairs. Go the Bay!
For those not tied to the
land through birth, the provincial experience is perceived as being a lifestyle
choice. Especially so when viewed through the marketing material foisted by
travel and real estate agents. The Bay is coincident with a ‘unique lifestyle’.
The vineyard experience and the opportunity for healthy active living – think
beautiful people, dude on a push bike, surf board under arm, a gentle roll down
the hill to a right hand point break, back home to crayfish, chardonnay,
children happily playing in the vines with a puppy. Fantastic.
Beyond the image
I feel I can now see
beyond that marketing image, attractive as it is, to the reality of the Bay and
what in essence are some trends troubling and antithetical to the promise. For
now I may still have the luxury of fresh eyes capable of seeing the
opportunities sitting at the doorstep, waiting only for the right catalyst.
Without a common vision it
is unclear how the region can develop and compete for national and global
capital and talent, while offering a sustainable lifestyle and pathway for our
people now and in the future. Fragmentation and disconnection evident in the
political ecology is glaringly obvious as manifested in the built environment.
We have a very clear correlation of spatial location with income and social
issues, better forgotten than confronted … out of sight, out of mind. Scattered
around the Bay various settlements reach out to each other with sinuous asphalt
arms, reliance on the automobile creating a ‘could be anywhere’ scenario.
Thankfully, the key
attributes of sustainable city-making are coincident with the key elements of
high-value urban environments. Compact, adaptable, walkable, connected,
legible, diverse, easy to get around, conducive to the exchange of ideas,
dollars and stories. Think Barcelona not Botanydowns. Cities around the world
are rethinking the post-war auto-centric model and transforming, not
necessarily because they want to, but because in order to remain competitive
over the long term, they must.
Therein lies a great
opportunity for the Bay. In reconsidering how and where we build, we also need
to reassess the value architecture and urban design plays in creating value in
our built environment and lifestyles. With better design, under-performance in
all four bottom lines could simultaneously be addressed.
CALL OUT:
“We
have reached an interesting time when the drivers of sustainable cities are the
same as the drivers of livable cities …When these characteristics come together
as they do in Barcelona, they provide an alchemy of sustainability, social
benefit and economic vitality. These cities reduce their need for car travel,
reduce energy consumption and emissions, use local materials, support local
businesses and create identifiable communities.”
– Rob Adams , Director of City Design, City of Melbourne, The
Age, 2009
Design intelligence needs
to be applied as a mechanism to create quality, innovation and value. This is
especially true of those areas and communities most at social risk.
Opportunities to future proof the housing stock based on best practice in
communities such as Maraenui are being missed. Instead, planning processes enable
the development of places with no clear identity … based on the preconceptions
of politicians, bureaucrats and contracted drafts people with perhaps the best
intentions, but without the right training and little or no connection to
place.
The Napier Art Deco
resource of architecture and design obviously creates value for the city as a
clearly identifiable brand. That opportunity was created eighty years ago.
Decisions made today have the potential to create value long into the future,
and need to be taken against a vision of what that future could be. What is the
billboard lifestyle we want to sell to our great grand children?
In order to leverage its
unique potential, it is imperative that design is enabled at all levels of
city-building and development in the Bay. Three councils in the region serving
a population of 150,000 and not one architect or urban design specialist on
Council staff to advise what spatial and design opportunities exist or to add
value to property development initiatives, whether public or private. What
opportunities are we missing by this void in knowledge? The old adage “we don’t
know what we don’t know” springs to mind.
Design panels have been
used with some success in Ahuriri; they are talked about in Hastings, but
seldom actioned. They are standard fare in maturing cities where it has been
realised that, without the input of design professionals, there is a risk that
the built future of the region may in fact prove to be a tax rather than a
value-adding proposition. Heritage is as much about what we create today as
what we protect for tomorrow. Based on current trends, what would a “2012
Design Appreciation Weekend” inspire in eighty years?
What are the processes to
enable a collective vision for the future Bay? The issues are understood to
some degree. ‘Sustainability’ and ‘place-based planning’ are bandied about as
notions of merit between the various councils and decision-makers. HDC with its
catch phrase “great living for a sustainable future” ticks the box, but is actually
unclear in meaning.
There is no regional
clarity of vision other than perhaps agreement that economic growth is
desirable, water is important, consultation is legally required, and China is
where the money is. A vision and pathways to achieving it need to be extricated
from a three-year political cycle masquerading as a long-term plan.
Globally there exists a
vast amount of research and best practice examples of sustainable city-making,
sustainable transportation models, sustainable housing, sustainable lifestyles.
The speed of global communication enables research and ideas to grow.
The city is open source.
Geographic isolation no longer equals cultural isolation. Geography is no
longer an excuse for mediocrity. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel … just
understand, based on local and global knowledge, what wheel works best here.
One of the great
advantages of the regions, compared to a behemoth like Auckland, is a relative
nimbleness and resilience based on scale. A nimbleness that could perhaps
overcome inertia and prove adaptable, analogous to a coastal tender compared to
a super-tanker. More of a ‘just do it’ approach rather than the convoluted
processes and energy demands involved with changing the course of a
super-tanker.
The opportunities visible
through my specific design-world spectacles, and global point of reference,
might seem pretty obvious and might sound like a one-liner lifted from a
marketing pamphlet, but I think the Bay could create its point of difference through its
attitude to architecture, urban design and place-making as a celebration of our
unique climate, geography and culture. Our wine is famously a unique product of
our climate and geography; why not our buildings, John Scott and a few other
local luminaries aside?
Our urban design
opportunities
Napier, with its deco
cloak a symbol of rejuvenation and newness, is now in danger of becoming purely
nostalgic, less willing to invoke the wand of newness. What if Napier continued
to embrace ‘newness’ as it did post-earthquake? How much more of a tourist
attraction could it become?
In a response to these
times what if deco city was also eco city? There is an opportunity now, as the
earthquake-prone building issues are addressed, to re-embrace the idea of new
and rejuvenation. It is possible for historic ways of thinking to sit beside
new ideas comfortably. Carbon fibre and brick.
Hastings, with its urban
grid and railway marks time in denial, while its potential bubbles just below
the surface. What if the artificial constraints placed on its natural ecology
were lifted and water once again flowed … as did the crowds on Heretaunga
Street? Hastings, once known as Christchurch of the North, appears destined by
political process and nostalgia to be an under-performing retail main street
and parking area?
What if it had a river
again? It wouldn’t be the first city in the world to realize what once was
considered a liability was perhaps actually the city’s greatest asset. What if
its natural ecology over time was the basis for its renaissance as a leader in
ecological urbanism?
What if the opportunity of
connecting the two main urban centres via the key strategic asset known as the
railway corridor was taken? What if freight traffic was pushed out of Hastings
central and off the Napier Parade as was first mooted in 1965?
What if the advantageous
exposure to solar energy was used to its maximum effect reducing the tax on
households as well as the tenuous link to the national grid?
What if the burgeoning
population of baby boomers embraced inner-city living, and valuable land taken
up by rest-homes and suburban expansion was given back to food production or
nature?
What if parking became
simply park?
What if real constraints
on suburban development enabled people to re-inhabit the city centres drained
of retail space whose tenants require only a URL to trade these days?
In lieu of low natural
population growth and a rapidly aging population, what if we more actively
sought immigrants?
What if the dynamic
nature of the seismic, alluvial and coastal landscape was celebrated, rather
than feared? What if the biodiversity and ecological uniqueness of the region
was regenerated in balance with the needs and growing demand of crop
production?
What if Maori heritage
was celebrated “as a living spirituality, a living
mana moving through generations” manifested and “brought to life through
relationships between people and place” (The Māori Heritage Council
Statement on Māori Heritage).
There is no denying the
challenges faced by the Bay in a changing world. Challenges with a regional
focus, but also global. One hopes the measures put in place to mitigate future
issues are well-considered, as previously acceptable lifestyle choices become
no longer so.
As guardians of the
future, present decision-makers should offer urban futures based on more than
car park numbers. They need to enable sustainable lifestyles and resilience
through clarity of vision, leadership and design. Giving value to design does
not need to be limited to big cities and big budgets.
Design was clearly on
the public radar in the Bay eighty years ago. Like then, we need again to start
with a dream and let those with the passion and the knowledge negotiate that
future, be it a house or a city.
Go the Bay … “ the beauty
of which can only be seen through the eyes of a Hawk”. Here is hoping design
and spatial intelligence just might again unlock some of that beauty and add
value to our region.
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