- Melbourne and Sydney really are the Tokyos
and the Londons of the future,
and we need to start thinking that way.
How are you going to handle such a high population and
maintain this fantastic livability we have.
Well we're not going to do that without being smart about it.
- We really need to think about comprehensive,
integrated strategies for bringing together jobs,
housing, transport infrastructure,
and really the kind of communities that we want to be in.
Melbourne just hit five million which surpassed the forecast
for where they would be.
Sydney, of course, has a similar population size
and Melbourne is expected to surpass Sydney
in the coming decades.
Additionally, I think in less than 10 years the forecast
is that we're going to add another million people
to the Melbourne population.
- When we talk about change, it's not just the community
and the social infrastructure that needs to create change.
It's also a body of professional practitioners
that we've built up over a very long period of time
to operate in a particular way.
We are in uncertain times moving forward
and that having to think about how we can
be a lot more adaptable, a lot more resilient,
and a lot more flexible and responsive
to these pressing situations.
- I'm not sure that any of us want to live
in a dystopian nightmare.
A Blade Runner-esque future city.
And so getting that balance right between the culture,
the ways that people live and move around a city,
as much as what the physical infrastructure offers,
I think is going to be very important in the future.
- The interesting thing about Australia's population growth
is that the majority is actually coming
from overseas migration.
So in Melbourne we are looking at just about two-thirds
of population growth coming from overseas,
and in Sydney that's upwards of three-quarters.
- The focus of our work is really to understand
how changing patterns of immigration affect the social,
cultural, and economic life of the communities
in which they settle.
The current drive to promote regional settlement
has some merits.
The trick is that we can't push people there.
So instead of thinking about how we construct policies
to insure that migrants go and remain in a particular area
and then police that,
I think a better approach would be to really
put a lot of thought in planning and
developing regional areas that are attractive
to migrants and, in fact, Australian-born
to get that energy and business and an industry
that will see those populations in the regional areas
be sustainable and maintainable over time.
- It's by building on the city rather
than rebuilding it that we think the way forwards.
The boundary of Melbourne is already big enough
so that it can actually accommodate
the increasing population.
- When we initially arrived in Australia in 2011,
we were fascinated by the authentic character
and atmospheres of the light industrial suburb.
There's a whole range of different types
of industrial buildings.
The mod is utilitarian, and the iconic industrial building.
These industrial buildings are being interspersed
with workers' cottages which together
form this authenticity.
But more important for us was the discovery
that the industrial suburb is intact and fully operational.
So the number of manufacturing businesses: book binders,
furniture makers, carpenters, and they form
a colorful coalition next to newer industries
which have recently moved in.
- 90% of manufacturing firms employ fewer than 20 people.
So what we need to look at and understand is
that with the rise of the maker movement,
we can use that as a platform to help support
these traditional manufacturers
in food and apparel and textiles.
And look at these together more comprehensively
for economic development policy
that can support this activity together.
We need to stop rezoning intercity industrial land
for mixed use and residential development.
We need to preserve industrial lands,
and help to support that diverse job and business mix
that we can have in a centre-city.
We need to look at those cross subsidy programs
that allow higher-paying uses
to support manufacturing activity.
And I think we'd start looking at other programs
towards subsidizing the development
of more affordable workspace and changes
in our zoning categories to allow for recognition
of new work patterns, new business patterns and so forth.
- I think the biggest thing we can learn about the past,
which we need to learn for the future,
is during the 20th century,
we've been building infrastructure thinking
that the more we build it, we'll be catering for growth.
In practice, the problems we have today,
we'll have tomorrow.
We'll always be resource-constrained.
We will always have political barriers,
be it conservatism when we need big changes.
Unfortunately our politics has focused
around building big stuff and often programs
which can divert travel and reduce travel have not
been favored because they're not as politically nice.
We need to retro-fit and repurpose
the existing infrastructures to enable them to form better.
Great examples of this are things like the West Gate Bridge
which is now handling much more demand
than it was ever, ever thought of in the beginning.
So engineers and scientists are having to work out new ways
to repurpose that bridge, to re-engineer that bridge,
while it's working.
- I like term "future cities" more than "smart".
I think a future denotes a smart city inherently
because you have to be thinking forward and
that is a part of where the system's thinking
lies at the moment.
So "smart", I think about it as smart individuals
trying new things, learning new things,
sharing those opportunities in an effort to move forward.
- By 2050, the older population of Australia
is going to look very different to what it does now.
We're going to have a lot more people actually living
in their homes longer.
However, we'll also have a large number
of people that do need care.
There will be a large number of people
with early onset or progressive dementia.
A number of physical ailments means
that they simply can't be looked after.
Smaller family sizes mean there's
even more people living alone.
Currently, technology is not serving all of the people,
anywhere near as well as it could do.
So now we do have the capability to instrument a home,
which could have a range of senses, movement senses.
Are you using the tap to hydrate yourself?
Are you taking medication at the right time?
Are you communicating with friends, family,
carers when they expect you to?
Are you partaking of normal daily activities
that you'd normally expect to or is something wrong?
So we have the technology to do that, are we doing that?
Almost nothing.
By 2050, we are going to have a lot of challenges
in the ageing Australian place and to be honest,
I'm not very confident that where we're at now
that we're going to be able to tackle those challenges.
We're going to have to step-change up the rate
of technological innovation.
- We've been running a series of surveys
with local governments asking a range of questions
about where they are at in their smart city journey.
One of the questions that we ask,
is "what are the major impediments for you progressing?".
I thought the best answer that we had was
from one counsel that said,
"Our inability to imagine the future."
The good news is that last year the conversation
was still very much focused on the
"should we do this"? and "why should we do this?"
and "what are the benefits?".
This year, we're seeing a greater shift
towards "how do we do this?"
And also move to
"how do we do this in a way where we better collaborate?".
- Some people have, I think, quite understandable
and sensible degree of skepticism
over what technology can do, might do,
and maybe what it shouldn't do.
How do we keep humans in control?
How to we leverage the technologies in safe ways
and appropriate ways rather than scare people?
You know, robots will take their jobs.
Cars will run them over.
The home will do something terrible to them in the future
if we instrument it in the wrong ways or whatever.
Those are all actually justifiable fears
because all could happen,
and it's on the shoulders of technological experts
like myself and teachers like myself
to make sure the next generation of technologists
are aware of these things and cognizant of them
and take due diligence of those
when they're boarding these solutions.
- If we have the political will to say,
"People come first.
That cities are about people, not profit.",
we can create cities
that create equitable opportunity for everybody.
- As academics, we have the great opportunity
to influence the next generation.
All the students,
they are the designers and critical thinkers of tomorrow,
and we can already observe a change in attitude
of this young generation.
- Many of the new ideas we have for smart cities
are forgotten humans.
We need realistic solutions that recognize everybody
in society, not just the elite,
not just the young, inner-city elite either, it's everybody.
We should be smarter than that.