Cities ‘More Important Than Ever’

Regional towns that thrived during the Covid-19 migration could wither without high speed connected transport.

“Without it regional towns like Geelong will boom for a while, but ultimately die away … and cities are more important than ever,” Urbis director Kate Meyrick said.

Speaking at The Urban Developer’s Urbanity conference, Meyrick said developers had a key role to play in developing cities that attracted social capital. 

“The only force that is more powerful than the pandemic is urbanisation,” she said.

“And in the post-Covid world cities are going to matter more than ever … [they] are getting bigger, there’s more of them and the landscape is getting more competitive.

“Already 80 per cent of the global GDP is created in cities, so from an economic perspective how a city is set up to succeed is incredibly important, but 72 per cent of carbon emissions that are created, come from the city.”

Foreshadowing the release of Urbis’ second Mission Fit Cities report Meyrick said there were seven areas that they assessed and rated to create the index.

These looked at people, planet, performance, positivity, place and permeability. 

Singapore topped the list for the second year with a score of 70 out of 100, while Australian cities lagged behind. 

But Meyrick said the outlook for Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast were very positive. 

Sydney was the highest scoring city with 58, followed by Melbourne which got 55. Brisbane came in third with 52 points, followed by Gold Coast (47) and Perth (42).

Meyrick charged developers, planners, and local governments with the responsibility of creating thriving cities with people at the centre of every project and design. 

“The road to success is paved with bold decisions,” she said.

▲ Urbis’ Kate Meyrick speaking at Urbanity on the Gold Coast on Thursday.

“It’s up to us to create these livable, lovable and lasting cities.

“People are the most important and fundamental raw resource that any city has. If you cannot attract and retain great people, if you can’t look after your people, if your people don’t enjoy living here, if they can’t connect, your city will fail.

“The whole reason for cities is not to make money. The whole reason for cities is to help people live together and be successful as a pack. People are essentially social animals and they thrive and they work better when they’re close together.”

“We’ve got to get on top of this technology scenario. High speed internet is a basic utility and you can’t actually get on top of this digital economy [without it]. It’s not an add on, it’s a necessity. 

“In this new paradigm not all cities are going to succeed equally. We are going to see a group of cities that are really well set up for the future, pull away … and the quality of life in those cities will be better.”

Meyrick explained that this would attract more people and social capital to these cities and they would continue to thrive. 

She said an increasing number of cities would fall behind, which would lead to shrinking GDP and inequality.