Canberra has a unique opportunity to become a city of the future

I've always felt that Canberra stands at the cusp of a rare opportunity to make the city more liveable, more competitive and to create more presence on the world stage. More importantly it has the right preconditions to project itself as a pioneer, a model and a testing ground to tackle the big issues that really matter that others can emulate. Canberra has the knowledge hubs - the universities, CSIRO and two tech parks, but has it got the ambition to connect the dots and to turn ideas and inventions into reality?

Mid-sized cities like Canberra have increased potential as secondary cities are on the rise as larger places become more dysfunctional. Remember, some important cities and leaders in livability are of a similar size to Canberra. Zurich has around 400,000 inhabitants, as do Bristol and Bologna.

Canberra is both big and well-known enough to be taken seriously, and in principle small enough to make things happen. It should be easier in Canberra to connect across disciplines, silos and sectors provided it reminds itself to be cosmopolitan and open and does not fall into the parochial trap.

There is the ability to be more agile, to more easily mobilise a coalition of the willing particularly in the surrounding regional context, and to respond more decisively to new opportunities if and when they are found. The urgency for Canberra to act stems from the imminent lack of available "greenfield" public land for new development as a tradeable commodity and funding source. So Canberra needs to think on its feet.

My visit focused on whether Canberra is a city of ambition or whether the good lifestyle perceived by many dulls its potential as people become complacent.

My sense is that Canberra should create a new narrative about itself as a city of ambition, and this cannot be achieved by a business-as-usual approach.

Opportunity one: It is now recognised that we are the midst of systemic crisis. All major global agendas spell this out. It cannot be denied (some deniers exist). Earth Overshoot Day, the date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds the Earth's capacity to regenerate those resources that year was July 29 in 2019. In 2000 it was September 23. There are opportunities in the crisis, and Canberra can be a testing ground for others to emulate in solving issues or creating new benchmark standards, for instance, related to green issues. Its sophisticated research and knowledge base provides the platform.

This systemic challenge focuses on three interconnected questions that cluster in cities. They are the risk nexus, the combination of escalating problems interacting with each other and agglomerating our problems into one: the inability of the current economic order, which is "materially expansive, socially divisive and environmentally hostile", to provide the equality and stability citizens increasingly demand. To avoid crisis turning into collapse, a fundamental rethink of the structure and operation of the current economic system is necessary. This will affect lifestyles. Another pattern of growth is required that ensures we operate within planetary boundaries and provides the ability to create wealth and innovations. Guiding a digitising age and the technologies associated with it is vital to guarantee that the evolving fourth industrial revolution is progressed in a human-centred way. Digitisation, designed and used well, can help create a fourth industrial revolution that is lean, clean and green. Yet threats of algorithmic control remain.

Canberra is already an Australian green leader. It can simultaneously address energy and resource efficiency, climate change and pollution, connected urban mobility, water, waste, sustainable food systems and cultural diversity, as well as establish an emotionally sustaining, physically attractive and aesthetically gratifying environment built on strong cultural identities.

To make this happen requires an integrated approach as it by necessity brings together different disciplines and so helps break down thinking, planning and acting in silos.

Part of this process is to rethink the definition and criteria for success, going beyond GDP.

Another opportunity is to be seen as "a city of welcome". The accelerated global connectivity enabled by the transformative and tectonic shift that is digitisation has changed our ideas about space, place and time. The sheer volume, velocity and variety of big data has created the anytime, anywhere, anyplace phenomenon. This changes how we interact, work and have leisure. When everything is on the move and potentially fragmenting, the issue becomes "where do I belong?" and "where is my identity?". Then place matters as never before, and especially the human scale and the cultural activities fostered and, in particular, those involving direct participation rather than merely consuming. The "here and there" world is characteristic of this age. As a government city, Canberra has experience of transience.

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Seeing itself as a "city of welcome" implies creating physical settings that act as gathering places at differing scales and providing opportunities to people and organisations to meet and interact across disciplines, cultures and worldviews. This means thinking of the City Renewal Precinct as the hub for Canberra's innovative ecosystem.

Given so many Canberra assets and potentially inspiring people and projects are hidden behind walls or isolated settings, creating gathering places and public events or activity programs rises dramatically in importance - otherwise we do not know they actually exist. Making the invisible visible is the mantra.

It highlights the importance of planning for the third-place logic. Third places become more important - neither at home or an office - to work on the move, to gather and meet and to combine local space and cyberspace. Integrated placemaking then becomes key, so as to provide both anchorage, yet with possibilities, the connections and even inspiration that developments like New Acton to some extent provide.

Creating this ambience of welcome is more about doing 100 small things well rather than creating one grand, iconic statement. It about weaving the city together and establishing seamless connectivity, such as the tram, or walkability. It is here that urban design takes on an even more important role.

Canberra should aim to project itself as a "can-do" place that exudes style, verve and imagination. Avoiding hype is key - there is a fine balance between letting the ambition pull the reality and the realities actually exemplifying the ambition. This ambition is the task of the whole of ACT and its partners.

This notion to some extent flips Canberra's ideal to reflect a city of conviviality and potential chance encounter. It is an ambition that emphasises softer infrastructures, such as creating atmospheres (and this requires a strong urban design input), wide-ranging opportunities to connect people and organisations across the city and wider world, as well as vigorous cultural programming.