45: How to Build Precincts That Last

Episode Summary

In this episode, Richard sits down with Dr Kate Meyrick, Director at Urbis, to unpack what really separates precincts that thrive from those that don’t deliver on their promise. Kate shares her inspiration to pursue her PhD, ‘On Track for Transformation’, which grew out of two career losses on major rail regeneration bids, and set her on a path to understand why some cities capture the full benefit of transit investment while others fall short.

Kate explores the key findings from her research, which studied 26 cities and 38 rail corridors worldwide. Sustainable transport emerges as the strongest predictor of a city's long term success, but only when land use and transit planning are genuinely integrated and government commitment holds firm across political cycles. Kate also highlights the surprising power of place as a supercharger of value, using King's Cross and London Bridge, two precincts in the same city with very different outcomes, to bring the point to life.

The conversation turns to what this means for Australia today, from Sydney's transit strategy and Brisbane's Olympic legacy to Melbourne's Suburban Rail Loop, before closing on the lessons government needs to learn if these enormous infrastructure investments are going to deliver for generations, not just election cycles.

About Our Guest

Dr Kate Meyrick is a Director at Urbis and leads a business unit called Future State. Her team combines insight, evidence and imagination to build compelling visions and evidence-based value propositions for major transformation projects, from transport infrastructure and urban regeneration to city shaping events like the Olympics.

With more than 25 years of international experience across Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States, Kate is globally respected for her work in visioning and positioning city scale precincts, working closely with stakeholders and communities to shape the future of well-loved places.

Kate is a regular speaker, panellist and conference moderator, and a recognised thought leader on city shaping, knowledge and innovation precincts.

Tune into the Episode

If you want to understand what really drives successful precinct development, from integrated planning to the power of place and the importance of long-term vision, this episode is for you. Tune in to hear Kate’s evidence-based take on Australia’s biggest urban renewal opportunities.

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Transcript

This episode was recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and future.

Richard: Hello and welcome to another episode of Precisely Property. I'm your host Richard Temlett. I'm excited to have you with us today. If you're here for the first time, thank you for joining us. I encourage you to listen to our previous episodes where we discuss all things property with a focus on dynamic discussions with industry leaders. In this episode, we'll be talking with Dr. Kate Merrick of Urbis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. Kate is a passionate urbanist and placemaker with more than 25 years of international experience working throughout Australia, as well as Asia, Europe, and the United States. She's globally respected for her expertise in visioning and positioning city scale precincts, working sensitively with stakeholders and the community to co-create powerful new futures for well-loved places. She's been influential in shaping thinking about the global competitiveness of Australian cities, their future identity and quality of life. A regular speaker, panelist and conference moderator, is recognized as a thought leader in relation to city shaping knowledge and innovation precincts and talent attraction.

Welcome Kate.

Kate: Lovely to be with you.

Richard: I'm so excited to have you with us today. Today's episode is all about urban renewal and precinct development. I just wanted to bring our listeners up to speed. We met at the urban developer events a while ago now. I'm pleased to say we're actually both finalists for a particular award. We were sitting at the same table, and it was fantastic. As soon as I started chatting to you, I realised it was first of all that I had huge competition and ultimately you won that award and congratulations again. What I found absolutely fantastic was you and I do similar types of work, certainly have similar interests and it was one of the best functions that I've had quite simply because I've got to sit with you for over an hour just talking and sharing notes about our experiences and things like that. Pretty much I left that night going, I really need to get you on the show because you’re an absolute wealth of knowledge and what I learned that night is that you've done a PhD that obviously you know, you're using for your, for your advice and consultancy. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And it was since then, can't remember the dates of when it was, but because you are so busy, because you're in such demand, taken a while to get you on the show, but I just wanted to thank you very much for coming on and you beat me in that event, which is absolutely hilarious. And you were very modest about it. I certainly hope that they are listening because they're going to learn a lot today.

Kate: I have to say you were the best dinner date I've ever had at an awards night or anything else. I did actually go home and say to my husband, I've just had the best first date ever.

Richard: That's absolutely hysterical. I must admit I went home too and I think we did exchange emails and I felt the same way. Very rarely at those events do I, I mean you meet nice people of course, but you don't really leave going, oh my goodness, that was such a thought-provoking inspirational chat. So again, that's why I think that you'll be a fantastic fit for the podcast. And already when we were preparing for the show, just could hear all your enthusiasm coming out and I can't wait for listeners to actually hear that. So, before we get into the show though, I did have an icebreaker question. I did laugh when you said what your potential response was going to be for this, but I don't want to ruin it for everyone. What's something completely unrelated to work that you've become unexpectedly passionate about?

Kate: Well, in general, I'm quite an open book. So, people tend to know everything there is to know about my life, but something that's quite a well-kept secret is. I am absolutely passionate about volleyball. Given that I’m not a very sporty person, volleyball got under my skin in a really unexpected way, partly because it was a way of communicating with my son as he grew up. It created space for us to have other important conversations and to find a point of contact and something we both felt very passionate about. But the more I learned about the game, the less it became about him and the more it became about how that trains your mind to see two, three, four, five moves ahead and to build the agility to react to a moment and to pivot and the sense of communication within a team and how verbal and nonverbal communication helps a team to achieve a goal. It has really surprised me. My son's now 26, doesn't live at home. We don't go to volleyball at GPS every Saturday any longer, but I would still choose to spend my time watching volleyball if I get the opportunity to, to remind me of all of those things that matter about agility and teamwork and thinking ahead and having the ability to visualise success.

Richard: That's an absolutely brilliant answer. I'm going to obviously show by ignorance, I have tried, particularly beach volleyball. I didn't realise that you had to think three or four moves ahead. That's probably why I was so terrible at it. But I suppose in hindsight, will reflect on it. That does make sense.

Kate: It's definitely a way. I think also to train young people to understand the consequence of chains of reactions. And so has this beautiful kind of sense of causality that it's not just what I do that provokes a reaction, but that actually sets off a sequence of reactions and sometimes they're predictable and sometimes they're not. So really important lessons for young people, think in life.

Richard: Brilliant. Well, I suppose also as an aside, before we jump into the session, I know that you manage a team of people. I actually suspect that you'd be a very good both leader and manager if you're talking about some of the themes that you've just spoken about there. And I think people would be very lucky to work with you to learn, I suppose, about life and then also obviously your technical side of things.

Kate: Honestly, I think I treat them all like my children, to be perfectly frank, and they probably get very fed up with me because it's that combination of praise and support and encouragement, but at the same time, really firm boundaries and setting expectations. And then saying, I'm sorry, this does not meet my expectation, which, you know, sometimes it feels like it's the first time they've been told that, but maybe that's what happens as you get older in your career.

Richard: Absolutely hilarious. All right. Well, look, before I get too carried away about that, we were actually talking about some of these things in terms of how work has changed over the last number of years. And I don't want to distract from the session today. I'm really keen to talk to you about urban renewal and precinct redevelopment. Now I’ve done a little bit of work myself on this, particularly in Victoria, for the state governments and then also starting to branch out into other states. What I really enjoyed when we caught up that night was that if my understanding is correct, you've done your PhD on this exact topic and you started actually talking to me about your PhD and I, that's why I in absolute awe because the depth that you've got into and the experience, the case studies that you have, and obviously know how you're applying it to different projects around Australia absolutely fascinated me. And right now I'm doing an enormous amount of work both in Brisbane because of the Olympics that obviously you are well aware given that you are based in Brisbane, even though I'm based in Melbourne. Looking at what the impact of the Olympics might be. Also been doing a lot of work on the impact of the delivery of new transport infrastructure and what that could potentially be for areas. And then even in Victoria, we do have a huge amount of infrastructure also being delivered. So it’s giving advice to governments and doing research for governments and sometimes private landholders basically to advise them how to set up precincts for success. I don't think I know anyone more qualified than yourself to actually speak about this given when you started talking about your PhD was absolutely brilliant. So that's what I'm keen to talk to you about today. It is very topical. There's a number of developers or financiers or builders that certainly will no doubt be reaching out. You probably already advise a lot of them and I'll be pointing them in your direction. But before we get into your PhD and then also what government needs to be aware of as well as some of the risks and the opportunities, let's just talk about your role at Urbis. I'm keen for everyone, just as a bit of a background, what is your role at Urbis?

Kate: I have an awesome job. So I lead a business unit called Future State and we do exactly what it says on the tin. We use a combination of insight and evidence, but equally imagination to develop very compelling visions, but equally powerful evidence-based value propositions, that are usually associated with transformation. So, they could be for the impacts of a piece of infrastructure like a rail project, or they could be around urban change, a regeneration project, or they could indeed be around an event that can change the trajectory of a city like the Olympics. So it's a very extraordinary privilege, the job I have, and I guess it's also quite a big responsibility, but it's fun every day.

Richard: Yep. Well, we're going to get into that. We're going to explain to our listeners that certainly again, we'll hear your passion they could probably hear it already, but I loved your comments about also having evidence, evidence-based, evidence-based research. And that I think is so important to everyone these days has an opinion that can all even, suppose, just jump on Google or AI or whatever it is, ChatGPT or some of the other programs that seem to be coming out every day and get their own views. But certainly what you do in terms of the critical analysis, the critical research, I think is absolutely essential. So let's jump into your PhD. What was the title of it and what was it all about?

Kate: Well, let's just back up a tiny bit. So the title is easy. It was on track for transformation. And what I was really trying to look at was how to use these enormous investments in transport infrastructure that we make in our cities and regions to drive the maximum intergenerational benefit possible. And to understand why I feel so passionate about this, you kind of have to understand my background a little bit. I’m quite old and I grew up in a time of profound change. I lived in the south of England. My dad was a planner, and I watched the impact of hollowed out city centres when people were decanted into new towns and industry went downstream or upstream or industrial restructuring meant that that industry didn't exist anymore. Then I lived through this extraordinary resurgence of precincts across East London and watched cities become something completely different in your lifetime. I think that leaves you with this really strong sense that change is possible. When I came to Australia, one of the things I quickly appreciated was you hadn't quite got, this is 25 years ago, to that level of maturity of city yet and things were only just starting to happen. There weren't a range of people who could imagine change at that scale. But because I had lived through it and been part of it, I knew that you could have a very powerful vision of a future state and you could back solve how to get yourself there and you could justify why that future was the right flag to place on the right hill. So in a way, I feel like every element of my career has coalesced in the time that I've been at Urbis to allow me to do the thing that I can perhaps most powerfully contribute to our industry. And then this really other interesting thing happened to me in 2000. I was part of the King's Cross Rail Yards urban regeneration bid and I worked on the team that lost. We won't name that team, but I had no concept because I was quite young and a little bit naive then. I didn't actually realise that tenders were a competition. I didn't realise that in a competition you get a winner and their idea is built and you get a loser and their idea is put in a drawer. I was devastated that we didn't win because I'd become powerfully attracted to this rail-led regeneration scheme in a city that was my home that I understood very deeply. I almost ran away to Australia to escape the ignominy and the disappointment and found here instead this incredible opportunity to be able to start to shape these conversations. Fast forward another few years, I worked on a big infrastructure project here in my own home city. Again, we were the underbidder and we didn't win. This time really moving to another part of the world was not in question. I thought, what more could I do? Where did I go wrong that I didn't tell the story? didn't help my team to win by setting out this vision of success and the benefits that would flow for my city. I was inadequate. Why was that? And that's what inspired me to do a PhD.

I wanted to understand whether I had given good advice and how I could have advised people differently. And I recognise that with all the transport work that was coming up in Sydney, in Melbourne and in Perth, really getting under the hood of what makes great rail-led transformation for a city would be an incredibly fertile ground. So, I trotted off to Curtin University and I persuaded Professor Peter Newman to take me on as a PhD student. Peter is quite Machiavellian and there aren't many people in their early to mid-fifties who want to embark on a PhD. I think there were many people in the faculty who probably told him I was a bad bet, but I did actually finish my PhD in three years and 51 weeks, which is inside the four years as a full-time student whilst I had a full-time job. I think people underestimate the power of passion. I felt a real purpose associated with this and I wanted to finish so that I could start using it. I felt that there was a substance and a gravitas that's given to your opinion when you've actually spent time deeply investigating this, building the evidence base, and then having your work peer-reviewed. And to be candid, the peer review of my work was the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done. Even when you give a report to a client, they're not often totally unkind about it. But to have to go through the rigor of defending your thesis and defending your evidence and your point of view, I think made me a much stronger practitioner. So, I feel very happy I went through that process and I hope that I can repay the Commonwealth and its investment in me by being able to give better advice.

Richard: Well, I probably knew maybe half of what you've described there. I certainly did not know what drove you that I think is fantastic. And certainly you have your why you have your reason as to, as to pushing and being able to push through when it got hard or got exhausting. So certainly, commend you for that. Talk to me about your PhD. What was the title? What did you actually do? What were you studying? What was the evidence base?

Kate: It was the best thing that I would start all over again in a heartbeat. I absolutely loved it. I frequently ask, I do another one? I get told no, but that's usually my family that says that before Peter does. I had always understood that rail shaped cities, their economies, their social life, spatially, environmentally. But I wanted to understand why some cities evolved really successfully and capitalised upon huge benefits that endured over many generations. And some cities kind of didn't. And so, I wanted to understand why that happened. What I was able to do was to go back and in my thesis, I looked at three interrelated questions. So, On track for transformation was really a rhetorical question. Are we as Australian cities and Australian governments on track for the transformation that rail can inspire or not? And three things that I looked at first of all was can really prove that cities that invest in a solid long-term transit strategy outperform those that do not? I looked at 26 cities around the world, and I didn't limit it to only cities that had a well-established mature transport network. I looked at all sorts of different cities so that my findings would transcend geopolitics or the technical structure of the city. And I collected data around 36 different indicators and each indicator looked forensically at a different aspect of the future success of cities. So, in the end, I collected 26 cities times 108 measures over 20 years. I think in technical terms, you might say that's actually a shit load of data. And I modelled it. And what I found when I modelled it was that the strength of support that validated the idea that sustainable transport is the best predictive indicator for a successful sustainable city was overwhelming. I had a very high statistical probability that my thesis was correct. What I also saw was that there were a couple of other things that had to be in train, no pun intended, for this benefit to flow through from rhetoric to reality or from business case to real life. One was that those cities had to have deeply integrated land use and transit planning. That when the things were paralleled, often the actual realisable benefit or addressable benefit just did not materialise.

And that it was only when these two strategies themselves intersected that you set the foundations for this really strong and enduring flow of benefit from the transit investment. And I also saw that this intentionality and commitment had to be over time and across geography. So it wasn't enough to say we're committed to this one corridor in this one city for the next five years, but when the government changes or the going gets tough, we're actually going to abandon that strategy, flip-flop and do something else. So, intentionality and commitment were really important. The second thing that I realised was that those cities that had really deliberately aligned their challenges and their opportunities to this investment in transit outperformed those that had been a little bit more happenstance about it. So, by saying, for example, transit-oriented development in North America was largely invented in the nineties to address urban sprawl. That was the challenge of our time. Therefore, the solution looks like this. Or in Asia, we've got massive population explosion. We need to create sustainable environments for people to live connected to their workplace. Todd’s achieved that outcome for us. Whereas in Northern Europe, we were largely saying Todd is a great antidote to these industrial wastelands that we're trying to reintroduce people to, they create a typology of urban development that is aligned to lifestyle need. And we didn't seem to have a Todd Hook or a challenge statement that we were orienting around. So I found that finding really interesting. And then the last thing I did was I looked at 38 different rail corridors around the world. And in that, I extrapolated a bunch of different precincts, and I looked at their performance using hard data. So, I looked at land vacancy, land value uplift. I looked at population density, population gain, socioeconomic transformations gets a bunch measured. And then I equally looked at quality of place, place experience, amenity, physical environment, and a bunch of other indicators. And I looked at what happened when I modelled the two together. And what I really quickly saw to my amazement was that those precincts that had really high place qualities, always outperformed against those solid economic and commercial metrics. And they also exhibited earlier and more sustained enduring change. I found this mind blowing because I'd never understood the role of place as a supercharger of other forms of capital. So place supercharged human capital, intellectual capital, environmental capital, and money. I found that really interesting. So I then started to think, well, possibly the output of my research is that it's not transit oriented development per se that we should be chasing in Australia. It's transit-oriented urbanism wherein we think about the whole city and we think about this as a network of connected places wherein we're also driving behavioural change. I suppose that was an unexpected conclusion of the thesis was we do as a young country with rapidly growing cities have a remarkable opportunity to approach transit-oriented city making in a different way. And I ended up with these 10 factors that helped us to think about it and drive performance in a different way.

Richard: Fantastic. I wanted to let you finish that before I jump in with a couple of questions or comments. The first one was just for the listeners that are not as close to the work as yourself or even myself is or are. Todd, what does Tod stand for? What does it mean?

Kate: Yes. So Tod is a tricky little acronym. It stands for Transit Oriented Development. And conventionally, people think about that as density around a train station, but that actually is not what a Todd strategy is about. So it was invented in the 1990s and had a couple of authors who wrote about it around the same time. So it's always difficult to say whether it was a Cal Thorpe or a Chevrolet inspired thing. But the way that it's grown out is to say, we know that when we put transit into a locality and bring people into greater proximity, a bunch of things become possible. We can support higher density living more effectively and we can also produce more productive environments. And there are a couple of other things. So, agglomeration can happen, economic agglomeration or cultural agglomeration. A couple of other things can happen if we design that urban environment correctly. If we make it walkable and we prioritise pedestrians over cars, and if we make sure that we actually orient our development form towards the station, as opposed to adjacent to the station, that some of these magic amplifiers start to happen. So, Tod is a way of talking about how transit changes the growth and the shape of a city.

Richard: Aright. Can you please let me know and let any listeners, what was the best designed example? Well, the worst designed example. And again, this was obviously based on your empirical findings, particularly for the worst one, because people that would be listening, a lot of them are actually from overseas, but people would have travelled. And so, to just try to give a bit more colour, because we're going to then jump into obviously Australian cities, but let's start with the best. What was the best on the metrics that you assessed? The best design city that you found?

Kate: I literally love this question because it doesn't have a simple answer. So if you made a histogram and you literally looked at which was the one that had the biggest score, the precinct is King's Cross rail yards. And just fractionally behind that is Porta Nuova in Milan. Both great examples of urban regeneration. Very well-rounded, they've had early and ultimate impact and that's a really important measure. The reason King's Cross is such a great example to talk to is because the worst example of transit oriented development is London Bridge. What makes that completely fascinating is they are two examples in the same city undertaken around train stations with roughly the same nodal magnitude in their networks. They had large tracts of land around them capable of uplift and development. One worked and one didn't. They came to market in really, really different ways. I think what that surfaced for me and the score differential was quite significant was that it isn't just the magic of having rail and land, it's also how you go on that journey and how these projects are brought to market. What I saw was when there is a deliberate market intervention, so the project is competitively tended, there is a very clear expectation of the desired outcomes and there's a very thoughtful response and time for a project to mature, you can get a very powerful solution. When you allow it to be left to market forces and you enable it in a planning regime, but you have no champion and no element of competition, you often end up with a very fragmented solution that may have individual plots of land, have individual buildings on it, but that dividend that comes from a pre-synchronised approach with that common public realm as the glue just fails to ignite the same level of benefit and value. That was what was incredibly interesting. So whilst land use change happened, it happened more slowly, whilst rental values went up, it was more sporadic and the social value was considerably reduced.

Richard: Very interesting. All right. And I think it's fascinating that the best and worst examples are in the same city, which is great.

Kate: Can I tell you one other thing that was also really interesting? it's a shame we don't have a visual because you need a lot more words to convey what was in the visual. I looked at three corridors in detail. One corridor was in Toronto, one corridor was in Singapore, one corridor was in London. Each one of them happened very usefully to have six stations on it, so it made for very easy set of comparators. What I observed was when I looked at the overarching scores, Singapore's scores for each precinct had a very low variability. Nearly all of their scores for their precincts were between 68 and 72. It had very little that went above 72 and almost nothing that went below mid-60s. Their frequency around that mean was really limited and they had a very well-orchestrated approach to the delivery of their precincts. When I looked at Toronto, they had largely not taken any form of place-based approach. They had a planning scheme orientation and very often it hadn't been led through a competitive tender. It was left to market forces. They had a very almost uniformly low level of activation and they were not accelerated outcomes. As a corridor, they didn't perform well and none of the precincts didn't perform well. When you went to London, they had incredible variability from the top score to the bottom score. And almost if you sequenced it over time, you could also see how long it took for a good precinct to mature to become a great precinct. So the interesting thing for me was, again, sometimes these very codified ways of doing things, they give you a good uniform standard. No one will be disappointed, but they may not achieve brilliance. Equally, they don't lead you towards a disappointment. And I thought that was interesting too.

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Richard: I want to shift gears but keep talking about some of the key findings. I do quite a bit of work for government, as I've mentioned, and they do ask, how long do these things take to mature? So I appreciate that perhaps the answer is it depends on the size of the precinct, but just, can you explain to the listeners how many years or market cycles do these things actually take from, you know, conception or conceptual or an idea to actual completion to then market maturity, you spoke about agglomeration of uses and things like that, and market identity or critical mass of uses. What is the timing for some of these precincts?

Kate: So, I don't want to freak people out because I think that, know, faint-hearted people don't take you to great places. If you looked at King's Cross, that's 27 years. Partly that's quite horrifying to me because that means I've been involved with that project as a watcher for 27 years. But from conceptual idea to more or less built out, that's a 27-year timeframe. And you could say success became visible at about year 12. And that would be not dissimilar to some of the other major rail projects in the UK as well. So one of the ways that you can accelerate success or bring forward obvious advantage is by building out the public realm as a great place first, even if those office buildings or residential apartments come online slower. Those places that retrofit place, those precincts that retrofit place rarely perform as well at all. So, they don't perform early and they don't perform ultimately as well as those who have led with place in public realm. Actually, a little known fact about me is I do have a valuation license, which most of my clients would probably find very scary. So, I'm not completely naive to development economics, but the investment early in place leads to backend profit and profitability and value that can be measured in so many ways, not just through the economic metrics.

Richard: Very interesting. All right. Let's jump into Australia and Australian cities. You've made the comments and certainly I agree that Australia and the Australian cities are much younger, much less mature than especially cities in Europe, for example. When I look around Australia, we've got huge city shaping rail infrastructure projects being delivered, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, smaller ones also in some of the smaller states. These are huge investments, take time to be delivered overseas and local capital is extremely attractive to them. I'm interested to know, let's start with your neck of the woods based in Brisbane. What are your views on them? How is everything materialising and what's the opportunity? What's the opportunity and what are some of the lessons learned? And the first one, obviously talking about when the timing for place and delivery of place and investment, but in Brisbane, we'll jump into Sydney and Melbourne, but in Brisbane, what are some of those infrastructure projects? What are some of the opportunities or the lessons learned?

Kate: It's really interesting because actually naturally I always start in Sydney and I think of my own city. Okay, let's start Sydney. I don't mind. Let's start in Sydney. The reason I start with Sydney is because I think Sydney’s original 2056 transit strategy, transport strategy, the original Sydney, New South Wales 2056 transport strategy was so enlightened. The way that they thought about Sydney Metro and the light rail and creating more orbital connectivity was really on point. It was happening at a time when the same thinking was also going on in Paris. I don't know if you remember that people thought Mayor Hildegard was mad and that the Grand Paris Plan and the Paris Express and these incredible New Borno-Leo lines, suburban lines. Why would you do that when you can have a perfectly great carbon transport system so ahead of her time? But we were actually doing really quite a similarly remarkable job in Sydney. What's been interesting is it almost has been an under the radar thing that we. It's like watching in Sydney this perfect test case rolling out that we are building infrastructure using all sorts of rail technologies, like rail technology, metro technology, high-speed technologies. I'm agnostic as to the technology, but the benefit that it has of increasing proximity, bringing people together by reducing the friction of distance and making faster connections, cheaper connections, allowing people to move around is changing our economic and social geography. And the precinct agenda has almost caught up with that. So, some cities led with the precinct agenda, other cities have used the precinct agenda as an addition or a supplement to their transport agenda. And I think that’s, it’s been very interesting to watch that happen in Sydney and where other people perhaps are distracted by different lines. The line that exercises me is the connection between Parramatta into Hunter Street and how that starts to pick up some of these urban regeneration and renewal precincts. The power of that corridor. over the next five, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 years is going to have the same amplification effect that Lee Kuan Yew's thinking about transit had for Singapore. That's why I find it so interesting.

We are only at the beginning of the benefit journey that's going to be realized in that city. When I think about Brisbane, we have a different suite of challenges. We are a very large landmass. We have some topographical challenges that make tunnelling and using trains often quite hard. We've taken a tripartite approach to this. We've got cross-river rail and our first underground suite of stations, it's a very important thing that's going to unify our network. Around those cross-river rail opportunities have arisen some of the most profound precinct change opportunities in the inner city that will catalyse the resurgence of Brisbane CBD as an experienced district. And that is undoubtedly going to propel Brisbane as not just a great host city for events and entertainment like the Olympics, but also a new economy agglomeration, a social community because the fastest growth and the greatest change in the population demographic is happening in our inner city area. I think that's exciting. So that's where transport, land use change and population and economic change come together. I think that will see Brisbane as a city really mature in leaps and bounds again over the runway out of the Olympics 2032 and beyond. So for us, timing is almost everything. Whilst it’s usually great to think about a precinct being there and ready when the first train pulls in, for us, the first train will be pulling in, the Olympics will come to town, and the legacy will be what these precincts become afterwards, riding that wave of optimism, confidence, and momentum. So timing is an interesting dynamic always. I think that Brisbane has been very fortunate to get that right. And then you look at Melbourne, and I'm a big proponent of the suburban rail loop. I think that those middle ring suburbs, the appropriate densification of middle ring suburbs, the reshaping of corridors of opportunity that connect new economy, activity, innovation, technology, education. and community together is also incredibly important for a city that has potentially lost its mojo a little bit coming out of COVID. If we build that story, this is actually a story about reshaping the city for the next century. I think that's exciting as well. Big projects like Arden, opportunities to tune up Box Hill, which is already an exciting and interesting place, to think about Cheltenham differently, to bring economic activation out differently in our Monash. All of those things to me, they are very exciting in their own right.

But if you notice, each one of those cities is offering a different opportunity and the transit oriented development addresses a different challenge. That's what I think is so very interesting about the environment we find ourselves in in Australia now.

Richard: Really, really great. Let's jump into Brisbane Olympics 2032, doing a lot of work in the lead up to it. People are also asking what happened in Sydney in the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. What happened afterwards? Is there going to be a huge increase in pricing, rents, land values in the lead up to the Olympics? What's going to happen afterwards? What's going to happen to the infrastructure afterwards? No doubt you're being asked or doing work in this space. So, I'm interested. It is obviously very topical. What do you think the outlook is for the lead up to the Olympics in Brisbane and then the outlook is?

Kate: Look, I'm a relentlessly positive person. I did also co-author the Elevate 2042, the Olympic legacy strategy for Brisbane. So spent a lot of time, 21 to 23, thinking about what the cumulative impact of this change might be and studying other cities. Again, I think what's really fascinating is when you look at the poster child cities for Olympic legacy, they are not necessarily the same cities that are the poster children for the games. So the games in Sydney was an extraordinary event and it had many extraordinary legacy outcomes. But in comparison to London or Barcelona, for example, the tale of economic transition and the tale of the elevation of those cities took a lot longer to mature for Sydney. We almost lost a decade because we kind of didn't plan for the after the games moment. Whereas I think the London and the Barcelona games, you've seen exponential value in legacy terms as every decade passes. So Barcelona, came out of an extraordinary political time. It was a city no one had heard of. I actually gave my pickets to the Barcelona Olympics away because I didn't want to go there. What kind of an idiot was I?

Richard: Wow, okay.

Kate: Now you look at it and it's become the ninth most visited city for business meetings, conventions, cultural exploits in the world. It consistently sits in that top 10 visitor attraction places, it's almost a victim of its own success. It used carefully strategically selected precincts at the edge of its CBD as its Olympic precincts to drive that inward and outward renewal process. Same with London, the East London dividend of the Olympics has grown and grown and grown with every year. It's not just about the housing of the Athletes Village, the extraordinary Queen Elizabeth Park, the Great Westfield Shopping Centre. It's also about Easter bank and the cultural institutions. It's about Hear East and the innovation. It's about how people across East London felt about themselves, about the pride they felt in the place they came from and how it changed the trajectory and the image and the identity of the city, which is always a hard word to use in the context of London. I mean, the greater London area rather than the city of London. It made London believe in itself again. That belief has stood it in good stead even throughout Brexit. And I think that's the lesson that we need to learn for Brisbane is that we're planning for the forever. We're not planning for the event, that we're thinking about how this incredible investment in event-based infrastructure and connective tissue allows us to become in the future, a live entertainment and event city of global standing. And without the Olympics, we couldn't have achieved that. It's also about the confidence in the investability in our product and having these shovel-ready precincts. Sorry to be crude, but the shovel-ready precinct product that you can invest in over time. So, we're a growing city, we're a young city, we're a pioneering city with a great lifestyle. Now we need to convert that energy from the Olympics into taking us to become this globally acknowledged business address in Asia Pacific and a lifestyle city that attracts people from around the world.

Richard: Well, that is a fantastic segue into the final theme of today, which is basically talking about what the different levels of government needs to be aware of. You've obviously articulated just how transformative some of this delivery of infrastructure, all these events can be. In your experience and looking at what's happened overseas, what are some of the lessons learned for federal, states and local governments for some of these precincts to set them up for success?

Kate: This is the subject of a whole podcast on its own right and it's probably the most dangerous territory for me and anyone from government listening, I definitely want to work for you again. But I think the first thing is we have to accept that cities are not political footballs and that cities transcend your lifetime. They transcend definitely your moment in government, and we have to think about those long-term outcomes, resiliency, liveability, their ability to compete. Those things have to transcend political and capital cycles. So having a really strong vision that is set for a period of time that we all collectively contribute to is incredibly important. While Singapore is a nation, it's a nation at a scale that we can relate to. Its vision has stood it in good stead since the 1960s. And it has that vision operating at a 50-year scale, a 20-year scale, a 10-year scale, and a scale of tomorrow. And everybody understands that vision. And my other example. that I often use is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the 2030 vision. There isn't a person of any nationality that you work with in the kingdom who does not understand what they're trying to achieve and what their role in achieving that is. And I would encourage government to make sure that it stands for something, that it has a clear vision. And I saw this great thing. It was actually posted by a colleague of mine and it was an article that he reposted on LinkedIn. And it talked about the difference between strategic planning and strategy. And it said good strategic planning, no one should disagree with, but a strategy you could find 50% of people don't like because you're actually picking a winning idea. You're picking something to orientate around. You're not just making sure that you're making all those sensible good decisions. You're actually standing for something. So, vision for me is really important.

I think the second thing is coordination and collaboration. And we should not be afraid of that. It's too easy to fall back into yesterday's paradigm around, I'm this colour, you're that colour. I've got this credibility, you've got that longevity. You have this policy, I'm responsible. Forget that. The city needs all of us to work together in a much more coherent system to enable the efficiencies to actually come through and to be a city that's to the benefit of all of its people. That can sound a little bit Pollyanna, but I think, again, when you look at things like the GLA in London, you really get the sense that the deregulation of national policy into this body allowed them to do things that an ordinary city council couldn't achieve. The unitary body nature of it means that they have oversight of housing policy, transport policy, tourism policy. They're able to make investment decisions that actually have longevity and scale associated with them. I think if we can find a way to work vertically and horizontally better as a collection of governments, that would be an extraordinary outcome. If you can't do that around the games, then really there's no other lightning rod that we can find that's going to be effective for us. And then the third thing is that cities belong to everybody and that the ethics of the city or the Jane Jacobs-ness of a city is it's only for everyone when it's by everyone. So how do we make sure that we don't end up traveling on a journey that takes some people to a better place and leaves other people behind. And you can see that in terms of intergenerational equity. You can think about it in terms of displacement through our own regeneration efforts that we shouldn't be using a public benefit like transport infrastructure to create advantage for some people at the expense of others. So how do we think more inclusively about the city and understand that what we've saw today we want to reap in 20 years’ time. And as a small nation, need everyone to be productive, everyone to be engaged, everyone to be involved. That only happens when we think about everyone.

Richard: Okay. That was an absolutely excellent answer. I've done quite a bit of research myself in that space and a lot of the executive summary and the key findings do tie back to exactly what you've said. And particularly having that long-term vision. I absolutely love that. And it has also been a major frustration of mine. And perhaps I raised with you the night that we caught up at the urban developer, we basically just said, property is very different to political cycles. And particularly in Victoria right now, it's infuriating to see some of the decisions that are quite clearly political decisions that do not reflect at all what is happening in the property space or what is actually in the best interest of the city and the future generations. And I’m glad to see that, although I'm not surprised that there are case studies overseas for when the opposite has been done. And the clarity that everyone has and that can actually follow to get these outcomes. That is why I'm assuming certain cities or certain precincts actually just outperform compared to others.

Kate: I'm very proud to be Australian. I'm lucky to be here. It was a big decision at the time. But once you've made that decision and you come to love the place where you live, you want the future to be as good as it possibly can be. I often, as you know, stand in rooms on a stage and I look out at 300, 400, 500, 1,000 people. Sometimes I'm brave enough to say, our future is actually in your hands. The people in this room who make decisions every day, because not only is it the big political decisions that drive cities, it's the sum of 1,000 tiny decisions that we all make on every project. If we all just made every decision 5% better, the cumulative impact of that for the future would be huge.

Richard: Okay. I know that we're almost out of time today. I think that's a very good note to finish on. I'd like to thank you very much for coming on. I will put certainly connections to yourself, and Urbis, and I am very much hoping that different private or public sector companies, departments actually reach out to you to get some more advice. And certainly, I know that the government loves case studies. You've obviously got those case studies and picture say a thousand words and I genuinely feel that sure the different cities may have been developed at different points in an economic cycle and so forth, but there's still a lot of similarities, a lot of lessons learned and Australia as a whole and much like you, deeply care about Australia. It needs more bigger picture thinkers, people with good experience that can actually help policymakers make the right decision. So, I wanted to just thank you very much for your valuable time today and certainly we'll be catching up when I'm next in your neck of the woods to talk in a little bit more detail about your PhD.

Kate: Thanks so much, Richard. I really loved it.

Richard: Hi everyone. I hope that you really enjoyed the episode with Kate and I hope certainly that you could hear just how passionate she is about what she does. I find working with people like her absolutely fantastic, inspirational. It's a pleasure to actually come into work and share ideas with people like that or with her in particular. There are a number of key insights that obviously came out of today's session. There's three though that I would ask everyone to just keep in mind are as follows. The first one is when I have studied and given advice on precinct development, and it certainly was resoundingly clear in Kate's analysis, is that successful precincts need an alignment of planning, infrastructure, and market demand. And that'll set up some of the major preconditions for successful precincts and urban renewal development. The second point that I thought was really interesting is that placemaking is absolutely key and setting up the public realm first to make the area attractive and give it an identity is also really, really important. It is often a debate when I'm working with various government departments about whether the public realm ought to be done first, obviously because of the costs, but certainly my view is that yes, it does need to be done first. That's government funds spent to set up the precinct for success, after which the private sector will come in, spend more money, take more risk, and actually develop out the precinct to maximise its capacity.

The final point is about having a strong vision for the precinct and certainly governance and proper governance through a single entity that also then. Both the vision and then the governance model actually transcends political cycles. As you heard from Kate, a lot of these precinct developments take one to two to three market cycles and the largest ones 25 to 30 years. If typical government cycles every three years, which is typically the case in Australia, we need to have longer visions, strong visions, strong governance that doesn't change every single time a political party or a different political party comes into power. I appreciate that that sounds obvious, but really her comments about overseas jurisdictions and everyone in that precinct knowing specifically what they were trying to achieve, I think is very well made. I mean, it just leads to substantially better outcomes for everyone in the actual city. That's all I needed to say today. I hope you have a good rest of the day. Thank you very much for listening to this podcast.

Disclaimer: Precisely Property is a podcast presented by Charter Keck Cramer and is for educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be taken as investment or financial advice. Please engage the services of an appropriate professional advisor to provide advice suitable to your personal circumstances. The views expressed by our podcast guests may not represent those of Charter Keck Cramer.