By Greg Paine, City Wellbeing Program, City Futures Research Centre

City Futures attended the recent workshop held by the City of Sydney as the first stage in establishing a program for a “resilient Sydney” as part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s $100 million 100 Resilient Cities program – which is to assist 100 cities world-wide to build capacity to withstand and recover from future potential shocks. The program addresses the increasing pressures being placed on existing systems by rapid urbanisation and globalisation coupled with the impacts of climate change. Combined, it means that any one shock to those systems will be magnified, with critical flow-on impacts not just to the particular city and its region but now also globally. Sydney joins Melbourne as the only Australian cities in the program.

Professors Susan Thompson and Hal Pawson, from City Futures’ City Wellbeing and City Housing programs were among 160 workshop invitees. Also from UNSW was Professor Deo Prasad, CEO of the CRC for Low Carbon Living.

Rightly, there were also diverse others: insurance companies, OzHarvest, banks, the Council for the Ageing, the Premier’s Council for Active Living, the Heart Foundation, arts and cultural institutions, the Council of Social Service, environment groups, and Government authorities.

Critically, a key feature of the City’s application to join the program was a metropolitan-wide focus. The workshop was attended by all metropolitan Councils, often at CEO level – and a good indicator of how the importance of resilience is perceived.

Hopefully, it also seems to indicate, finally, a growing “metropolitan-consciousness”. This may be one of the first times all Councils in Sydney have come together to brain-storm Sydney’s needs as a metropolitan area rather than a collection of localised (parochial) entities. Not even the State department of planning when preparing recent metropolitan strategies (which tend to group local governments into sub-regions as part of the planning process) seemed to do this. So full-marks to the City of Sydney for this initiative. It now joins a growing collection of others with a similar metropolitan stance: like the Committee for Sydney, the Sydney Alliance, and ICLEI Sydney; all also part of the workshop.

The program itself will take place over two years and will set in place on-going actions, policies and structures to enable Sydney to recover from future shocks should and as they arise. A preliminary survey of invitees had identified an initial set of six “resilience challenges”:

1. Ageing infrastructure
2. Flooding, and coastal inundation
3. Heat wave
4. Infrastructure failure
5. Poor transport system
6. Lack of affordable housing.

But subsequent discussion centred on a critical feature – that building resilience means not just developing the capacity to deal with particular shocks as they are experienced. Rather, it also needs to address long-term underlying stresses which can constrain that capacity when required in emergency. So while the workshop focussed initially on those more visible hazards (like bushfire, flood, coastal storms and rail network breakdowns), it quickly progressed to a realisation that while Sydney had processes, by-and-large well-managed, in place to deal with these emergencies, we are not so good at dealing with a growing list of stresses – and which require different thinking and co-ordination processes. In short: effective planning and governance!

Here the discussion turned to growing inequities, now felt in the affordability of housing, health outcomes, the distribution of jobs, and travel times to access work and services. Tackling these underlying vulnerabilities so as to strengthen the capacity of individual residents and communities may well be more effective in building metropolitan resilience than say “guessing” specific future shocks.

A graphic example was given. During a total power failure in New York in the 1970s when the city was characterised by high unemployment, crime, housing stress and poor public transport, residents rioted; in a similar blackout in the 2000s, by which time the city had turned around many of these underlying stresses, residents calmly walked home. It was noted that Sydney also has had its share of riots (albeit localised, but still concerning) born of various frustrations (think Redfern in 2004, and Cronulla and Macquarie Fields in 2005).

The City of Sydney will appoint a dedicated officer in the near future to lead the program from here on. This will involve additional major exercises to engage all relevant players and resources to ensure correct identification of issues and needs and objectives. As evidenced by the wide and dedicated attendance at the workshop, “resilience” provides, perhaps one of the few, galvanising metropolitan-wide ideas relevant and understandable to all of us. City Futures is keen to remain involved. It is also an opportunity for everyone interested in Sydney’s future wellbeing to contribute to this expanding and critical consciousness.