14 Cities

8/6/2019 14 Cities

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14 CITIES

Implausible futuresfor Australian cities

8/6/2019 14 Cities


CITY OFLA NIÑA

The city o La Niña is built onterraormed Australian territoryin the Pacic and is the onlyAustralian city built on climatechange itsel.

The expansion o the Austra-lian continental shel in 2008increased the country’s territoryby 2.5m sq km, and as the Aus-tralian interior has become evermore inhospitable, a shit out tosea seemed inevitable.

Two technological break-throughs - in the constructiono adaptive terraormed landand in harnessing o energyrom intercontinental weatherpatterns - enabled this new cityto emerge rom the rising sealevels o north NSW.

Equidistant rom Brisbane and

Sydney, both o which were

by this time slowly sinking, LaNiña also orients itsel towardsthe United States, South Ameri-ca and Japan, taking advantageo the New Pacic EconomicEnvironment.

Built on expandable platormsthat keep the city alot o risingwater levels, La Niña is poweredentirely by the El Nino South-ern Oscillation, which climatechange has increased to an an-

nual event as opposed to everythree to eight years.

High altitude kites harvest thewind movements in the skyabove La Niña, energy cours-ing down gossamer threads totransormers kilometres below.La Niña also harnesses tidalpower rom giant tentacular

outriggers.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


CITY OFALGALIAAs the Gold Coast’s canals -nally began to disappear be-neath the waters o the risingPacic in May 2041, it becameembarrassingly clear that theGold Coast Development Cor-poration was aced with a starkchoice: retreat or adapt.

Whilst a ew die-hard GoldCoast dwellers decided to con-struct small oating harbours opontoons, lashed together and

oating sentimentally abovetheir ormer properties, a moreexpansive development beganto emerge around the partlysubmerged towers on the coast.

Ater the towers had beensealed, each became the pinionin a large circular partially-algalplatorm structure oating on

the clear blue water. This struc-ture is inhabitable above water

and rapidly growing beneath, aschemically-controlled benecialblooms naturally cleanse theeuent and exhaust rom theconstant small boat trafc, re-duces ambient temperature, andgenerates cheap energy trans-orming CO

2into lipids (oils).

The increasingly intense heatabove the water causes other va-rieties o megaora to emerge,creating rippling tropical orests

around the circular platormslaced through the towers.

Underwater, the lower oors othe old towers contain glass-lined hotel rooms with viewsonto the new ree o a turqoisedrowned world o Karl Langerhotels and barnacled neon sil-houette signs. Algalia’s econo-my is in both tourism and algae-derived oil exports.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


DARWINS.E.Z

By 2050, Darwin had eectivelyreed itsel o its moorings inNT and was oating north, cul-turally and politically at least.

Through a deal concocted be-tween the Chinese and Austra-lian governments in 2032, Dar-win became a city-state ‘specialeconomic zone’ ree o nationalsovereignty but under Chinesepolitical control, almost like areversal o Hong Kong’s posi-

tion under British rule.

This meant the city was ree togrow rapidly, becoming a thriv-ing entrepôt exporting Austra-lian resources and importingChinese creativity, though itsalliance with both the vast cit-ies o Singapore and Jakarta arealso key. Thus it comprises part

o the South-East Asia megalop-olis, a string o city-states run-

ning up to Hong Kong.

The primary language is Man-

darin, with streets signs in bothhanzi and pinyin , though Can-tonese and Australian Englishare also spoken. Unencumberedby Australian-style planningpolicies, the skyline soars verti-cally with gleaming skyscraperso organic orms, whilst the hor-izontal expansion is through ahigh-density sprawl, high-speed

subways connecting the sub-urbs, and a vast high-speed railbridge connecting Darwin S.E.Z.directly to Indonesia.

The city remains a curioushybrid o Australian and Chi-nese cultures — with CasuarinaBeach clear o box jellyshor the rst time in its history

thanks to Chinese technologicalknow-how, surng is popular.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


RE-INDUSTRIAL

CITYThe advances in various lightmanuacturing technologiesthroughout the early part o the21st century — rapid prototyp-ing, 3D printing and variouslocal clean energy sources — en-abled a return o industry to thecity. Noise, pollution and otherexternalities were so low as tobe insignicant, and allied tothe nascent interest in digitally-enabled crat at the turn o the

century, by the early 2020s sub-urbs had become light indus-trial zones once again.

Waterloo, Alexandria and theInner West o Sydney throughto Pyrmont once again becamea thriving manuacturing cen-tre, albeit on a domestic scale,as people were able to ‘micro-manuacture’ products romtheir backyard, or send designs

to mass-manuacture hubs sup-ported by logistics networks oelectric delivery vans and trains.Melbourne had led the waythrough its nurturing o produc-tion in the creative industriesand its existing built abric.

In an ironic twist, ormer ware-houses and actories are beingpartially converted rom apart-ments back into warehousesand actories. Yet the domestic

scale o the technologies meansthey can coexist with livingspaces, actually suggesting areturn to the cratsman’s stu-dio model o the Middle Ages.The ‘aber’ movement — faber,

to make — spread through mostAustralian cities, with the ‘re-industrial city’ as the result, agenuinely mixed-use productiveplace — with an identity.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


METABOLISTCITY

Harry stepped out o his houseonto the old iron oorplate othe Sydney Harbour Bridge,sipping an espresso. Since thecar trafc had been removed,leaving only one light-railline connecting the north andsouth shores, it had becomesomething o a ‘living bridge’in every sense. Harry’s streetstretched horizontally and verti-cally, as well as diagonally on

guyropes across to Sirius, theold public housing block nowconnected physically to thebridge. Each o the cube-likeblocks o Sirius looked as i ithad been repeated, as i copiedand pasted liberally onto theedges o the bridge.

The vertical street above Har-ry’s head was also composedo these modular blocks. The

‘dupe’ technology had emergedin the mid-2030s, as Sydney’sCBD had become incapable obeing developed by traditionalmeans, due to lack o space, -nance and interest. Combinedwith the act that post-peak oilvirtually no-one could actuallycommute to the city, the cityneeded to nd a way o intro-ducing residential space withinthe vicinity o commercial

space, without losing the latter.Hence Dupe. A modular build-ing technology, it enabled sim-ple blocks to attach and accreteanywhere and to anything, suchthat towers were blistered withthese barnacles, oten cantile-vering out across the streetsbelow. Harry used to live on theWestern Distributor, a similarlyencrusted structure...

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


NEWSUNSHINE

By 2045, the Sunshine Coasthad eectively become a singleurban conurbation stretchingrom Caloundra to Cooloola,eventually known as New Sun-shine. Coordinated and gov-erned by the New SunshineCity Council, the average age othe city is 72 and rising, lendingthe place a special atmosphere,orm and series o unctions.

The ongoing surge o retirees

means the new city is a livingshowcase o the ‘demographictimebomb’. Yet this has beenre-cast as an advantage, an idea-lised community or Australia’selderly, an urban paradise orthe superannuated. The coun-cil retrotted a richly diverseurban orm, characterised bytness or two things: local cli-mate, and old age.

As the number o Australianwith dementia had tripled be-tween 2009 and 2050, part othis design is ‘sot inrastruc-ture’ — or instance, livingrooms have responsive photo-rames that reinorce the iden-tity o close amily via sharedambient presence.

Yet the wisdom o these seniorcitizens is also harnessed, vianumerous on-demand consul-

tancies run rom shared work-centres. Transit is by rubberisedPRT pods and slow-movinglight-rail that leans towards thewide, non-slip pavements. Gra-dients are non-existant. NewSunshine’s street-signs are inlarge print and audio. Gol isplayed through the streets onSundays, while the club scene is justly inamous.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


CITY-STATEARCHIPELAGO

“(The bush) was biding its timewith a terrible ageless watchul-ness, waiting or a ar-of end,watching the myriad intrudingwhite men.” D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo (1923)

A century later that end seemednot so ar-o, and it was becom-ing abundantly clear that theinterior would soon be as unin-habitable as the ocean on theother sides o Australia’s great

cities.

As bushres ravaged the landthrough the summer monthsand dust-storms and reakweather events characterisedthe winter, the cities clingingto Australia’s coastline couldincreasingly be seen as a stringo pearls tracing the outline o a

nation that also seemed a con-cept o another time.

The Australian Republic hadbeen nally achieved in 2019,ater the death o Queen Eliza-beth II, also enabling the dele-tion o the state governments.Then Darwin was ‘sold’ to theChinese in 2032, becoming athriving special economic zone.Finally, Canberra lies eectivelydeserted, only the sta o PrimeMinister Wong remain, as i thecaptain o a sinking ship. Much

o the interior is similarly de-void o humans.

The large cities realised theywere eectively working mostsuccessully as city-states, andater lacing a high-speed railnetwork around the entire pe-rimeter o the island-continent,they declared themselves to becity-states ormally, islands inan archipelago o conurbations.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


STARCITY

The ‘Macau o the South’, StarCity emerged rom the ruins othe deadly Sydney casino re in2014. Still assumed to be arsoncommitted by the disgruntledlocal residents o Pyrmont andUltimo, upset at the casino’simpact on local trafc, businessand architecture, Star City hadbeen burnt to the ground andlay in ruins or some months.

While another local theory that

the re was an insurance scamalso cannot be disproved, thecasino had outgrown its Pyr-mont location and had beenlooking or an excuse to move.

Yet no-one expected the scaleo the move, just as no-one inQueensland expected the stategovernment’s continuing pur-

suit o businesses rom south othe border to extend to donat-

ing both Moreton Island andNorth Stradbroke Island to thenow-Chinese-owned gamblingchain.

Linked by high-speed railbridges to Brisbane Airport andwith its own landing strip terra-ormed o the eastern edge othe islands welcoming visitorsrom Indonesia, Malyasia andChina, Star City oers thrill-seekers a unique combination

o risk and comort, aux-classi-cal architecture and vast stripso white sand beaches.

An incoming visitor populationo 10,000 augments the 25,000permanent residents that liveacross both islands, principallyin the 15 high-rise towers knownas the ‘Stars o the Star City’ or

the late-night light-show thatcan be seen rom Brisbane.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


WALLEDCITY

From his observation tower,Mark looked across the ex-panses o waste treatmentplants stretching into the dis-tance. To his let he could seethe marshlands responsible orcleaning the city’s waste water.He couldn’t look directly to hisright, due to the glare rom theseven kilometre-wide solar pow-er plant that lay o the northernperimeter o the city’s walls.

He put his rie down, leaning itagainst the thick wooden wallso the tower. Slowly unpeeling ashrivelled dwar banana, Markcast a glance back towards theinterior o the walled city, overthe bamboo roos bleachedwhite by the sun, the arrays otwirling vertical axis wind tur-bines and a handul o satellitedishes and radio masts.

The Walled City o Wollongonghad been built around the Kem-bla Grange Gol Course aterthe water riots o 2048 had letthe city largely in ruins.

Mark had been part o a groupo no more than one hundredcitizens that decided to build a“genuinely sustainable city”, acity that controlled its popula-tion in line with its resources,that controlled its resources in

line with what naturally-occur-ring energy it could harvest andwhose waste it could process,that could see its own ootprintdirectly by limiting the city’ssize by that o the 400 hectareso land required to support it.

Mark quickly picked up the rie.He thought he’d seen a ash o

movement in the marshland ...

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


SLOWCITY

Sometime ater becoming LordMayor o Adelaide, Maggie Beerdeclared the city the rst ofcial‘slow city’ in the southern hemi-sphere, moving Adelaide in linewith a growing internationalmovement comprising severalcities in Tuscany and Provence,a ew in Germany and Japan,and Portland, Oregon.

Though it initially seemed toconcern restaurant ordinance

and generous nancial help orparticular kinds o ood produc-tion, it eventually became clearthat Mayor Beer had more radi-cal changes in mind.

Sidewalks became ‘widewalks’,with cars largely pushed to oneside in avour o active trans-ports o walking and biking.

Delivery networks were trans-ormed by the use o smart tech-

nology augmenting a centuries-old inrastructure o handcartsand bicycles. Driving school-children to school was bannedin avour o ‘human buses’ oschoolkids walking together.

Architecturally, Adelaide hasbegun to explore the use owood and paper in construc-tion, building up to nine storieswith cross-laminated solid tim-ber panels, and in low-rise with

reinorced paper/cardboardstructures designed by ‘design-er-in-residence’ Shigeru Ban,meaning structures could berepaired, replaced and recong-ured by hand, and by residents.The city began to coalescearound walkable spaces, with-drawing rom its outer edges.

However, quince paste is stillthe largest export commodity.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


CITY OFSONOVAC

Though some claim it is merelya rivolous architectural themepark without the attractions,others have declared it to be themost interesting urban experi-ence in Australia. For Sonovacis a city designed with as muchattention given to sound as isusually given to sight.

Ater the independently wealthyLord Mayor o Hastings, Victo-ria, Gavin Stark, lost his sight

in a reak boating accident andgained an interest in the ideaso Finnish architect Juhani Pal-lasmaa — who decried the ‘ocu-larcentric’ nature o most archi-tecture — Stark has careullyrecongured Hastings as “Sono-vac, a city designed to heightenthe senses”.

Stark’s council’s rst move twasto ban traditional trafc rom

the city, instead avouring elec-tric vehicles. The sound o thesehas been calibrated to be gen-erated by particular locales: anarray o pipa and guan strike upas you drive through the city’ssmall Chinatown. Elsewhere,sound designers have ‘primed’the streets with latent composi-tions, which are then perormedby the passing cars. All publicart is sound art.

Three giant concrete ‘acousticmirrors’ have been importedrom Dungeness, UK, and sit onthe promenade, ampliying thesounds o the ocean.

Streets are designed to mue,cloak and dissemble industrialnoise, through the careul useo materials and oliage, and

the city has become home to athriving music scene.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


FRACTALCITY

An output o the most strin-gently applied planning codespossible, the Fractal City com-prises most o the new City oNewcastle, NSW, rebuilt aterthe Great Earthquake o 2019.

In a twist o ate, only the un-loved CBD o the original cityremained standing, and is stillhome to the thriving small busi-ness culture that had inhabitedthe near-derelict buildings be-

ore the earthquake. Yet most othe rest o the city could be re-designed rom scratch.

With its previous zoning ail-ures in mind, the City took theconcept o the ractal, and ap-plied it to a orm-based code.This meant that no area waszoned as one unction. No sub-

urb was solely residential. Nobusiness district was solely

commercial. The city could beread as a mixed-use develop-ment at every stage.

An individual apartment wasoten home to production aswell as residential and leisureactivities, due to the predomi-nance o knowledge industriesand new smart manuacturing.The apartment complex couldalso be read as a local aggrega-tion o production, residential

and leisure activities. Thoughthe emphasis shited rom blockto block, no one componentdid one thing only. Each blockcould be read as an aggregationo these apartments, and eachsuburb an aggregation o theseblocks.

Thus the city has multiple ocal

points or work, rest and play.Each apartment is a CBD.

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8/6/2019 14 Cities


CITY OFTILLANDSIA

Floating low over the BlueMountains, the city o Tilland-sia is named ater a very partic-ular plant genus.

Tillandsia — the plant — drawsmoisture and nutrients directrom the air itsel (rom dust,decaying leaves and insect mat-ter), and so this air plant servesas both metaphor and nativeora or the city.

Borne alot on warm thermalsrising around the Three Sisters,Tillandsia appears as a cloudo bubbles, its numerous sacsglowing with LED lighting andhumming with activity. Thebubbles are composed o ETFEand aerogel, the latter materiallighter-than-air. Its gently twirl-ing rotors are powered by solar

energy harvested on the skin othe structures, and wind energy

gathered by high-altitude kites.Thin guylines ascend into near-orbit above the oating city,also traced with arcs o light-ing to warn nearby aircrat. Atnight, the structures look like alarge cloud lit by internal light-ning.

Tillandsia’s small but wealthypopulation has taken to theair, a stated attempt to ascendto a higher orm o human-

ity, though they spend mosto their time circling aroundthe east coast o Australia theyoriginally ascended rom, wheretheir plants can thrive and romwhere they can occasionallydescend on small elevator pods,touching base with rural com-munities to exchange goodsand services.

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CITY OFGLASSESThe pervasive deployment osunglasses and white head-phones had become a eatureo the urban experience in theearly 2000s.

At rst glance, citizens dur-ing the 2020s seemed to havemuch in common. The glassesseemed a little bulkier, andhad apparently integrated theheadphones, but otherwise thestreets were still ull o people

wandering around cocoonedwithin the rames o their glass-es and immersed in their ownsoundscapes.

Yet on other side o the glass,Sydney in 2025 is quite dier-ent. In act, there are so manySydneys in 2025 as to render theidea o one Sydney ridiculous.

The city is experienced as animmersive projection, with data

overlaid onto the physical abricto the extent that only the mostdesirable built elements remainvisible at all. All other itemsare cloaked by the glasses, justas all urban noise is ltered bythe headphones. These removeunwelcome noise whilst height-ening others, all set against asoundtrack o music, displacedambient sounds, and a stream ocommentary rom other users.

Investment in the visual designlayers o physical structures hadplummeted as people began toinhabit other spaces in theseplaces, overlaying their own ar-chitectures.

And yet, a ew had recentlystarted wandering the streetsunadorned, eyes wide open, ears

cocked, experiencing what waslet o the unmediated city ...

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14 Cities