City Talk: What Makes Cities Great
The City Of Sydney put on an open talk by two great Australian urban design experts on Tuesday June 20th in the City Recital Hall. Over an hour and a half, Ken Maher and Rob Adams spoke about the foundation of great cities. Ken spoke specifically in relation to Sydney, including half a dozen propositions about how to improve our city, such as:
- creating and nurturing communities such as Surry Hills, Pyrmont and Darlinghurst
- linking these communities via transport
- creating a traffic free city
- light rail through the city and over the bridge
Rob spoke about how they had revitalised Melbourne city and made it into the friendly and cultural place it is today, from rather bleak beginnings in the mid 80s. This included how they went about integrating heritage and new architecture, to the encouragement of city living and a vibrant "cafe society".
Both speakers were very interesting, in different ways, and the MC Adam Spencer was engaging and is clearly very intelligent as well as funny. I left this feeling the vitality of the city and encouraged that a packed house of around 800 felt the same.