A day in the life of a Strategic Urban Planner

As I’m sure you know by now, I work as a Senior Strategic Urban Planner for a local government in the western suburbs.  As my wife regularly reminds me, not everyone is aware of what a strategic urban planner does, day-to-day (actually, I’ve substituted ‘aware of’ for ‘interested in’, but I’m sure that was just a slip of her tongue).  So I thought I’d provide a brief précis of what I get up to in my work.

I’m lucky enough to be able to focus a lot of my time on place making initiatives.  This means researching the latest innovations from around the world, things like:

• What Vancouver is doing to achieve a diversity of housing options;
• How Melbourne is leading the way in using place making strategies to activate it’s laneways and public spaces;
• What Portland is doing with their public transport system to cope with traffic;
• How San Francisco and New York are introducing new "parklets" for people to enjoy open space;
• What Toronto is doing to encourage rooftop gardens; and
• David Engwicht’s ‘taming traffic’ theories.

The next stage in the process is using that information to develop projects that will make the local area function better, according to Council’s desired outcomes. A big part of bringing these projects to successful fruition is knowing how to make them work in a local government setting.

This means being aware of what pitfalls can strangle a project from the beginning, things like imposing regulations that are confusing or unreasonable, not engaging in proper community consultation, or not devoting proper planning to ensuring build form codes are up to scratch.  So when I say I have experience in getting things done in local government, this is what I mean.

I really do enjoy my work (and I’m not just saying that in case my boss reads this and I find myself abruptly transferred to the refuse department), although I do occasionally buy the odd powerball ticket.  I also think that the fact that I spend a significant part of my waking hours on developing initiatives to make local places better can only be a positive for Fremantle, if I’m elected.

A conflict?

I was surprised to be asked recently whether or not I thought my professional position as a strategic planner in a local government would cause a conflict of interest if I was elected Councillor in Fremantle.  To be perfectly honest, I can only assume the person making the suggestion wasn’t very familiar with local government operations, or alternatively got the wrong end of the stick about what I do for a living. 

You can be sure that the Local Government Act would have precluded local government officers in my position from becoming Councillors if it was ever going to represent a problem – and, given that it’s 382 pages in 10 point font, it’s nothing if not comprehensive.  In fact, some of the best councillors in WA also happen to be local government employees.

To be as unambiguous as possible, there is not even a remote possibility that my professional life will coincide with City of Fremantle business.  In fact, there would be as much likelihood of a conflict of interest if I’d been successful in my boyhood dream of becoming an NBA basketballer for the Boston Celtics – although in that case I’d be running for mayor of a large tropical island in the Caymans rather than City Ward councillor in Freo.

My only vested interest in Fremantle is the fact that it’s my home, and that it’s where my wife and I are going to raise our daughter and I want to play a role in making it live up to its promise.

As All the President’s Men did for journalism, Amelie did for waitresses, and the Dead Poet’s Society did for teachers, I hope this post has provided some enlightenment about the life of a strategic planner, and why my experience in getting things done in a local government setting would be a positive for Freo.

Reduce anti-social behaviour

The most common issue that people have raised with me during this campaign is anti-social behaviour.  It’s clearly a huge problem for Fremantle, something I can personally attest to as a resident of the city centre.  I have a very real and specific interest in making sure that progress is made in reducing anti-social behaviour. 

How? 

-  Reclaim our public spaces by providing better infrastructure, which in turn will increase useage and therefore natural surveillance.  Simply getting more people on the streets and in public spaces has been demonstrated to have a profound, positive effect on reducing anti-social behaviour. 

-  Introduce regular events and activities in more of Fremantle's public spaces – not just one or two. 

-  Investigate regular, targeted security patrols and / or supported CCTV systems. 

-  Dedicate more resources to restricting anti-social behaviour through design. 

-  Improve the appearance of Fremantle's streetscape and focus attention on providing better lighting.  In the same way that graffiti has been proven to be contagious, spaces that appear uncared-for or deserted attract undesirable behaviour.   

-  Advocate for greater resources from the police and other state government agencies.

Create better, safer places for everyone to enjoy

Fremantle is lucky enough to have an abundance of public spaces ripe for improvement.  Shopping should be just one of the attractions that gets people to visit Freo - ideally, our city centre should include great, welcoming public spaces where people go to “meet friends, listen to music, learn, entertain and be entertained by their kids, take part in civic life and much more”, in the words of place maker Julian Dobson. 

Freo has always had a strong festival culture, which should continue to be encouraged.  However, such intermittent influxes of visitors ultimately won’t be sufficient to address issues of economic stagnation.  If Fremantle’s city centre can be made more permanently appealing through better use of its public spaces, it would go a long way to remedying many of our problems.

How?

• Start with some small wins.  Address the aesthic deficiencies of Freo’s public spaces:  peeling paint and rusty chains on bollards outside the town hall, grubby bins and litter, lack of vegetation, lack of lighting, shabby frontages as a result of red tape holding up restoration…all of which combine to make Freo appear tired and unloved.

• Also in the short to medium term, look at making some bigger additions to our spaces.  For example: public art (preferably interactive to engage children), interesting street furniture that doesn’t need to be taken in over the weekend, some better vegetation to encourage a village atmosphere, some better lights to show off Freo’s heritage buildings, and even a better skate park in a more appropriate area.

• Complete and publish a public spaces / public life audit of the Fremantle city centre to quantify the current state of play.

• Ask community members about what’s working and what needs improving in some of Freo’s key public spaces for some good, local ideas, and use the results to prepare a ‘Place Vision’ - an aspirational statement that details the desired outcome - to provide direction for place making plans.  Each plan will be based on trialling small wins and delivering amenities and activities that people will use and enjoy.

• Prioritise the funding of creating great public spaces around Fremantle.

• Review Council's administrative setup to identify how it can deliver better place making.

• Ongoing monitoring and review.

Meet me at Moore & Moore

I’ll be at Moore & Moore on Henry Street from 2pm – 3pm this Sunday 2 October and next Sunday 9 October, for anyone interested in meeting with me to discuss our great city. 

If that doesn’t suit, I can always be contacted via email at michael.swanepoel@gmail.com or on 0432 932 506.

I hope to meet some of you there for a nice long chat (Sunday is chore day, so you’d be doing me a favour).

Cut red tape

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I believe that a city trying to encourage innovation in an environment rife with unreasonable red tape is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

The story about the introduction of alfresco dining to Freo (and therefore to WA) in the eighties provides solid proof about what is possible when local government chooses to facilitate innovation and cut pointless red tape. The other lesson that I took from this story is that traders (and even our bureaucrats) can double as fantastic place makers.

Reducing the type of bad red tape that suffocates innovation and creativity would make it easier for Freo’s retailers, residents, landowners and even bureaucrats to be more innovative, productive and competitive, and the end outcome would be a more attractive city for locals and visitors.

Aspects of red tape that need addressing

• Reducing the administrative burden.
• Timeliness and predictability of government services.
• Improving coordination between the different divisions of the City of Fremantle.
• Minimising the cumulative burden of regulations. For example, if policy is developed within a silo, the cumulative impact of regulation may be poorly understood and not taken into account.
• Increasing specific attention to the needs of small business.

How? 

• Introduce a small business impact test applied to new regulations. If impacts are found to be above a given threshold on small business, the City could be required to tailor portions of the regulation to lessen this impact.
• Start with having conversations with retailers, residents and landowners about their experiences dealing with red tape at the City. 
• Introduce more consistent front-end analysis of regulations to “catch red tape before it starts” as part of the regulatory development process.
• Remove superfluous or out-of-date regulations.
• Introduce ongoing review and reduction mechanisms that measure compliance burden and establish disincentives to add red tape.
• Publish an annual report on the status of red tape reduction.
• Innovate to improve service standards, coordination and responsiveness of City of Fremantle regulatory programs.

As a Councillor, I will work towards rewarding innovative ideas, and making sure that the bad, lazy, knee-jerk kind of bureaucracy (which is unfortunately rife, especially when it comes to enforcement) doesn’t mean that good, new initiatives will be hamstrung by red tape.

Promote respect of heritage

As I've previously discussed, I believe it's self-evident that heritage is a big part of what gives Fremantle its unique character. I'm committed to retaining and restoring Fremantle's existing heritage to preserve that special charm, and to ensuring that new developments are high quality and sympathetic to the Freo character.

How?

• Increase the heritage incentives given to landowners and traders to restore and maintain their buildings.
• Understand the opportunities that exist for making better use of our heritage buildings and prepare a strategy for their activation.
• Make Indigenous heritage a more prominent part of Fremantle's overall heritage narrative.