Rob Stokes

Caitlin Morrissey

In your mind, what is the DNA of Sydney?

Rob Stokes

It's a prison. Sydney started as a prison, and it's important to understand that. And I guess from a British perspective, that's the joke about Sydney, but it's true. Sydney started as a penal colony and as a prison camp, and it has always been thus. And it's written into the very nature of the place. Now, I might be getting myself in trouble by suggesting that its history started in 1788. I'm certainly not suggesting that. It builds on the foundations of a whole series of nations that were already there, but it is true that Sydney, as a city or the place that became the urban place of Sydney, started on the 26th of January 1788. That's when we can actually-- the origins of the city itself. Interestingly, there are echoes of the tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation in some of the roadways, in some of the geographic divisions of the city. But it wasn't a city then; it was a series of nations.

But having said that, I suppose, in the character of Sydney, it's a very laconic place, and it is also important-- in the same way as a prison, it's respectful of authority but also dismissive of it at the same time. The paradox of a prison is writ large in an urban context in Sydney because, at the same time as people are obedient to authority, they're also resistant to it, and they don't like it very much. So you'll find these improbable situations where the 'tall poppy', which is the Australian characteristic-- you know, we will put public officials and leaders on a pedestal in order to tear them down again. It's sort of that process of both. I mean, Sydney is a very polite city. It's a city that queues; not many cities around the world will queue. Sydney will queue, but it comes with, also, a disrespect for authority and also a bit of a sense of us against them that you would get in a prison context as well.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you for this. This is a brilliant place to start us off. I want to ask you now about the key role of geographical and geological features in Sydney. Can you talk to us a little bit about those and the role that they've played in the evolution of the city?

Rob Stokes

Yeah, it's interesting because your project is looking at cities as a personification, their DNA, which is sort of Patrick Geddes idea of cities as an organism. But like any organism, I suppose we respond to our environment. And cities are exactly the same, and Sydney is very much the same. So the way to understand Sydney is, it is a drowned river-- it's a drowned river valley. It was formed in the last ice age - and that drowned river valley opens out into an enormous plain, the Cumberland Plain. It's shaped by its rivers. In fact, the its rivers that borders the indigenous nations of the Eora nation, so the Hawkesbury River to the north, the Georges River to the south, these are the same features that shape the city today. And also, it bookends its urban growth boundary, if you like, whereas Britain's used to imposing a green belt. With Sydney, our green belt is our national parks: the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to the north, the Royal National Park to the south, which, importantly, is the second-oldest national park in the world, and the Blue Mountains National Park to the west. So these are the natural growth boundaries of Sydney, and so that geography shapes the whole place.

And you will find that the hills to the east and the plain to the west also shape the relative advantage and disadvantage of the city. In other words, the wealthy lived in the undulating country, whereas the poorer people lived in the very easily, cheaply developed land on the plains, and you see that geography writ large in Sydney. And to this day, there is sort of a line between the wealthy areas, where the undulating country is, and the poorer areas where the flat land is. Of course, that's a massive generalisation, but the geography does dictate the city.

And its river systems, whether that's the Parramatta River and Port Jackson, whether it's the Nepean into the Hawkesbury, which acts as the diameter of the city and increasingly, the intersecting creeks, places like South Creek, for example, on which the Western Parkland City will be built-- so it's a river system. And Port Hacking to the south is the other geographic feature-- the rivers that shape the city. Interestingly, other cities are formed around a river; in Sydney's case, that's both true, but also, we are-- the river is the perimeter as well as being the heart as well.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you for this. This leads me on to the question of, how many Sydney's are there? Is there one Sydney, or are there many? And this might be one way of differentiating, but are there other ways that multiple or singular versions of the city appear?

Rob Stokes

Yeah, so there are a whole range of Sydney's. The first is the state as city. In many ways, Sydney is seen as the capital of Australia. People forget that Canberra is the capital. You ask 10 people, what's the capital of Australia, and five will answer, Sydney. And so in many ways, you know, it's a symbol of the nation. It's also-- New South Wales, in one sense, is a city-state like all Australian states. The fate of the capital is also the fate of the region. So that's another Sydney, which is the entirety of New South Wales, which is 802,000 square kilometres.

But then there's the Sydney which is the Sydney that is the greater metropolitan region of, what the Bushies like to call-- NSW stands for Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong, sort of the urban conurbation linking all the way from the Illawarra to the Hunter. But the most typically understood Sydney is that which is defined in the Greater Sydney Commission Act, which is the Sydney Basin itself, which is, I think, largely understood, and the other regions, while close, are not Sydney.

But then there are multiple Sydney's within Sydney, and it's actually helpful even to understand the Greater Sydney region as the wider metro region. And when I say that, I'm thinking of places like the Randstad in the Netherlands or the Rhine-Ruhr in Germany or the tri-state region in the northeast United States, where there are cities within that city. Because remember, the area we're talking about, even the area denoted by the Greater Sydney Commission Act, is still 12,000 square kilometres. It's vast. You know, the area of Sydney is bigger than a lot of countries. And within that city, you will find what the Greater Sydney Commission has conceived as - and this is very powerful imagery that is really guiding government policy now-- the Eastern Harbour City, the Central River City and the Western Parkland City. And that works because it does pick up the sense of each of those places.

But beyond that, you can also see a polycentric city that goes much more granular than that. If you go to large urban centres like Liverpool or Campbelltown or Penrith or Windsor, Richmond, Chatswood and Leonards, Sutherland, Manly, they're all the same places. And if you go further down, Sydney is a collection of suburbs and localities which are all quite distinct, and they are all quite different. Well, some of them are not different, but some of them are very, very different. And then there's urban villages. There are impossible places like I have in my community, a place called Terrey Hills which is a country town surrounded by farmland and bushland, yet it's entirely within this Greater Sydney area. And it will always be a country town because it's surrounded by land that will never be used for another use. So it defies easy description. But if you're going to pick one Sydney, you would pick the area defined in legislation in the Greater Sydney Commission Act.

Caitlin Morrissey

The next question I have for you is, what are the physical infrastructural or architectural features that define or shape the character of Sydney?

Rob Stokes

So I think Jeff Kenworthy and Peter Newman very usefully spoke to this in their city automobility-- or overcoming automobile dependence. I can't remember-- 1999. I can't remember the name of the book. But anyway-- where they talk about the sort of-- a typology of the development of cities over time from walking cities to transit cities to car-dependent cities. And in that, Sydney central, the city, as in the city of London-style-city, itself, is the old walking city. Then there are a series of towns that were established by Governor Macquarie, the so-called Macquarie Towns - places like Parramatta, like Windsor, like Campbelltown - which are distinct little towns themselves, and you can see, you know, their little grids that make them quite distinct. And even now, they've still got a sort of bucolic feel about them. Even in the centre of Parramatta, you can still get the sense that this was, at one stage, a country town.

But then, chiefly, Sydney-- the infrastructure that shapes the city are the railway lines and tram lines that radiate out from the city, and they've been enormously difficult to shake-- I guess, the demography that's grown up around these railway lines. So for the extent this radiating pattern out, like the rise of a sun from central Sydney, you'll have, for example, the North Shore Line, which is a train line created in the 1890s, the Northern line, the Western Suburbs line, the Southern line. All of these train lines have actually created their own sort of little radial group of suburbs that are connected to each other.

So if you, for example, live-- and all these radial lines will have wealthier accommodation and poorer accommodation and everything in the middle. And so you'll find that at different stages in people's lives, they'll move up and down that particular line, but they won't move between them, so the city follows these trails out to different places. So to pick an example-- say the North Shore line, for example. If you grow up in a place like Lindfield, you might move in-- you know, if you move out, you might move into North Sydney or St Leonards, because it's a bit cheaper and a bit denser, to get rental accommodation. When you're younger, you might establish your family in - I don't know - Roseville which is another suburb. And then you might retire further out the line to Wahroonga or something. But you'll stay on that line.

Only more recently, over the last 20 years, have people started to move further afield. They've been very parochial in their particular regions which is why you have such parochialism around different areas like the western suburbs or the northern suburbs or the north shore or the northern beaches or the eastern suburbs or the inner west or the shire. It's because those groupings of people are a result of the transport decisions made between the 1870s and about 1910, and that still shapes the city to this day.

Since then, of course, automobility and increasing automotive dependence has allowed the bits in between to be joined up. But like so many outworkings of modernism, many of these suburbs don't really look very different from one another. So you'll go to a suburb, a suburban subdivision from the '60s or '70s, in any of these areas between any of those transport lines, and they'll look much the same as each other. But they're shaped by their car dependence, so they tend to be fairly vanilla places because people who are-- whose lives are dominated by cars tend to operate in certain ways and have a certain regularity to their lives, that people who don't need a car or don't want a car don't have. So they tend to be-- they are more similar to one another than the other areas where the real intricacy and granular character can be found.

Greg Clark

I wanted to say is what you're saying, of course, is so fascinating, and I've got several questions to ask just on this particular issue about the railway lines and how that's created this sense of belonging in these contiguous areas. Are people aware that transportation played the key role in defining those geographies of their lives and the different sort of generational dimensions of that? Or do they just refer now to the northern suburbs or the other locations, thinking that it's just a place that naturally formed? Do people-- are people conscious of the role that infrastructure played in this identity making?

Rob Stokes

No, I don't think so. Perhaps if you put it to them, they'd figure it out, but I don't think they think that way. I just-- I think instinctively that that's their tribe. Yeah. Although, it's funny, you go to some areas-- I mean, people are very, almost, scared of transport infrastructure because they probably do understand it because-- not that they're recognising that that's the history, but they know their future could be shaped by transport infrastructure. So interestingly, people will resist transport infrastructure because they don't want change, and they know that it'll bring change and will change the nature of their tribe and make their area more accessible. And so there's this paradox between people wanting it to be easier for them to move around but more difficult for anyone else to come into their area.

Greg Clark

Rob, that's very helpful and insightful. You've referred on several occasions - and I thought very, very helpful - the point you make about when Sydney became a city and, as it were, the prehistory and the Eora Nation and the role of the rivers. So anything else we really need to understand about Aboriginal life prior to the establishment of the city and how any of that is reflected in the character of Sydney today? I don't-- I mean, the answers could be many and various, but I'd love to know what you think are the important sort of DNA inheritances from the First Nations.

Rob Stokes

Yeah. So this will be part of the next agenda for city development in Sydney. I think the next-- certainly, the next, you know, area of academic interest and so forth, as well as just public policy interest, will be how reconciliation with Aboriginal people is manifested in the physical environment and in planning for the future of the city. And I don't think that was something they necessarily picked up in the New Urban Agenda or-- because it's-- in many ways, it's distinct to places like Sydney, to settler cities which disrupted a pre-existing culture.

The sad answer is, in many ways, Sydney's development came at the expense of what was before. And there were almost-- I don't know if it was a conscious attempt to erase what had been there, but it was as if there was-- well, the assumption was, there was nothing there. Terra nullius was the idea that that was the legal principle by which British settlers were able to say that there was nobody here. Yet there were people, but for English law, which was received into Australia under the doctrine of reception, at the moment, the proclamation of ownership was made. At that point, it was as if Aboriginal settlement wasn't there. It wasn't seen as-- it was recognised, but it wasn't seen as legitimate because Aboriginal people didn't live in little cottages surrounded by fences and have roads and post-boxes and those sorts of things. So, therefore, their pattern of existence had no legitimacy. And so it wasn't as if it was like-- and this is a contested area, the concept of invasion, because even the concept of invasion is sort of projected. So the European might say it wasn't an invasion in the same way that you might invade a country that was understood in Western terms, but from an Aboriginal perspective, which had never had that sort of jolt with such a different culture, it was very much an invasion. So that's a contested term.

But I don't think it was so much in the early days of the colony that there were attempts to wipe out evidence of Aboriginal settlement; although, that is very much a case of more recent settlement. And ironically, in some ways, that's almost as a result of laws designed to protect Aboriginal heritage. They almost ironically act to make developers go, "Well, you know what? Because we've got to protect it, we're better off just destroying any evidence of it whatsoever." So, again, it's another paradox. That in seeking to protect what is now valued, that very protection provides an incentive to destroy it. And that's been the story of Sydney's development, really, over the past 20 or 30 years.

But I think in the early days, it was much more pragmatic. They were there to survive. And if there was an Aboriginal trail that went somewhere useful, to a water hole or something like that, the European settlers would just use it. And you see that in Old South Head Road, for example, in the east suburbs. That's very clearly an old Aboriginal trail that was used, presumably, thousands and thousands and thousands of years, similar to the Great North Road that went from Sydney up to the Hunter, built off an old Aboriginal track. And there'd be countless examples of that. But other than that, I think it's fair to say that Aboriginal history was largely ignored.

A little bit-- I think the way to understand it is, Sydney-- in the same way as Sydney ignored the fact that it had a harbour right up until the 1960s. The harbour was used as a sewer. It was used-- the abattoirs were all on the harbour. It was used for industrial waste. People would just dump stuff in the harbour. And it was only in the '60s, particularly when the European modernist architects came out of Europe and said, "You guys. For real, look at what is facing away from the buildings you have built, and look at that incredible asset you have," suddenly, the city was reshaped around its harbour.

I suspect what we're going to see over the next decade or so is a re-engagement with country and rediscovering what has always been there which was the learnings of Aboriginal settlement for thousands and thousands of years. While a lot of that knowledge may have been lost, a huge amount of it is still there. And certainly, the foundations of the Western Parkland City, which was really gratifying to see in the Aerotropolis, was-- they started with looking at country. So they started from an Aboriginal-- from looking at an Aboriginal perspective of how this land was described in the Dreamtime, what was the songlines across the landscape and what are Aboriginal understandings of that landscape. And they used that as this foundation spot-- a foundation stone to set the context for planning a new city.

Greg Clark

There's one other thing I just want to check with you. So one of the things that people have said to us a lot is that a key part of Sydney's vernacular, its character, is that it's an outdoors city, and that part of this outdoors nature of the city is that it's a great leveller. It brings together people of different incomes, different racial backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds in the same spaces whether it's the public spaces within the city or it's the beaches or it's the parks. And people say that this was one of the features of Sydney, as it were, pre the colonial period. That it was a place of celebration, of festivity, of gathering. Have you seen or heard any evidence of that? Does this sense of Sydney as an outdoors city appear to you to have deeper roots than the recent history, as far as you can tell?

Rob Stokes

Oh, yeah, well, it speaks for itself. I mean, the environment has shaped-- and that's, I guess, to Caitlin's earlier question. I mean, it's one of the most attractive places anywhere in the world because of its climate. It's got the benefit of not having-- still has distinct seasons - so there are cooler times; there are warmer times - but all of them are interesting. I mean, it's not as if every day is the same, and it's very much shaped by its climate. The breezes have a big part to play in Sydney, you know, and the southerly buster shapes so much of how people work in the city, live in the city. The prevailing nor'easters. People know what sort of day it's going to be because of the wind.

But you mentioned the beach. I guess from an English perspective, the sacred cows of the English political economy are the NHS and the greenbelt. In Sydney, our shibboleth would be the beach, that no one owns the beach. There was a recent case where some poor gentleman had a great idea to basically put up a privatised beach club on Bondi, to just rope off an area where he could serve drinks and those sorts of things. And the community outrage against it was absolutely off the charts. And the reason was, it struck straight to the heart of something that Sydneysiders didn't realise was important to them, but that is that anyone can go to the beach. The beaches are all crown land; they're all owned by everyone in the community.

And the beach-- by its very nature, you can't hide anything. You know, it doesn't matter if you're fat, whether you're thing, whether you-- what ethnicity you're from. Doesn't matter how wealthy you are, it doesn't matter what car you drive, it doesn't matter what job you do. On the beach, you're very much 'that's who you are'. And so it's a very levelling place, so the beach shapes that culture. The outdoors nature of the city is also a challenge because whereas Melbourne has great architecture and great culture and celebrates those things, in Sydney, everyone just goes to the beach. So in one sense, we've been able to be a bit indolent and haven't had to develop our cultural institutions as much. Because if it's a nice day, well, why bother? Just go down the harbour, go and have a picnic, go the beach, have a surf. So that does very much shape the city.

Greg Clark

Rob, thank you very much. You spoke, right at the beginning, in answering Caitlin's questions, about how many Sydney's are there, about the role of Sydney in Australia and, as it were, the relationship between Sydney, the place, and Australia, the country, and the national identity. And I just wanted to invite you to say a little bit more about that. It's clear from what we've learnt already that Sydney plays a really unique role in Australia as its kind of global stage, its gateway, its ambassador, its iconic urban environment, but it also plays a role in people's careers and their lifestyles and their developments. And, you know, if you want to test yourself against the best, you go to Sydney. But Sydney is also a launchpad for Australians into the rest of the world, and it's also a welcoming place for the rest of the world into Australia. How do you see that relationship between Sydney and Australia? How does one shape the other? And does it provide particular tensions that you have to manage? Or does it provide a particular character to the way Sydney is perceived in Australia? Anything key to say on that question?

Rob Stokes

I think the same way as cities are starting to separate themselves from the idea of the nation-state, that's true in Australia as well. If you go to-- in some ways, if you go to New York and then you go down to a town in upstate New York, you'll find two different Americas. In some ways, if you go to Sydney and then go to a country town like Bathurst to Orange, you'll find two different Australia's. And I think that's a phenomenon--that's one of the things-- if you want to identify what a global city is - sorry, I accidentally turned my video off - that's one of the defining characteristics of a global city, that it's different from everywhere else in the country. In the same way as Des Moines might be a big city in America, it's like the rest of America whereas New York is nothing like the rest of America. And, you know, New York is-- no one who lives in-- the last place you'll meet an American is in New York.

You increasingly could of start to say the things-- I mean, certainly, the idealised-- you know, whatever an idealised Australian might be, you're unlikely to see that person in Sydney. You're more likely to see them in a country town. The same with London and the rest of the UK, the same with Paris in the rest of France, the same with any global city. There is a very clear gulf. And so I think the best way to understand Sydney is as Australia's global city in the same way as London is the UK's global city.

It's not-- I don't think you can helpfully understand it as reflective of the rest of the country; it is the global focus of the country. And that's why I think Melbourne is on track to become a bigger city than Sydney, but it will never be the pre-eminent global city in Australia, just in the same way as New York may well be surpassed by other cities in the states in terms of population - already, I think, it has been - but Los Angeles will never be America's global city in the way that New York is. The same is very much true for the relationship between Sydney and Melbourne and the rest of Australia.

Caitlin Morrissey

One of the questions we wanted to ask you is, who are the leaders that have shaped Sydney? And that can be in any domain.

Rob Stokes

Immediately, when I reflect on the leaders, sadly, in terms of individuals they're largely men. They're largely men because, I mean, maybe that was the nature of the workforce, you know? The engineers, the planners, the military governors, so that's the first thing to say. They're also white men and Englishmen generally. So whether that's John Bradfield, whether it's Governor Phillip, whether it's Governor Macquarie, even the colonial architects, largely British-trained. You know, we literally only just appointed the first female New South Wales government architect in 200 years since the office was created. So it's been white men, sadly, that have shaped the city, and I didn't really reflect on that until I turned my mind to it.

But of course, it's not just the individuals; it's also groups of people that have shaped Sydney. So leaders have been groups of people because they've ushered in powerful change. I'm going to just nominate an unusual group of people, but I think it's important to recognise the impact of women, as a collective, have made on the city because so much-- I mean, the city was a very, very gendered workplace throughout most of its history. And so you look at any of the newsreels of the '60s or '50s or '70s or even '80s, and the women worked in the suburbs raising kids, and the men worked in the factories or in the CBD in offices. And so that landscape of the women's domain was the suburbs, and so much of the infrastructure of the suburbs have been shaped by women.

But then the other group is migrants. I mean, migrants-- the waves of migration have had an enormous impact on the shape of the city. And so you could look at any particular group of migrants that had a different impact, but you can see, even at a-- like, even in the architectural sense, you can go to different suburbs, and you can tell which ethnic group settled there because of the architecture, because of the smells from the cafes and restaurants you walk past. And so the ethnic diversity is also-- it's not-- it hasn't been a journey of assimilating, of everyone melting in together. It's actually been of-- but not a forced segregation. It's just that different people have chosen to live in different areas which has created this real variety of difference.

You go from one suburb to the next and in one area, there are more Koreans; in another area, there are more Hong Kong Chinese. And I say that quite specifically because there were different waves of Chinese settlers. There were obviously the ones that came hundreds of years ago or 100 years ago. But then there were-- more recently, there was a large wave of migration from Hong Kong which was a very different group of Chinese than the groups of Chinese that are coming in now. The big wave of migration at the moment is from the subcontinent, but the first real wave of change to the city, there were, the-- there were, obviously, the post-war migrants - the Greeks and Italians and Baltic peoples - but then, in many ways, they weren't really very different because their culture and traditions were European. But what was shockingly different was when the waves of Vietnamese boat people came and settled in the city from the sort of late-1970s on, and that really reshaped the city. And so you can't-- it's not the individuals; it's the groups that shaped the city.

But if you want to look to at, I guess, a founder in a planning sense, it has to be Macquarie. Before Macquarie, it was a penal colony. There was no real suggestion it would necessarily even be a city or let alone a town or anything permanent, but Macquarie did establish it and lay it out. And he established that role of government architect, and it's their edifices that have shaped the city and helped discover its vernacular.

You could look at particular architects, as well, that have left their mark on developing a Sydney style. So Robin Boyd, you know, is Melbourne's son. Sydney, you look at people like Hardy Wilson or, you know-- that sort of created the Sydney version of the British arts and crafts movement. But you'd have to then look at the post-war migration of some of those great German-Jewish architects, people like-- I guess, the leading light would be Harry Seidler and the way he bought this sort of shocking modernism into Sydney and completely reshaped the city. So that would have to be for the list of individuals who shaped it.

I need to go a little further back, though, to recognise, as well, that Sydney was also an experiment. And when you look at where Britain was in the late 18th century, there were the creeping ideas of people like the Clapham sect, Wilberforce and his mates, and then you had people like Jeremy Bentham and his ideas about prison. All of that, the sort of sweeping wave of liberal reformers in Britain in that late 18th century, early 19th century, they left their mark on Sydney because they experimented with Sydney. And they wrote quite extensively about Sydney because they saw it as a context to try out their social ideas, and so you do see that in the city.

And I also put in religious leaders here as well because people like Father Terry, who was the first-- I think he was the first Catholic priest who came out to Australia. That was really profound because he ministered to the Irish, chiefly, Catholics who-- remember, when Sydney was founded, Catholicism was illegal in the colony. It was not the established religion; it was prohibited. And so the church had an important role in providing education, in providing all those sorts of things to the Irish who had been repressed to that point. And then there's also been the Anglican bishops and those sorts of-- which was part of the establishment of Sydney. But then more recently, there have been, like, the Muslim faith leaders, who are incredibly important in the history of the city, let alone all the other Christian denominations, particularly, that are as much religious groupings as they are cultural groupings and ethnic groupings. So whether it's the Assyrian bishop, the Greek Orthodox archbishop, whatever the case is, they are all important to understand the shape of the city as well.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you so much. That was an awesome answer. You covered so much. The second question was about Sydney's greatest inventions.

Rob Stokes

Yeah, so that's interesting because in many ways, it's-- I was literally trying to go top of mind. I could have done a lot of research and found you and told you, but I thought the more interesting answer would be what appears in the front of my mind. What appeared in the front of my mind was the Hills Hoist and the Victa mower which were very much just-- the Victa lawnmower, a feature of the city's development, suburban expansion, it was the way in which, generally, in those days, the father of the household could exert domain over his little patch of dirt by mowing it. And the Hills Hoist, very much more associated with the female role, in that gendered suburban ideal, because that's where you hung out the washing. And that was the way in which chores were-- which ended in that city, but they were also indelibly associated. I mean, if I use the expression 'Victa mower' anywhere else in the world, no one would really know what I was talking about. In Sydney, everyone knows what I'm talking about. The Hills Hoist, the outdoor clothesline invented in Sydney, just a bit of basic engineering for a clothesline, but it wouldn't work in most other places in the world because, a, the climate's not the same, but, b, there aren't the spaces.

The nature strip, the idea of this little patch of crown land that is your responsibility to mow, it's got very little to do with nature because it's just covered in grass which sits outside every suburban home, and not just every suburban home, every unit block in Sydney or every factory in Sydney has a nature strip out the front. I think I'm right in saying the nature strip is the biggest single land use in Sydney, and yet we don't really use that term, as I understand, anywhere else in the world. So there's three contributions. They're not terribly exciting ones. I'm sure there's far more esteemed inventions that have come out of Sydney, but I'll leave those to others to talk about. But they were the three top of mind that came to me.

Greg Clark

Rob, it's always fascinating to hear about what we might call 'mundane technologies' because they're the ones that have really shaped very large numbers of people's lives. And I, for one, salute you for raising these three. Brilliant and very, very helpful to hear that. Caitlin, I think you're going to ask Rob the last question. But I'm just going to say, Rob, so far this has been absolutely inspiring. We're very, very grateful and such a pleasure to listen to you as always.

Caitlin Morrissey

Well, I certainly echo everything that Greg has just said. Thank you so much. The final question is, if we were to have asked you the right question or a better question, would there have been anything else that you would have wanted to say about the DNA of Sydney?

Rob Stokes

Yeah, one last thing. Maybe this is too far to go, but the name Sydney, I think, is quite instructive of its origin. Sydney was named after Lord Sydney, and Lord Sydney, the etymology of that name, it was because he came from Saint-Denis in Paris. And then Saint-Denis, itself, was descended etymologically from the Greek goddess Dionysus. And she, as I understand it, is associated with hedonism and materialism and excess, and I think that describes Sydney very, very well. So it's all in the name. And the history of the name tells you about the place, and that's an east-of-the-Eden idea of Sydney, that it's a hedonistic-- it's like Australia's Babylon. It's where you go to make money, to go to enjoy yourself to excess. It's where you go to live large, live relaxed, but live hard. You know, Australians love to exude this image of relaxation, but they work damn hard at it. And it's a very hard-working place but likes to have this vision of not really doing anything. But my reflection is it's one of the hardest-working cities on Earth.

At the same time, Sydney, as I said, is a very expensive city, but I think that's an Australian conception. I think, globally, it's actually surprisingly cheap when you consider what you're getting. You know, when you compare it-- you know, it's a false comparison to compare Sydney to Houston or Dallas or Atlanta or even European cities like Berlin or, I don't know, Naples or any of these places. You have to compare Sydney with places like London or like San Francisco or some of the really expensive cities in the world. And actually, when you compare Sydney with like for like, it's actually remarkably cheap, I would have to say, at a global level. That's not the lived experience of Sydneysiders, obviously, because it's all relative. But globally speaking-- and I think that's why so much foreign capital finds its way to Sydney.

Once we began making our three episodes on The DNA of Sydney in December 2024, we caught up with Rob to see if there was anything else he wanted to update or add to the conversation we had in 2020. Rob started by painting a fuller picture of Sydney’s leaders by highlighting the women who have been pivotal in making Sydney, Sydney.

Rob Stokes

Well, as I reflect on my earlier answer, I reflected that I was wrong in what I said about that women had been neglected in terms of leading the development of Sydney. I suppose, what I was trying to get at was that, you know, very much of the time, women were often disregarded or their opinions were relegated. Their opinions were dismissed. That does not mean, by any sense, that Sydney was not shaped by incredibly strong women, even from the very first days.

Barangaroo was, in fact, an Aboriginal woman and who was very important in the establishment of the original settlement of Sydney, based on the land of the Gadi people. And ever since, powerful women like Caroline Chisholm, who had a very important role in relation to young women migrants arriving from the United Kingdom, and then into more recent days, Maybanke Anderson, who was an early suffragette in late colonial New South Wales – remembering that Australia or New South Wales, was one of the first jurisdictions in the world in which women fought successfully for the right to vote. And then, more recently, Annie Wyatt, who was the founder of the National Trust of New South Wales Australia, and then to the women who fought alongside The Builders Labourers Federation in the 1970s to set up the world's first green bands to preserve elements of Sydney's built environment and cultural heritage.

So my omission was quite wrong and I was very, very keen to correct the record. And I've just selected a few. And I was delighted during the time that I was Minister, that the Head of the Greater Sydney Commission was a woman, Lucy Turnbull, the CEO was another woman, Dr Sarah Hill, and the profound impact that women have had in leading the planning profession in Sydney for many decades can't be understated. And if their role had been even more powerful, I suspect we would have inherited a far more beautiful, elegant, equitable and efficient city. So it was important for me to correct the record because I was quite wrong.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Rob. You also mentioned that you wanted to reflect upon the current housing crisis in the context of the DNA of Sydney and how that's shaping city planning at the moment.

Rob Stokes 

Yes, so, I mean, we last spoke before the pandemic, and it had been a profoundly difficult time around the world, including in Sydney. We had just been recovering from some of the worst bushfires in Australian history and then we went straight into the pandemic. And as the pandemic was unfolding, we also experienced some devastating droughts and significant coastal erosion events. So it was quite biblical in the sense of these, you know, cascading disasters that unfolded and the impacts on the city. And I observed rightly when I first became Planning Minister, it seemed that, you know, Sydney's growth seemed an ever-present reality and climate change seemed like a distant possibility. When I finished my time as Planning Minister, it had reversed. It seemed that Sydney's growth was a distant possibility and climate change was an ever-present reality. So that really changed public opinion. It changed the economy, society. It's had profound changes.

Having said that, now that I look back on that period, one of the most shocking things about the pandemic is it seems that we've forgotten it happened, and so we're all scratching our head saying, you know, why are geopolitical conditions so bad? Why the cost of building materials? Why are supply chains so broken? Why is there a housing crisis? Why has migration rates skyrocketed? And well, the answer is obvious. It was because everything got disrupted in the pandemic, and we're getting back to the way things were before. I think because the pandemic's impact was so difficult personally that we've all tried to strike it out of our minds. But one of the things I think we need to remember is that it has had an indelible impact on the development of our cities, which will reverberate for generations to come.

Just like the last pandemic in Sydney, the Bubonic Plague led to the Spanish Flu. The Spanish Flu led and pandemics of the late 19th Century, early 20th Century led to the government of the day banning townhouse and unit developments or apartment developments because they were considered to be associated with unsanitary conditions and overcrowding and all those sorts of things. So the Garden City Movement was taken to with great vigour in Australia because it seemed to be the antidote to the pandemics of the past. So, you know, and we tend to forget that that was a reaction to the pandemic. My fear is we're similarly forgetting today what the pandemic has spurned, has spawned in Sydney today. We find ourselves in a housing crisis, and we seem to be sort of-- I think the planning system seems to be the most common whipping boy for the housing crisis. But I suspect the reality is somewhat different, and I think there's many causes to it, but the pandemic itself, and the impact on flows of people and materials, I think are a big part of the housing crisis. But I don't think that suits the agendas of various stakeholders, to actually say that.

Nevertheless, it's very interesting because the housing crisis has sort of been weaponised in a policy sense, to say, let's get rid of design standard. Let's get rid of requirements around apartment sizes or solar access or storage or balcony sizes or cross ventilation or public open space or any of these things because that undermines the feasibility of providing housing, and that's a crisis. So let's get rid of these things and build more houses. And if we build enough houses, we'll bring down the cost of housing, and everyone will have enough houses to live in. And I'm a little bit fearful because the work that I saw underway to see Sydney as a truly Garden City, as a city in a garden and with amazing sustainability standards, and coming to a real understanding of what a post-colonial city is-- what a post-colonial settler city would actually look like, and coming up with a truly vernacular Sydney style of architecture, and all these sorts of things, I think the risk now is that all those things are jettisoned because we're in a housing crisis and the ends justifies the means. And once they're jettisoned, it'll take many decades to get them back again. So I'm a bit fearful about the future in that sense because once you have accepted the premise of a crisis, you implicitly also accept that any policy is fine if it helps resolve that crisis. And sometimes I'm fearful that the panic will lead to poor, poor planning and built environment decisions, and we're already starting to see that happening in various jurisdictions in Australia. I don't know what it's like overseas, but that's my current fear. But there's always something to worry about in urban development.

Caitlin Morrissey 

It's really helpful for you to explain it because much of what we had over some of our episodes in the first season were just this idea that when cities respond to shocks and traumas like you said, accepting the premise of the crisis means that we're going to use quite language that isn't deeply rooted in Sydney's current crisis, but that the DNA of the city almost gets forgotten. And so you have these development pathways that don't sort of chime with, like you said, the vernacular of the city.

Rob Stokes 

I mean, look, it's easy I suppose to chuck rocks from the sidelines. And having been in government, I understand the pressures that, you know, ministers and premiers and others face and public servants, however, I mean, they're doing some things, like looking at pattern books for mid-rise apartment blocks. What should they look like? That worries me a little bit because design should respond to its context. But to the extent that it might help us identify and encapsulate the soul of the city in its built environment. And you know that's a good thing to seek to do. I've always worried with Sydney because of sort of modernist approach, you've got the same architecture in Sydney as you do in Dallas, as you do in Detroit, and as you do in Bloomington, or, you know, any of these other sort of settler cities. And if it weren't for the eucalyptus trees, you wouldn't know you're in Australia, or you wouldn't know you're in Sydney. But I'm fearful that, I mean, we've got a number of crises at the moment, I think even bigger than the housing crisis which will pass, is the climate crisis that won't pass. And then we've got a crisis of the cost of living. And when you look at the housing crisis, well, it's interesting when you look at prices in Sydney, for example, the price of two-bedroom units has actually fallen relative to incomes. So it's difficult to suggest there's a crisis in the price of two-bedroom apartments, if it's falling, but there certainly is a crisis when it comes to the value of detached homes that's risen dramatically since the pandemic. And also, there's a massive crisis in homelessness and in the need for housing for people who qualify for affordable housing where there has been a chronic undersupply, and we are living with the impacts of that. But it does seem to me that when industry talks of a housing crisis, I suspect they're not all interested in providing the type of housing that will actually address the crisis. I think I've said that as diplomatically as I can.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Rob. And now that it's been a few years since we originally spoke to you, of course, we have this opportunity, I just wanted to ask you again if there's anything that our original questions didn't elicit from you about the DNA of Sydney, or that you'd like to add?

Rob Stokes 

I think Sydney is a city that is coming to terms with its past and doing so quite rapidly. I think it was one of our key Indigenous leaders who said that Australia is a nation of three tribes. There’s Aboriginal Australia and First Nations people. Then there are the Anglo Celtic migrants that sort of, you know, colonised and then created the basis of modern Australia. And then there are the more recent waves of arrivals from all around the world. So there's Aboriginal Australia, Anglo Celtic Australia and multicultural Australia. It was Noel Pearson, if my mind serves me correct, the Indigenous leader who came up with this thesis. And he said that, basically, reconciliation will be a matter of these three tribes coming together and forming a shared identity and we're still on that journey and I think Sydney is a representation of that struggle. And it's very interesting in the way in which we're coming together with those things, even in the debates today about heritage, there's a renewed focus on identifying and protecting Indigenous cultural heritage. Shockingly, Indigenous cultural heritage is actually protected not under the Heritage Act, but under the National Parks and Wildlife Act. So it's protected in the same legislation that protects flora and fauna. So that's deeply wrong, but it's very difficult to fix. And then, interestingly, more recent migrants tend to look at some of the cultural heritage of the Victorian era and Federation era, and don't attach the same meanings to it as Anglo Celtic Australians might. So we're coming to terms with, you know, all these things, and trying to draw them all together.

And I also think this idea that Robert Hughes wrote about in, you know, when he talked about, you know, the tyranny of distance affecting Australia's development and that we saw ourselves as an outpost on the other side of the world. This idea that actually Sydney, and even Sydney being set up as a prison and as a penal colony, and recognising, actually, you know, before it was a prison, Sydney was a garden. And the closer we come to recognising what Sydney always was, since the dreaming for tens and tens of thousands of years before Governor Phillip arrived, that richness is where we can find the true soul of Sydney.

And when visitors arrive to Sydney or foreign direct investment flows into Sydney, it flows there because of three things: our environment, our education and our ethnicity. What I mean by that is the environment. You know, if you're setting up a global headquarters in Australia, you're going to come to Sydney. Because where else would you go? You know, the beaches, the bushland. It's just incredible. So our environment, the fact that we are a bit of a garden, is one of the big draw cards to the city. Then I said education. I think one of the things Australians don't really think of, we don't really think of ourselves as an educational hotspot. But the reality is that the metropolitan New South Wales centre of Sydney has no fewer than six universities in the top 200 anywhere in the world. I'm not aware of any other city that can claim that. And that's a profound-- it's one of the biggest exports of the city is actually the number of international students who are attracted by the quality of our universities. And the final thing is ethnicity itself, the fact that Sydney is a peaceful collection of people from all around the world draws a lot of foreign direct investment because people feel there's, you know, regardless of where you came from, you'll have connections in Sydney. And so I think those three E's, I've said it alliteratively, of environment, education and ethnicity are the really strong points that point to the DNA of Sydney. And that Sydney is ultimately a garden and when Ebenezer Howard was talking about garden cities back at the dawn of the 20th century, it's no surprise that his thinking was picked up with such alacrity in Sydney by people like Walter Burley Griffin and most importantly, his wife, Marion Mahony Griffin, you know, they, for example, in Sydney, they're known for planning Canberra, what they're less known for is they planned the bush suburb of Castlecrag in inner Sydney because they saw that those ideals of a civilisation among bushland could be realised in the drowned river valleys and the surrounding plains of the Sydney basin.