Tim O'Loan’s Post

Confident, inspiring & honest - the success of the SRL Precincts may very well depend on ‘certainty to the market’ of the Government’s intent, however today at the Property Council Victoria - Precincts and Cities Outlook our panel described a broader range of dependencies – many of which require the property sector to develop responses to. Tom Mackellar spoke about lessons learned for Lendlease development at Elephant and Castle in London, lessons that should be brought to SRL precinct thinking by industry; -      Blending social housing with full cost using ‘blind tenure’ design approaches. -      ‘Always on’ community engagement, and -      And ‘incubating’ independent retail businesses as though they were tech start-ups. Meredith Sussex AM had a long list of lessons learned from Fishermans Bend, many very hard-won, that again need to be repeated and brought into future precinct planning and development, although one of her astute observations really stuck out; “Urban character is developed from multiple decisions, large and small, by many people, public and private, over years and decades”. Vicinity's David Waldron’s insightful observation, albeit borrowed it’s not less true, that space + purpose = place. The challenge for precinct makers is to bring purpose and meaning genuinely to a ‘space’ to create a place. Lissa van Camp gave us one of the most positive and confidence-instilling overviews of the SRLA’s progress to date and recognised the shared challenges ahead for Government and the industry. Matthew Chun shed more light on the very exciting opportunity to leverage one of the CBD’s most valuable assets, open up the waterfront, and get stuck into the ‘main course’ of redeveloping Harbour Esplanade. However, Sarah Horsfield really stole the show with her research on the approval rates for high-profile precincts with recently completed Structure Plans. #cities #innovation #melbourne #property #infrastructure