I always enjoyed building things, and was able to follow in my father’s footsteps.

He was originally a carpenter, but would later go on to become an architect. In my fourth year of study I developed a deep understanding of how cities worked. After graduating from university and becoming an architect, I practiced for a while. Straight after university I spent 18 months with a sole practitioner. I designed and built houses and realised quickly the direct connection between building materials, and how they could be used. I was also aware of their limitations; how that could hinder or enhance your design capabilities.

In 1969 I travelled for nine months and realised– new cities were becoming soulless places. Why do you travel to old places? You go there to experience their humanity, public life that gives cities and their public realm meaning. I developed a profound respect for good urban design. With this ideology in mind, I went back to do a Masters in Urban Design in 1975. This opened my eyes to the gap between Planning and Architecture, a gap that was to increasingly be filled with Urban Design and set the trend of the rest of my career. In 1983 I came to the City of Melbourne to help write the City’s Strategy Plan for the next decade, and have been working with them ever since.

There was a dramatic evolution of Central Melbourne during the 20th century.

The lifting of the city height limits was a significant mile stone in changing the face of Melbourne. The challenge in any developing city is to strike a balance between continuity and change. It is the crucial question in any city’s structural and cultural direction. The introduction of comprehensive heritage controls in central Melbourne came in the 1980s and these have acted to mediate the balance between the past and the present as the city develops. In more recent times as the planning controls in the central city have been eroded the value of these early Heritage controls have become increasingly important in  retaining some of the amenity and meaning of the inner city.

Following the 1985 Strategy Plan, put in place by the Council and complimented by the State’s Vision for the central city there was steady incremental progress through the late 1980’s the fruits of which became apparent in 1992. This was the year South Bank opened and Swanston Street was closed to traffic. However, it was the Postcode 3000 initiative that produced the biggest single change from any government intervention. In 1985 there were only 650 units in the CBD, but thanks to Postcode 3000, there are by 2014 over now 28000 units for city residents. The introduction of Bluestone paving, new street furniture, street trees and the redevelopment of City Square were some of the many positive changes for the Melbourne CBD that emerged in the 1990’s.

This improved amenity and new residential population paved the way for bars, cafes, restaurants, supermarkets in the city. The physical changes also produced a new confidence and a large number of projects were green lit. The Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, Melbourne Museum, Federation Square and Birrarung Marr all subsequently appeared as a result of this renewed vision for Melbourne. It was such an exciting time, because you had the momentum to create a lot of new things – the city went from falling behind to leading the pack in urbanisation. That’s where we find ourselves today. We have a city in which people value the  “downtown”, apartment living is now something that makes up over fifty percent of the housing starts in Melbourne and has initiated a trend that shows no sign of stopping.

Questions of how to handle the major urban challenges of rapid population growth and climate change have emerged.

There are modern challenges that occur from an explosion of city inhabitants, such as managing the growth so we don’t compromise the feeling of the city we love while taking advantage of the greater utilisation of existing infrastructure. Can we manage climate change? What if we continue to see less rain and higher heat levels? What does this do to urban livability? Will our grandchildren look back and say we did a good job? These are the questions architects and governments must wrestle with constantly. We must ensure that we have greater utilisation of resources while consciously ensuring we maintain the culture we have cultivated during this time of expansion.

In terms of dealing with heritage projects and respecting the past, I’ve always thought you don’t have to take heritage in its strictest forms. You can have an exciting combination of old and new. Take for example the Town hall on the east side of Swanston Street. We realised more entrances would help create a better interface with the street so we got agreement to cut existing windows down to street level and create entrances – if you could argue that it was beneficial for the long term use of the building or precinct then it should be allowed. The question is always, “How do you get more use out of it?” There is no use just preserving a site, if it’s just eventually going to decay and die. We must assess what opportunities can be created.

With something like the iconic Queen Victoria Markets, there is a vital need for systematic planning to anticipate the future needs of the retail market. How do we recreate the Markets’ former glory in a situation where things have evolved dramatically over the last 30 years in the city? The market has been usurped by different CBD shopping habit norms. I believe it will slowly decline if changes are not made. If we value the markets then we need to explore how you can get that elusive competitive edge. Before focusing on the site’s structural demands, you must look at the cultural and behavioral needs of customers and the City.

One example is increasing the activation of the markets to focus on twenty-four-seven activation in the same way the city has over the last 30 years. If that can be accommodated, a lot of other city activities can feed off that. It would give further interest for Melbourne visitors and locals. To give it half a chance of surviving into the long term, the market needs something new and different. Food is the hot topic of the day and a great selling point. Making the market a community of markets is an exciting proposition, a trading place that truly reflects our multicultural society and love of food, fashion and the sense of discovery. The Market can and should be the primary meeting place of the CBD north.

We can talk about livable cities but to achieve it we need to have a new approach of urban small.

It will sound ironic, but the best things are the small incremental changes you can make to improve a City. What are of interest to me are the small changes. If you can do it with skill and design, you can improve many people’s lives. Interventions that improve and adjust our environment in a way that makes it feel as if it has always been this way rather than the simplistic grand gestures that fade and date are essential to a successful city. If there is a one liner that would summarise my approach to urban design it is, ’If you design a great street you design a great city.’ This is because streets make up eighty percent of a city’s public realm and the small incremental adjustments that make streets lively, safe and exciting to walk along are the actions that have the most impact on the way a city is perceived by its users.

We need to start to look at things in a different way. How do you take cities of today; with their structures and land forms, to create something special yet sustainable? If we know that our city needs to double in capacity over the next fifty years, then how do you get high density without ruining the city? This is something that I am very passionate about. Docklands is an example of an area that has not through the process of redevelopment unlocked the full potential of its site. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the richness of the “small”, because there has been too much focus on the macro side of development. It will be an area that could still evolve with the right planning but only if there is greater emphasis on the fabric that allows the small and secretive activities that exemplify Melbourne to flourish

The best part of my job is turning problems into solutions by bringing the players together to create something special. It is never just one person’s effort that facilitates dynamic city design. It is generally an accumulation of work from a lot people over time. I love this collaborative aspect of design. The ability to hear other people’s views and modify your own views is exciting, and a necessarily part of evolving your urban design skills.

Knitting the fabric of Melbourne together is something I strive for every day in my work. During Latin studies in junior school, we learnt a saying that translates roughly to – “So much to do, so little done…” This is often how I feel in my career – the further you go the more there is to do. But this is what gets me out of bed in the morning – it’s what gets me excited about the possibilities of architecture and city design.