This was published 3 months ago
Opinion
Three great cities, one big lesson on Sydney’s peculiar relationship with space
Michael Koziol
Sydney editorJust as a gas expands to fill its container – or a task always takes as long as its deadline allows – we tend to use up the space available to us.
The same goes for our cities. And not just their geographical sprawl – certainly true for Australian capitals – but their approach to space and size in general. Our cities embody the idea that bigger is better, from cars and trains to parks and pubs.
Hong Kong, defined by its density but not diminished by it.Credit: Getty
I’ve spent the past two weeks in three of the world’s truly great cities: Hong Kong, London and Paris. And it doesn’t take long in any of them to start thinking about the peculiar relationship Australians have with space.
Hong Kong, of course, has the most severe limitations on its shape and size. The steep terrain of Hong Kong Island means every inch of developable land is essentially built up to the maximum. The city is a global byword for high density, by necessity.
It’s not just skyscrapers, though. Parkland in Hong Kong is at a premium, and so green spaces are designed to maximise utility. Parks aren’t just acres of grass and trees with a few benches plonked around; they contain multipurpose sports facilities, and often a jogging track circling the playing field – with instructions that the path is for joggers, not walkers.
A block of residential flats near skyscrapers in the City of London.Credit: Bloomberg
Australians have an easy rapport with London, but it is really nothing like our capital cities. It feels 10 times denser, and personal space can be close to non-existent. Older tube lines, with their squat carriages and low clearances, would be hazardous for anyone of significant height (a rare win for us shorter folk). And the trains get actually crowded, not the faux-crowded we have in Sydney.
And then there is Paris, the city many politicians and urbanists like to cite when they’re trying to sell density and beauty as a package deal. Paris – at least the city of Paris proper – is small. It’s much smaller than it seemed when you were backpacking around the joint at 18. More than 2 million people (plus all the tourists) are packed into 100 square kilometres. Space is not in abundance.
On the Paris Metro – still one of the great examples in the world, I would say – the trains are short and the distance between stations is, on average, a little over 500 metres. Apartments are small, restaurants are intimate, footpaths are narrow, and you pretty quickly learn to weave your way around crowds.
By contrast, Sydney is blessed with space. And boy do we expect it, commandeer it and luxuriate in it. We’ve spread out to the mountains and the rivers, we like mansions for homes and monster trucks for cars, our pubs, bars and restaurants are often needlessly spacious beasts that lack intimacy, and even our trains are double-decker behemoths that crawl their way around our stations.
Yet people will tell you the trains are crowded, even though they’re patently not, and even though we still haven’t entirely disabused ourselves of the COVID-era practice of leaving the middle seat empty. Our new Metro is a shrine to excess, with hugely long platforms and wide, cavernous and expensive stations that will dwarf their human patrons. We like it large, baby.
Our perception of green space is also warped. By several accounts, Sydney has among the highest levels of public green space in the world, ranking third or fourth among major cities. But we are regularly told by some that we don’t have enough, and indeed that more homes should not or cannot be built without it.
This innate preference for more space enters the housing realm, too. Apartments are demonised as “shoeboxes”, even though the exorbitant price of one-bedroom units would suggest we ought to be building many more of these smaller flats to meet demand.
The idea that bigger is better is not uniquely Australian – it exists everywhere space is available, most notably America. Our car-dependent, sprawling cities resemble much more their American cousins than anything in Europe or Asia. Space can be a gift and a curse.
One thing I think gets lost in the debate over housing and density and apartments and all that is how the crux of the issue is not really about buildings or design or sunlight or setbacks, but about people and space.
To accept more density, we must accept more people and less space. We must share more. To me, this is an easy bargain. More people make life more interesting and exciting, and we already have too much spare room. My travels in the past fortnight have only affirmed this view.
But it is far from universally shared. And I think that remains the biggest challenge for politicians, planners, urbanists or whoever is involved in convincing people of the merits of density. It is not so much about changing our relationship with buildings as it is about changing our relationship with space – and sharing it.
Michael Koziol is Sydney editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.