I am not an Architect, by training I am a Sociologist. For
the last 20 years, as spokesperson for community group REDWatch, I have
facilitated community voices around the redevelopment of Redfern Waterloo in
NSW with architects, planners, consultants, developers and a conga line of
bureaucrats tasked with fixing our area.
When we got our own Minister and Authority in 2004 the
government owned one third of Redfern Waterloo. It took planning control over
Redfern’s Aboriginal heartland on The Block that was not government land, as
well as the State Heritage Listed Eveleigh Railway Workshops, and other surplus
government land. Also in its sights was most of our areas 4,311 public housing
units and houses.
Here are a few things we have learnt from shaping public
opinion that might help architects.
Understand
the context and what has gone before
Before you turn up in a community do your homework on the
community. REDWatch website holds a lot of this information for our area and is
valued as a result. Look at reports from community centres, subscribe to email
lists from local organisations. If there have been prior studies on the area
then read them and read the submissions to understand people’s concerns, don’t
rely on the sanitised “Response to Submissions” reports, people seldom find
what they said there.
Aboriginal context is important in our area, as is their
call for the delivery of practical outcomes like Aboriginal Affordable Housing.
Help
Build Capacity to Participate
Building capacity is key to what we do and it is a two-way
street. The community needs help to understand what is being proposed in
planning speak and also what it can influence. The proponent and its
consultants need help to understand the local context and to talk with the community.
We provide and support community controlled sandpits to hear
from proponents and allow people to articulate their concerns back to
proponents. We bring in your own experts, like Peter Phibbs for workshops on
Planning for Non Planners, so tenants know more about planning and can better
formulate their questions and submissions. It also helps them when they take
their concerns to the media.
Think
of the community as your client and be informed by them
For public housing redevelopments in particular you have
existing communities that need to be involved not just vacant industrial or
green-field sites. People like the current tenants will be in your new
buildings. Those communities have a lot of experience, local knowledge and
expertise that you can draw upon. They also have aspirations for their
community which you can help deliver.
Understand
that social impacts matter and have to be addressed
Public housing tenants want safe places where they can have
peace and security in a housing of last resort system under strain. How does
what you do as an architect deliver safety when it also depends on what happens
with building and tenant management and the level of human service supports
available to people with complex mental health, drug and alcohol, trauma and
other complex issues?
Transparency
matters
Treat all the players equally so everyone knows what is
happening and is on an equal footing. REDWatch puts out the same information on
our website and email lists to the Minister, the industry and to the community.
For new developments the first public meeting we request is when the application
for study requirements is submitted.
Know
the players and stakeholders
Redevelopment is complex with lots of moving parts, and lots
of places of intersection of interests for possible cooperation and influence
not just in formal submissions. You need to get behind the project Comms team
and build relations with key players even if that is on a Chatham house rules
basis. You need to identify all the government, community and institutional stakeholders
in the area and make sure they know what is happening.
Build
Alliances of influence
We are not just about building capacity and trusting in
submissions, we are there to build alliances and influence the process.
For example, as our sites are controlled by state
government, we work closely with both Councillors and City of Sydney staff to
keep them informed about what we know but also drawing on their expertise and
their ability to lobby for what we want to see from Council, the state
government and bureaucracy.
We have helped establish a Waterloo Human Services
Collaborative of government and NGOs to work on the current people supports. This
also helps put pressure on the redevelopment to take Health and Social impacts
more seriously than they have in the past.
We have an alliances of state and local NGOs that have a
stake in what is happening. We work also with researchers, journalists and
academic and a wide range of other organisations.
Hopefully this brief overview gives you some ideas as to how
architects can also shape and lead public opinion.
Source: Geoff Turnbull’s contribution to Australian
Architecture Conference 2025 panel on “Shaping
Perspectives: How Architects Lead Public Opinion”