Episode 145 | What defines a suburb & are all new suburbs the same? | Lucinda Hartley, Neighbourlytics | Insights from Neighbourlytics.com

Why do certain suburbs attract particular demographics, and what are urban designers doing to create ‘utopian communities’
Have you ever wondered how suburbs are designed? What makes that suburb a community? And the role that urban designers play in moulding modern Australia? Lucinda Hartley Co-Founder of Neighbourlytics, discusses these complex questions with our hosts. Lucinda and her co-founder Jessica Christian-Franks have led the global conversation on urban innovation, holding positions with global bodies the UN and the World Bank. 

Here’s what we covered:

• How do suburbs develop their own identity and community?

• What can people do to move into areas that suit their lifestyle?

• What data does Neighbourlytics utilise data to map social trends in suburbs?

• The correlation between a suburb's liveability and wellbeing?

• How should cities be built and organised?

• Where have we gone wrong in the creation of new builds and suburbs?

• How do new suburbs and towns on the fringes develop?

• What drives people to move out to these fringe communities?

• How will Covid change the social dynamics of cities?

• What can we learn from alternative community models from around the world?

RELEVANT EPISODES:
Episode 138 | Simon Kuestenmacher
Episode 120 | Michael Yardney
Episode 104 | Adam Hirst

GUEST LINKS:
Neighbourlytics - The new local data report
Song - Little Boxes On the Hillside

HOST LINKS:
Looking for a Sydney Buyers Agent? www.gooddeeds.com.au
Work with Veronica: https://linktr.ee/veronicamorgan

Looking for a Mortgage Broker? www.wealthful.com.au
Work with Chris: hello@wealthful.com.au 

Send in your questions to: questions@theelephantintheroom.com.au

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 
Please note that this has been transcribed by half-human-half-robot, so brace yourself for typos and the odd bit of weirdness…
This episode was recorded in October, 2020.

Veronica Morgan: Remember that song from your childhood little boxes on a hillside, the houses were all made of ticky tacky and they all say the song goes on to say that the people also all look the same. Now, looking at any newly built suburb with the uniformity of frontage tree scape and building material, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this must be true, but is it are all new suburbs the same? What lies beneath and how does a suburb develop a unique community? His own personality over the years, I've watched as many apartment complexes have been built and settled. I've often wondered at the seemingly random ways in which they established their personality. Some of these develop an amazing community through some sort of osmosis while others, even those that have been specifically designed for community failed to hit the Mark and become white elephants. Why is this?

Veronica Morgan: Welcome to the elephant in the room? This is the podcast where we love to talk about the big things in property that never usually get talked about. I'm Veronica Morgan, real estate agent BAS agent cohost of Foxtel's location, location, location, Australia, and author of auction ready.

Chris Bates: And I'm Chris Bates mortgage broker. Before we get started, I need to let you know that nothing we say on here can be taken as personal advice. We always recommend you engaging the services of a professional.

Veronica Morgan: Don't forget that you can access the transcript for this episode on the website, as well as download our free, full or forecast report, which experts can you trust to get it right? The elephant in the room.com did I, you know, one thing COVID-19 has done for us is to remind us of how important our local amenity is shopping, exercising, dining and socializing in small groups away from crowded spaces has reinvigorated many neighborhoods.

Veronica Morgan: The social life of a suburb is so important for livability connection and belonging. And this has had a knock on effect with desirability and property prices. And today we're exploring the changing behavior of people within the neighborhoods and what this means for our cities with social data expert, Lucinda Hartley. Now Lucinda is an urban design and cofounder of neighborLytics, a global urban tech company, drawing on public social data to capture the digital footprint of cities, giving real time insight into neighborhood life. So we are very excited about this conversation, listen to because you have access to some pretty amazing data. So thanks for joining us.

Lucinda Hartley: Pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's nice to chat.

Chris Bates: Thanks for coming on, going to kick us off. Could you please explain to us what is social data? That's a good question. So Naval it taps into the everyday footprints that we leave behind when we interact

Lucinda Hartley: With our neighborhoods. So it's, it's digital data that is reflective of behavior and lifestyle. So think Google maps, event pages, TripAdvisor ratings, and reviews what, what, it's not a, which is perhaps a, a common assumption is it's not personal data. So we're not looking at your personal Facebook profile or your personal LinkedIn account. What we're trying to understand is what's the digital footprint of a place based on the business activity, the community activity. And every day we leave behind literally millions of digital footprints through our smartphones and social media accounts about the places that we live in.

Chris Bates: Okay. And so in terms of your business, are you got lots of different sources of data that you then aggregate to kind of track how people are moving and what people are doing is that conduct or the audio behind the business?

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah, we're looking at potential. The specific question that we're looking at there is what is the behavior of a place? What, what's the, what are the, what are the humans doing, I guess not necessarily what they're saying, but what are they doing in a particular place? So we lay a many, many different data sources to, to find that there's, there's three kind of types of data. There's place data, which is a thing that will tell you whether a place is or a park or a restaurant or a cafe. And you might look at map by style there's activity, data that will tell you what's going on. So things like opening hours, events, programs, services, et cetera. And then there's another layer which we call engagement with stories, which actually looks at, you know, do people like rate, review, check in, talk about this place or not. And by layering, you know, many different sources of data together, we can build a picture of what a neighborhood looks like. So we actually created a proprietary data set, but it's informed by data attributes that we find across a variety of those places, activity and stories, data

Chris Bates: You finding, I guess, massive differences. Cause I think you've done on lots of different neighborhoods now, I think thousands of something. And are you finding that they're all starting to become very similar or are you finding a few different categories in different sort of neighborhoods that people sort of, you know, I guess behave differently within their neighborhood?

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah, it's interesting on one level we see trends, but then also what we highlight is immense differentiation like much more than it's visible to the eye. And that always surprises me, that you look at neighborhoods that are, that might look and feel kind of similar to each other. You know, we've done a lot of work with Greenfield property developers looking at neighborhoods in emerging suburbs, which physically, even though they may be in different parts of the city often have a, of a similar footprint because they've built sort of grouped by similar providers. But when you dig beneath the surface, you find that they have very, very different social lives. That in one area everyone's very interested in small business and home based business. And in other areas, it's, it's much more about arts and creative activities and hobbies. And in others, there's a, you know, burgeoning kind of community services offering.

Lucinda Hartley: And these neighborhoods might be right to each other or in different parts of the city. But we see these kind of very unique socialize, which also gives us a lot of clues about, you know, what's going on behind closed doors. On the other side that we do, we do start to see some trends around types of places. So if we look at the maturity of neighborhoods, so Greenfield neighborhoods might have more patterns in common than in urban neighborhoods places like innovation districts or, you know, high growth, urban development, precinct, high job growth, even development precincts, which we've looked at quite extensively around the world. They, they physically look very different from each other, you know, if you're comparing Barcelona or Kings cross or various other places, but they actually have similar kind of rhythms. So they have similar types of places in terms of destinations or activities to do and things like that. So it's, it's a difficult question to answer because in one way we see the particularities of neighborhoods that help us understand them in a very asymmetrical and local way. And then on the, on the other side where you, we start to see these broader macro trends as well. So

Veronica Morgan: It's sort of dichotomy by the sounds of it that it sounds like quite often an area that areas that look different might be quite similar underneath, but areas look sane could be very, So these sort of chicken and the egg sort of idea that you know, say in a Greenfield site, You know, one could develop a sense of, well, local, a little lot, little small businesses versus arts across, et cetera. How does it Come about? Is that why are smokers is by accident? Is it because cause sometimes I don't feel like it's, It's the people themselves, but what I noticed attracts, especially when there's no history in an area or you've got no outward signs of something, how do you, how do people find people like them in these situations? What are the signs and clues?

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah, I guess, you know, we make, you know, to the point of, I guess a lot of what you talk about on this podcast, we make a lot of assumptions about neighborhoods and we certainly make a lot of assumptions about who lives there. And, and that's because we look at things like demographic trends or, or things like that. And that the fact that someone might be 35 and female doesn't mean that they're interested in the same stuff. So when we start to look at the behavior and lifestyle, we can see that the demographic actually isn't the right customer predictor, that we should be looking at what they do, what they're interested in, what their behavior, lifestyle patterns are rather than necessarily their age and background when it comes to actually planning, planning for good places.

Lucinda Hartley: So that those particular sort of particularities can emerge in that way in terms of how people find each other. I suppose there is, you know, certain types of people will be attracted to different places. What we would pick up in ad is how those, those trends kind of emerge over time. And so one of the most interesting things, I think that across Naval Lytics that we've observed is homebased businesses. And this particularly is, I mean, it's relevant right now, of course, during COVID when a lot of people are locked down, but it was really relevant beforehand when, when we would look particularly at residential suburban developments whether they're Greenfield or infill and then often be as has an assumption that during the day there wasn't a lot going on and a lot of the infrastructure, a lot of the infrastructure that supports those places caters for the fact that it's a, not a large business community.

Lucinda Hartley: So if you think there's a lot of large infrastructure investment in public space, community services parents groups and things like that, and that's all true and that, you know, we should invest in those things. But what we've also found is that there's a barrier in the high density of home based businesses. And in some of the developers that we've worked with based on that, instead of running mothers groups, I started running business meetups. And what they realize is that they actually had a very active business community. It just wasn't visible. And so again, just by looking at say the young family demographic, we make these huge assumptions about what people are actually doing in that neighborhood. And actually maybe, maybe what will attract them and the services and facilities they need. We might be better to look at their behavior and lifestyle patterns.

Chris Bates: It's interesting cause it's Connor. I think a lot of the old design is all around sort of livability, I guess, where does the kind of wellbeing of not just the behavior, but you know, the happiness, I guess, as the people within the community, how does that kinda fit into the whole scheme?

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. So the way that we define so wellbeing as a couple of different definitions. And so what neighbor Lytics looks at is is whether a neighborhood provides the level of opportunity to provide you with the physical and mental health opportunities that you need to support your kind of lifestyle. So it doesn't necessarily tell you enable in each case, whether someone is happy or not, because that's a feeling and we don't, we don't measure feelings and sentiment. We measure, I guess the, the level of opportunity but where that's slightly different from livability is livability tells you what stuff you have access to. And that's, that's a critical part of wellbeing. But wellbeing is also like, is it used and, and do people like it and engage with it. So you might have on one level you might have a lot of parks, but no one goes there. And so you might meet your livability metrics, but maybe those parks feel unsafe. Maybe they're under utilized or all the opposite might be true that you have one tiny little space. And in terms of meters squared, it's probably not enough to meet your minimum livability standards, but people love it. And it's, it's always active and people are always going there. So those are the kinds of things where looking at that behavioral lens gives us indicators of wellbeing, not just livability.

Chris Bates: Have you found places where on the team, it looks like it's got great livability, but then the wellbeing, I guess, of that neighborhood kind of show something completely different.

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. Well, the moment we're seeing patterns like that around things like public space. So there's obviously been a much more dramatic shift in neighborhood change over the past six months than we would see in normal circumstances because of COVID in lifestyle is really being turned upside down and in that regard. Okay. So w when we look back at the last six months, and we've seen a pretty dramatic shift drink during COVID and lifestyle and behavior patterns, I guess, on a scale that are really, you know, unprecedented to use the word that everyone's using, but that's very much true in what's happening in neighborhood level. But what we've seen when it comes to say things like livability or shifts in public spaces, we would normally sit think, and it absolutely is proven to be that public spaces are really, really important part of our wellbeing of neighborhoods. But what we've seen during COVID is the type of spaces that people use has shifted. And therefore, I guess, highlighted some inequalities of access in the cities. And so with, with, you know, I'm in Melbourne. And so you know, playgrounds, sporting facilities, these kinds of public spaces that we normally would have access to a shot, which leaves more limited options of what you actually have access to.

Lucinda Hartley: And so in our data, what we've seen is a very large increase in engagement, which, you know, is, is looking at their use and participation. Very large increase across Melbourne city. Amber has been with nature like 112% engagement levels up in Melbourne, for example, but they use and participation in regular public spaces down 50%. And so that's sort of highlighted, I guess, and need for more natural green space to be resilient, not just you know, sporting fields, playgrounds, and other kinds of public spaces, which also help us with Lidl livability.

Veronica Morgan: There was some issue with that report and there was some really interesting differences, cause I mean, it was obviously it was Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, right. That points to the same thing. We're all Australians, but there's was quite marked differences in usage up and down of various aspects of our neighborhoods.

Lucinda Hartley: Can you shed some light on that bumming you, so you reflect the behavior, you just sort of, you go deeper into why. Yeah. So we can make, we can make inferences at watt as to why particularly when we look at the neighborhoods in comparison to each other or what we know about measuring those cities historically over time and what's normal for that place. And so we would expect from Melbourne Sydney and Brisbane to behave differently in some ways under, under COVID because the level of lockdowns and the, and the government responses in different States been different than we would expect to see sort of lifestyle impacts associated with that. And so in some instances like with public space, that the trends are kind of the same across the three cities, but they're more exaggerated in Melbourne and you might expect that because the lockdowns have been more prolonged, but in other areas, it is like a little bit different.

Lucinda Hartley: So for example, if I'm looking at hospitality what would have seen, you know, hospitality is one of the industries that's been most impacted by private lockdowns. And that obviously has a huge impact to our congressional centers and activity centers as well. That in, in Melbourne we've seen kind of dining out and food and drink, decrease and home cooking up by 400%. So that's really high, but in Sydney we've actually seen not much decrease overall in food and drink. And so sort of the speculation there would be that perhaps some of those businesses were more digitally engaged to start with and that they were able to retain some of their customers, even through lockdown, through pivoting, to takeaways and things like that. So that's sort of one inference that we could draw on what we would do to validate that would be to look at historical data that we have for Sydney and, and how that's changing.

Lucinda Hartley: We might also look at perhaps the lockdowns in Sydney were not as prolonged. And so you know, the overall increase, perhaps not as dramatic but there hasn't been an uptake in home cooking in Sydney, but there has been in Melbourne and Brisbane. So you make your own assumptions about what city decided to doing in terms of know, not, not cooking as much at home. But yeah, we are, particularly in this particular, it's been new local report that we released last week as some of our COVID research. We were looking at the CBD neighborhoods. So again, if you compare that to sort of, some of the inner urban suburbs, you'll see changes again,

Chris Bates: Has an urban designer, I guess, do you think you would design a city differently now that you've gone through COVID or do you think that a lot of the rules or the ways of thinking are very similar and what we were doing before? Perfect. I guess

Lucinda Hartley: Uh I think it would be difficult to say we were doing things perfectly before. I mean, people talk about it and, and new normal if you like, but I, you know, I often think, well, what what's normal anyway? Yeah, I would say that, you know, we have really great aspirations for cities. And certainly as an urban designer, I have been involved with watched reviewed plans that are great. They've got all the right things. They look like they're going to thrive, but the reality when they're built on the ground is that they don't, and that happens time and time again, whether it's that we can't get tendencies to feel the retail, whether the apartments are selling classes, we thought they would, whether there's, you know, different other shifts happen, maybe we didn't get a product market fit quite right.

Lucinda Hartley: And so I would say that if we're looking at, you know, what do we do things differently? Well, on paper, we do things quite well. So where's that where's that Delta of not quite getting it right. And, and, and the, the place neighbor Linux tries to feel is that we don't actually understand the human side or the behavioral side very well. And so the reason why things like, you know, our local economies, they're very fragile and understanding what's actually going to predict a great retail center requires sort of a nuanced understanding of that trade area and that customer market. And then we can really improve how we do things by being more cognizant of the actual humans who had gone to use those places and design around those kinds of needs instead of that sort of ones that are broader statement.

Lucinda Hartley: But I think what will change or at least I hope has, has changed is we have for the past, you know, two decades probably longer, I've been very focused on destinations and building great destinations, sticky places, and everything's being focused about getting people to attend large places to spend in stay. And that's great when you, when you have no restrictions on physical distancing and the boy and economy and various things like that. But the moment that shifts those kinds of environments and not particularly resilient, because they're not very diverse in their offering. And so what I think we will need to be mindful of whether it's to deal with climate change, whether it's to deal with you know, we don't have more pandemics or just, you know, an economic downturn, people are more localized. And so we actually need to reinvent or rethink local centers as well as not to the exclusion of, but we need to give more time and attention to local centers as well as you know, the larger centers, if we're going to have really kind of thriving markets moving forward. It's quite interesting. Isn't it,

Veronica Morgan: As you look at the Westfields of the world, you know, they've, they've, you know, and it's like, did their big advertising, you know, Australia's biggest shopping center in the Southern hemisphere and that sort of claim just even before COVID structural into my heart, because I hate that sort of places. But at the expense of obviously the neighborhood's trips, and it's been a lot of, a lot of programs, you know, in recent years to try to enliven and be great neighborhood shopping centers. And so this is sort of putting the focus back on

Veronica Morgan: Shopping centers, right? You got to have businesses, it can afford to establish or take on new leases. So, you know, we've been relying on pop up stores. That's right. It was for awhile. So, you know, how does, how do I guess where do we see this going? You know, you talk about like these beautifully designed spaces and I've seen it many times, do you think, how does that develop And just flew on its ass? Somehow it just seemed to Get the right mix of people who really got on really well and are really wanting to train up within the development. You know what I mean? And yeah. And I've watched them These buildings over time. You think you bind to that, but you wouldn't buy it to that. And doesn't really have anything to do with how the marketing was some on the first,

Lucinda Hartley: In some cases. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately it's not really very easy answers to that because it is, it is very, very complex. But I think sometimes that we, what we overlook is the fact that you know, diversity of opportunity is very important for making those places resilience of one aspect of the development kind of didn't quite make it through with their kind of proposition than other parts might. And, and we, we tend to at a neighborhood level, at least not always have all of the things that we need. So I think planning for more diverse economies more diverse living opportunities diverse housing stock, those kinds of things do do help with both, both market and CUNY. You know, it has the byproduct of community resilience as well, which is really positive. One of those local centers, I think what we envisage is, is not so much that we would necessarily revive.

Lucinda Hartley: And this, this is obviously a very different conversation right now, because there are so many local businesses who are really, really struggling and many who I, I think very sadly won't be able to make it through this time, possibly because they were already vulnerable from other, you know, market forces and impacts and digital transformation and things like that. But I think the reality is that we need to be able to access things locally, but it doesn't necessarily need to mean that we need to access all of our shopping locally. Because I think the reality of digitalization is it's probably only been enhanced by COVID. I think Amazon has just hired another a hundred thousand people and various things like that. So whatever, there are some winners in this and, and I guess I'm in the kind of digital camp where I don't necessarily say that that's something to flash, but I think that's something to think about, well, what does, you know, what does a digitally engaged neighborhood look like?

Lucinda Hartley: I still want to be able to walk to my cafe. I still want to be able to access services locally. I still want to be able to go to parts of my kids and have bright local experiences. So investing in local is still very much about creating great places to live. It doesn't necessarily mean I need to be able to access, you know, all of my hardware within walking distance. But it does mean that I need to be able to access the things that I need for my physical and mental health within walking distance. So I think helping local centers digitize in different ways is also one of our strategies that we can look through for post credit recovery.

Chris Bates: And so a lot of these new Greenfield estates, I mean the idea behind it is you bought a farm and then you cut it up and then you sell it off, you know, as small as possible, really it's going to be cheap. And then if it's cheaper, more people can afford it and say, they're going to be easier to sell. And you know, and the land's been getting smaller and smaller, and it's been about the commercial or the wellbeing about that community. It's about kind of selling landlords, right. Do you think that that's going to potentially shift in terms of the developers gonna look at it and go rot and let's build this around maybe a little bullets for the commercial hub in the middle, right. And have the things that people want to walk to there and then start to build out from that rather than just building houses.

Lucinda Hartley: Do you think that's going to become a real fight? I hope it does. And I think if we look at the pattern over the past 20 years, we've made a huge amount of progress from going from essentially dormitory suburbs to new town centers on the fringe. And that is a huge step forward to be able to have access to a certain level of amenity locally will always be important. But I think things like COVID have you know, where there are at least in lots of cities around the world, and I know in Melbourne like geographic boundaries of what you're allowed to travel to, that really, really exacerbates that question of, you know, do we actually have everything within walking distance we'll often, often not. And I think it's an important it's an important economic strategy to actually consider that. Cause if you imagine a world where work from home is more prevalent, and I actually would say work from anywhere rather than work from home.

Lucinda Hartley: I hate working from home. Like, honestly, get me out as soon as you're allowed. But the idea that I wouldn't have to go to the office every day is very liberating, especially cause I often will used to at least travel a lot for work. But if you can work from anywhere, like when I think about it anywhere, why would you choose to, like, that's also going to type way you want to leave as well. And so why would you choose one suburb over another? So the places themselves need to have a level of a man, if you, that means that you choose not just on the price tag, because you could live anywhere. You want to leave there. And I think that if we let that kind of drive some of our success metrics, then that helps us think that we probably don't just want to cover up lots of as many kind of houses within commuting distance as possible, probably what we want to create. And we can do this very much within the same cost envelope, you know, create places that great amenity that people really want to live and build community. And because the, the work and the committing factor is going to be less centralized,

Veronica Morgan: What sort of property developer would bother getting the sort of information, the insights that you can give them because I suspect not all boards, right?

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. I think there's a level of scale where it becomes useful. So for if you're a sort of small scale town house developer, the insights that we can give you, I, I mean, I still think they would be useful, but would you necessarily want it on every, every project? Well, that that's probably a decision that they could make, but where it becomes very useful is when we're looking at apartment buildings residential communities, particularly activity centers, shopping centers, new town centers, activity, hubs around new transit stations and things like that. Because these are places that need to become destinations of some sort, whether it's to attract buyers, whether it's to attract tendencies, whether it's to create a medical village of, so it's in, in an apartment building. And so there's this kind of two main areas that we would work with property developers.

Lucinda Hartley: One is to understand their customer value proposition much better, because if they actually understand what the values and lifestyle are of the neighborhood, or if it's Greenfield similar neighborhoods around it, if it's not the one that actually exists, then you're going to be able to target a much better product. So understand that the sort of PayPal, not on a personal level, but on a behavioral lifestyle to perhaps compliment some of your other demographic information that you could look at is one area. But the other part is understanding the place better because we make these big assumptions around what's popular. What's valuable, what people really interested in if we, if we, if we're investing, you know, as might be in a, in an infill area. And, and we want to know what's actually going to stand out and be most successful. It's really great to know what your competitors are like.

Lucinda Hartley: What's the competitor retail in that area. And in, in an experience economy that competitor may not necessarily be the thing that ends the most money. It might be the carpet salad, the local primary school and the YMCA. They are actually competitors for people's time and energy these days. And so if we understand that in one neighborhood, those things are more popular than then. It really does inform what kind of investment we would need to make both in terms of the unit services, retail, or product. So those are the sort of two areas understanding the, kind of the people behavior side and understanding the place side, where we work with developers th the other way, and that is, I guess my point of scale is because digital data is available anywhere. Anytime, you know, they want you to look at like whole portfolio comparison very easily and effortlessly in a way that other kind of customer search such as surveys cons, because it's often not very locally targeted. So if you want, if you go to a hundred sites and you want to know how they're tracking, or if you've got 10 or others, and you want it to be able to compare them or compare if you're Westfield and you want to actually be able to compare two different diabetes enters or something like that, you can because it's digital data and you can actually just compare them side by side to understand where the, where the opportunities are. So that comparison is something that a lot of customers use digital data for

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Chris Bates: In terms of the cities as a whole. Is there any things that you think that Australians in Melbourne most livable cities, 10 years in a row, but then maybe not the last couple of years, but pretty good, but you know, that other countries and other cities have got lots of, so we've got not enough of, I guess I would say on the whole that we don't, we haven't done density very well. And so when, when, because we're looking at, through the wellbeing lens, we will look at cities that are, you know, 10 times more dense than Australian suburbs and have similar or better wellbeing indicators or you know, in terms of their access to support. And, and I think that's helpful to know that the density doesn't always get a good rapport. We don't necessarily always, it doesn't always trend in a really positive direction in Australia.

Lucinda Hartley: I think we've got a, we're improving with our density, but it's not always the right kind of density. As we can learn from other cities, who've achieved density, but have done it in a way that didn't compromise livability and wellbeing. And I think that gives us clues as to how we can go about that here. What are the poster children of that people might to hold up places like Barcelona and, and you know, Copenhagen and things. And I think that's good in terms of physical design in terms of, you know, looking at eight stories rather than 30 stories, you know, I used to visit every block rather than 30 next to four is actually better density overall. So I think that's good, but I also think that we can be it can be difficult for us to sort of cookie cutter copy other cities, because it doesn't always take into account the fact that there's very, very different cultural and behavioral size and things like that. Actually, it's a quite good model is coming out of Asia as well as Singapore is one. Kyle's got some good examples as well which possibly in some ways closer to what the Australian market is doing, then looking at kind of the historic European centers, which have got some good lessons too. But perhaps in some ways can be harder to replicate culturally in, in, within the sort of the constraints that we have without planning markets and things like that.

Veronica Morgan: They've got, you know, the old center, historic center of town, and then this brawl looks different, you know, they're, their urban sprawl Is So outside that, but it's very similar density, right? Yeah. Well, even

Lucinda Hartley: Role is sort of high density. So I think that's where they're good lessons are. The sprawl is still sort of six stories, maybe not eight to 10. And I think that there is very good lessons there in terms of what tends to happen in successful places. No matter where they are is that there is co-investment of you know, transit and infrastructure or public space upfront with the density. And so it, it perhaps mitigates and offsets the idea that you might have density without amenity and service cause the whole point of density is to make, make the amenity and service more affordable and more distributed. Yeah,

Veronica Morgan: I see. That's been a big, big issue without sprawling out of suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne in particular you know, the suburban gets built and then afterwards I sort of retrofit the infrastructure, but I mean, Melbourne now is like, isn't it a hundred kilometers wide? Yeah, absolutely

Lucinda Hartley: Enormous. I mean, it's, it's many, many times bigger than greater Paris. For example, I think like the Paris covers of, I can't remember the exact statistics, but it's something like Richmond to Footscray is Paris or something like that. So it's possible. And I think that's where it's good to look for, for clothes, for, you know, how we can work out.

Veronica Morgan: But is this part of the Australian psyche? You know, you've got to have your house on you. It's not even a quarter acre block. It's like a quarter of a handkerchief block these days. You know, is it, is it still, we just can't seem to get ourselves out of that

Lucinda Hartley: Sort of thinking right now that feels that way. But I think there is a generational shift upon us where that won't be viable anymore. I think if you look at millennial trends around, you know, work from anywhere completely digital lifestyle, you're probably gonna rent or subscribe to your car, not own one you want to live. So therefore, if, if mobility is taken out of the question and where you work is taken out of the question, then you're going to work. You want to live then in the most exciting place. So then experience becomes everything. And therefore you're less concerned about having your sort of middle kingdom, I guess, and you're more concerned about what you have access and amenity to. And there's very strong leaders around the millennial Walker. That's sort of leading towards that. So that's not going to be an immediate shift.

Lucinda Hartley: But I think that the writing's on the wall in lots of ways that, that the, what the market will want moving forward is actually a more flexible and dynamic kind of relationship with work, which will make some of those questions around, you know, can we have more family style apartments? Can we have a much more viable? And certainly if we look at like Copenhagen and other cities like that, and I, I always sort of like, sort of Cringila hold them up as examples cause everyone does, but there are some things that they've done very successfully, I think, around building an apartment market for families and allowing people to grow in place in, in the density and not needing to move out as soon as, you know, you have children because there's just literally, you know, you can't do it in a one bedroom studio type thing, I think allows a lot more flexibility of how people work. So thinking about the diversification of opportunity within density is something that I think the millennial market will really, really be driving.

Chris Bates: Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest issue, right? My, for housing affordability is a millennial is a single was, or, you know, Haven, young couples, you know, there's options, right. For them to buy an apartment or, you know, it's not housing problems there per se. It's really, once the family comes along and they go, you know, we really want a three bed or we really want a little bit of an outdoor space and then there's not enough of them. And then the prices are astronomically much more higher. And we haven't been building anything as an alternative sort of for family market. And there's a lot of catch up to do because every year there's more and more people wanting that. And we still haven't been building it. Sorry. Do you think that developers are actually going to make that shift and how long it's going to take to really have a viable alternatives to what we've currently been doing?

Lucinda Hartley: Well, maybe it will be the shakeup, but we need to create that because our, the, you know, perhaps the housing, the solid basis of the housing market that we've relied on has been shaken up and we'll need to diversify more in its offering. I mean, it's hard for anyone to take a risk out or what's perceived as a risk in these kinds of areas, but there's plenty of, you know, to your point about kind of what you make a hunch about versus like what the data actually shows. So if we look at the data, whether it's behavioral lifestyle, data from Naval Lytics or, or other demographic trends or, or other information available there, there is, there is a lot of support that would say that if we build a more diverse housing stock, there is demand for that. Whether it's looking at the waiting lists for assemble and Nightingale or others like that, there there's plenty of evidence there that's demand. It does, it does require people to take just a little bit of risk, but on the flip side, you get the argument. Well, you know, if there wasn't a market for it, we wouldn't build it, you know? And so we wouldn't build all these crap one and two, these horrible, you know, cheek to jail project homes in the outer verbs. So I just wonder, because I know you've done a lot of research on our own, those outer suburbs and what's going on, do people bother me?

Lucinda Hartley: Cause they don't perceive there's any alternative or do they actually really want them? Yeah, that's a difficult question to answer. I think that people will come with that question from a lot of different cultural backgrounds as well around what's seen as valued and what's different whether it's status or, or other you know, often people are buying into those locations because they have friends and family and other networks in that neighborhood already in those, those areas. So the particular drivers pretty nuanced in different places. And I think what neighbor Lytics would show you is kind of, what's actually going on when people are there and how do we understand that to inform our future decisions. But certainly I think that if people are given the opportunity to live closer to transit and amenities than they nearly always do.

Veronica Morgan: I guess those outer suburbs and what leads people to, to move there or live there. And it's a bit of chicken and the egg in a way, isn't it really?

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. There is a chicken and the egg and, you know, on one level, there, there is a a market. And I think people do want us to have a half the land and, and various things like that. But that w when you add in things like the pandemic, there's a lot of things that make that kind of investment much less viable than perhaps it was before. Um when people needing to work from home and extra things locally and be a part of that local economy that might not be as active will have as much access to service and things like that. So I think we will see a big sort of post pandemic shift in terms of the type of market that's available. And, and particularly I think that will impact both you know, the, the very, very small apartment lodge sort of tower type. And it will affect the, the outer Greenfield areas because those areas are already vulnerable because they're less diverse in terms of their economy and offering. And that's going to be one of the big factors that's affected by COVID.

Chris Bates: We've already started to say it, I guess, in Sydney and a lot of easy to do things at the moment. I've fortunately for a lot of people in Melbourne, but do you think that a lot of people will start to buying in a ring of Footscray and instead of buying theirs, now they want to buy mine symphony or Jalong or Ballarat, et cetera. Do you think that you will see a lot of the bride preferences because there's more options we worked from home. A lot of people in sane Melbourne will actually relocate to frame sort of lifestyle pockets. I expect that that will be a trend that we see, and we've already seen it already in terms of like the whether it's people on longterm rentals during lockdown, or you know, relocating to holiday houses, if they're, if they're lucky enough to have one you know, what we've already thing is the data volumes in, in perhaps hostile or adjacent towns to two major centers have really increased during private.

Lucinda Hartley: And so we're already seeing patterns of that right now, but I suspect that there are many people who, you know, Oh, I'd love to live down the more entrepreneurial or, but I work in the city. If, if you sort of turn that equation and say, well, you only have to go in one or two days a week, how that might change your decision making. So I actually think that the work is going to be a critical factor in, in seeing a lot more demand on adjacent, I guess, you know, sea change, tree change locations. So

Veronica Morgan: What are you seeing in the data already? That's, you know, that's picking this sort of thing up.

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. I mean, at the moment, because we mentioned places on demand and capture the data particularly sort of when customers are looking at it, our view of regional or tree change areas is, is not complacent in, in all of them. But that the minimum thing that we're seeing is that there's an increase in activity based on normal. So just the data volumes, there's more people there there's multiple, they're doing more things. And the things that they're doing not hugely different from what we're seeing in urban centers. So you need more engaged with nature and amenity, less engaged. I think actually things like hospitality and attractions and destinations and things that are you know, closing many regional centers as well. But I think that the volume itself shows a perhaps a level of engagement and activity where those places that, you know, in a normal kind of winter month, wouldn't be there.

Veronica Morgan: Would that also be though, because we can't travel even into States difficult, almost impossible. We can't travel overseas, so we are traveling locally and if we're going to drive, I don't drive that. So

Lucinda Hartley: Could that be really reflecting the fact we're holidaying there? Yeah. That's likely affected as well. So they bill it, it looks at what people are doing, what fed they're there, and they're, you know, that particular location that attraction can be from, from visitors as well as people who might be there, you know, on a semi permanent basis.

Chris Bates: Yes. That's interesting to say that sort of trend and come back in a year or two, right. And actually save that activity's still pretty constant. Once borders are open and people can travel, then maybe the towns, you know, the rural towns, aren't going to be so sleepy. You know, and then that changes everything, right. If people then businesses start being up and then that creates more demand. And then, you know, the local economy starts, you know, you know, more people want to move there, et cetera. So, you know, maybe it's just a match to sort of light those sort of cities up because I think that's one of the United to keep growing the population. We can't just keep on making Melbourne and Sydney bigger and we need to have these other alternatives growing. Yeah.

Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. I've got a bit of a theory on this. I think that wherever you can get really good coffee, that's a sign that there's enough demand that has moved into the area that's causing, you know, calling for that. That's my theory. You might be totally unfounded and it would be a very interesting thing to validate the coffee meter. Yeah, absolutely.

New Speaker: So I, this back the otherwise, like, instead of thinking there are pockets outside the city, like if you think about my fear on it guys from everybody that we will do that once as long as housing's affordable, because a lot of what's driving that is the house. And then, so you've always probably see growth in these housing markets because people are like, wow, it's cheap. And that pushes up those markets, but then what's asked to become more expensive in these areas comparable. And there's only so many, even though there's a lot of land out there there's only so many houses, cause they're much smaller that could very easily get under and lots of demand and push up prices. And then they can't really build any like old heritage homes inside Ballarat, for example, it's not in my thoughts. I still enjoy living here in the city, but I'm not going to move there because it's not that much cheaper anymore. What can we do to improve inner city life, I guess, and you know, things that would potentially, I don't know no more cars in the city, you know, more box, et cetera. And I Melbourne's getting good at that. So what are some of the things

Veronica Morgan: These bikes and they all end up in them in the Yarra bikes. Yeah. That was a short lived. It's not that it's not muddle of rent from anywhere. It didn't quite work, quite things,

Chris Bates: Quite Nate and in certain places in the middle of the wall. Quiet. But yeah. What are some of the things you think that we should be doing now in Sydney around central station? For example, they've just announced this week that they're going to create a massive square where people can kind of go and congregate there and that could just be a dead zone, but, you know, ideally that Tronic cried something like you'd say in Europe, you know, you're lucky, there's entertainment that is an open sort of Plaza sort of feel, but do you think there's things that we need to be doing in our inner cities to make them much more livable?

Lucinda Hartley: Yes, I do. I think what we've seen is a, a, an increase in density across the board, which is a good thing, but we haven't seen a proportional increase in public space. And, you know, you might say, well, there's no, there's no space available, but there is always space available. Like 80% of our public space network is actually straights. And so if you think that there's only a very small proportion of streets available for, you know, play or pedestrian use right now, then there's huge opportunity for repurposing car parks, rooftops, sidewalks, you know, under utilized streets for green spaces. And if we're going to have more density and then we need to have more space for people to be active outside, that's kind of the offset that needs to be planned for. And there's certainly been some, but not to the level, that's a proportional to the population increase.

Lucinda Hartley: So that's where I would start. But to do things like, you know, actually increase the greater green meters squared area, you do have to do things like take out streets or take out new color access to streets. So that creates other reconceptualization of, you know, or how do we get people, less people driving more into public transport and particularly cycling is a big thing that can be promoted in when there's short trip destinations in inner cities. So that's the piece of the puzzle that really needs to be sustained. If we're going to continue at density, it's not really longterm possible to have density without that, because then you end up sort of cannibalizing your own ability and then you end up cannibalizing your own value proposition in market because that's not how people actually can live in the long term. So we're kind of in a space right now where we actually have opportunity to shift the dial on this, but it will take proactive steps.

Lucinda Hartley: But we, you know, we've seen that in new South Wales is huge investment in public open space in the last six to 12 months. And certainly they've got a Premier's priority on public space, which is driving a lot of that. And I suspect, you know, the announcement yesterday that Melbourne's putting another a hundred million into open streets as part of having outdoor hospitality is COVID response over the summer. I think that will help change people's mindsets because, you know, you talk about taking away cars and people panic, but then because you know, that feels like a loss, but if you, if you think, well, imagine if we could have live Brooklyn, New York style, open streets just outside our houses. Well, that actually feels quite good. I'd be quite happy to drive so much if I, if I got that in return. So I hope that some of these kind of demonstration projects that the city's planning over the summer will be enough to help change mindsets around some of those tricky decisions around public space.

Veronica Morgan: One of the pretty cool things about COVID is it's really sort of prompted some innovative thinking and problem solving. And I think that outdoor solution in Melbourne is really interesting, but obviously it's weather dependent. It is a bit of a difficult city for that. I look to Singapore as well. When you mentioned Singapore earlier, because, you know, I guess it's got a benevolent dictator that runs a joint, but you know, it, didn't he set out to have this absolute goal of, was it 50% of spice to be green space or garden space he really wanted, as it was proactively designing a garden cities? Is that correct? Yeah, but there's a percentage of public spaces, also percentage of canopy cover the city that we can make 60% canopy cover, which is, you know, not that hard to do really at the end of the day, like pine trees.

Lucinda Hartley: But yeah, it does that kind of, when you have that kind of mandate, you can, then it actually just kinda gives you a whole economic dynamics and you can make it fit within that because everyone's playing from the same playing field,

Chris Bates: You've got a property Dumbo for something that didn't work or, you know, someone or someone done something where you think yeah, it wasn't the greatest of moves. And this is a lesson that we can learn from, I guess. Yeah, I can probably point to a few, but you know, the things that that come to mind for me is, is I guess the, the way that we're looking at ground floor retail in apartment buildings as just a fact and that might seem controversial because I'm very much an advocate of great straight life in lots of ways.

Lucinda Hartley: But I think if we I have been involved with as an urban designer and, you know, I won't call out very particular examples, but I, you know, you can all imagine the kind of one or two ground for shops that are vacant long term and the apartment tower they are now, the objective there is really good. So if we focus back on the objective rather than the outcome, I think we can, we could, we could actually achieve it. But what, when we're often making those decisions in absence of is his context. So is there an actual viable economic market there, but the objective there is about activating the straight. It's not about having two small businesses there. It's about having, you know, not having like a solid private interface in the streets. So if we take that away, there's so many things that could be, it could be community space for the building.

Lucinda Hartley: It could be a library, it could be a service provider, it could be, but many, many things. So I think that that's creating, there are some sort of blanket rules that we have around planning have good objectives and that, but if we at the execution of those is very, very poorly done. And in my view that comes back to us and not really understanding. I cannot make you guys see CMS, not really understanding our customers and, and not really having very good insight in the places that we're building in the first place. So they said to me, that comes back to as a data question, but overall, I think that's a very common blight on our city is a vacant Rachael in new buildings, particularly new area. It's a difficult one to solve. If the only thing we could put there is a cafe.

Lucinda Hartley: I think if we dug into what that definition of activity means then there is lots of different schools, communities, or all sorts of things that could be involved in providing that activation. It's such a good point because it really is more about the mindlessness of so much of our development. Isn't it it's like it's going to happen. It's like I look at, I think if you're going to put a Dumbo for developers, I think those apartment buildings that are built on main roads and they've got balconies facing the main road, why couldn't they have all the lifts, worlds, the bathroom, windows of bloody laundry windows, all that stuff facing the main road and all the balconies and all the orientation, the apartments completely away from the main road. It's just like, well, you build a building, they have apart, they have balconies. And so there's no thought into where they are, whether anyone's going to use them, right.

Chris Bates: And you can get so much of a supply and also the, on this, a product. And they sort of rural towns where you know, but in this situation, you know, there's usually if it's a high rise development or even medium rise, they're probably the only one doing a development, right. It's there's going to be a low when they all finish in three years time, they're all trying to at least their commercial then it's just not near enough. They will wanting them. And then you want your whole idea of what you were trying to create, right. That sort of straight life. Well, it's a bit like you don't want to walk along that street cause everything's, you just admit it just completely, yet shoots everyone in the foot. So, yeah, that's a very good Dumbo. Thank you very much.

Veronica Morgan: I appreciate you timely. Seem to these insights have been really quite fascinating. Excuse me. Have you guys.

Chris Bates: Yeah. And I think the biggest thing is for us to you know, get better at data so we can make better cities. And I think if we you know, I think before, it's just about what are we going to sell? What do we need? Let's just build that rather than actually trying to look at the data to figure out what we need. So I guess it's a very exciting business to be part of. I assume it's, it's really fun.

Lucinda Hartley: It's exciting. And, you know, despite all the changes we've had this year, I think from a data perspective, it's actually a very interesting impact. So yeah. Thank you, Chris and Veronica, it's a pleasure to chat.

Veronica Morgan: Absolutely. We've popped in the show notes as well. The the link to your new local data report. So if anybody's interested in looking at that, then they can click on that link and and sign up for it. I've also put the link in the show notes to the lyrics for little boxes on the hillside, for anyone who wants to go down memory lane

Chris Bates: For that, we want to make you a bit of elephant rider.

Veronica Morgan: Talk a little bit about buying outside of the city. It's a, I literally just came back from a, week's driving up the North coast of new South Wales and, you know, and I don't want to rub it into our Victorian listeners, but been enjoying a little bit of freedom. And you know, we, we stopped in at just outside of Newcastle with some friends there. And also then we went up to the hinterland, a bar and an everywhere with everyone we spoke to were talking about the fact that Sydney siders are buying up property big time on MES. And it's sort of interesting because I know when I was filming the show, we did quite a lot of the, you know, sea and tree change or episodes. And I just wanted to I guess remind people of the dangers of buying outside the city without properly researching the area.

Veronica Morgan: And often what happens that the locals know that the out of the out of town is coming in and they love it because they tend to pay too much money or they pay more money than anybody else. Prices start rising as a result of that, of course, but also they don't necessarily know the ins and outs that the locals know, you know, they don't necessarily know what Rose flood when it's torrential rain or where you've got too much shadow in summer or winter, or, you know, all those sorts of local nuances that the locals will go, Oh God, I wouldn't buy there because of X, Y, Z, and yet a city, a city slicker hapless would rushing there and think, Oh, it's beautiful. I love it. Particularly at the moment because we're no longer in drought. And a lot of these places, you know, only, you know, a year ago were Brown and now they're lush from green.

Veronica Morgan: And so I think that you know, Sydney siders in particular, but you know, I'm talking about Sydney siders and this particular case, but anybody looking at moving out of the city needs to take time and care to actually observe and understand the local amenity and lifestyle. What constitutes a good property, what constitutes a good area? A lot of people you know, after they moving, they, they buy in a hurry. And if they'd actually taken their time to research here, even rent there for awhile, they may not have bought in that particular pocket. They would have bought somewhere else. And certainly there's a lot less mobility when you buy in a regional area than there isn't a, in an urban area. So you, you stop there. So it's, it's well, I just encourage people to absolutely take their time and understand that you can't put, you can't view these areas with a city lens.

Chris Bates: Yeah, I, we are finding you know, a dramatic change. We're saying lots of, we had quite a trickle number of clients buying inside central coast or outside of Sydney over the last five or six years and most were, you know, they're talk about it, but then ultimately they would buy in Sydney. But just in the last, probably six months, we've had, you know, quite a lot of clients bought from the central coast. Lots of clients looking down towards surreal, quite a few clients that bought and that sort of pocket as well. And you know, they don't, haven't lived in these areas that haven't grown up in these areas. And you know, there's lots of mistakes you can make in terms of what the locals wouldn't want to live, where you know, it gets too busy over summer and cause it was winter and the way that the sun will change from winter to summer. And there's so many things that you can just make mistakes that the locals want. And yeah, the problem is though, if that makes sense, go rent there for a year, but there's, I guess probably

Veronica Morgan: On Airbnb. Yeah,

Chris Bates: That's true as well. And you know, in a, in a rising market, if you think about, you know, what areas are potentially going to rise over the next couple of years, what's areas that like this, where the commute was factored into the price, not the lifestyle, the livability of it. And now the commute has changed in terms of its you know, negative or positive. You know, that the prices will be changed. And so, you know, if you can't, you go rent for a year, you could find yourself chasing the market and you can't afford where you wanted to buy anyway. So you've just gotta be, you know, doing your resource, don't over rush your decision, but just going up there for a couple of weeks, weekends on Airbnb and thinking, you're going to understand the city. I try to really get your research done as quick as you can. And maybe it takes you three months, you know, of renting rather than renting for a full year, but you know, you need to do the legwork. Cause we've already started to say you know, clients almost make mistakes. And so we just think that yeah, it's definitely going to happen, but you just gotta do it smartly.

Veronica Morgan: So please join us for our next episode. And we actually interview an accountant with a personality. Not only does this accountant have a personality, he's a mortgage broker, a financial advisor, and a licensed builder. Kim nichey joining us to talk about lots of things around structuring for properties, both your own home and investments around the tax breaks around. Also doctors don't necessarily make right.