Somewhere Worth Living

Rethinking the way we inhabit buildings means re-imaging the city. The random thoughts of an instant life, or a social dot net IPO?

Trend; Smaller households.

Trend: Coffee offer in every building, on every corner, in every office foyer, in every shopping centre entry, and next; in residential apartment complex lobbies - although it is a bottle shop in the lobby next door to my home!

Could baristas become akin to a concierge? Or a surrogate family matriarch? City life can be re-defined as a series of social interactions, sort of a lens on city DNA.

Gen Y; Look at me! I’m here! Where? Join me! I’m shopping. NOW! I’m doing it! What! Anything. Something. It’s interesting. I’m interesting. Look at me.

The city is a stage set; physically, virtually and emotionally. Every space a place, themed and active. It’s an experience economy now. Instantaneous everything. Proximity, speed, connectedness.

We now build buildings set for an explosion of one person households. But they are not yet a hotel or a resort in the true sense of service.

Gen Y; I’ll have a concierge please. Not a family. I have friends. Virtually. That is my NOW family. My Future? Not sure yet. Have we met?

As smaller household sizes dominate the statistics, then perhaps this should give rise to smaller and smaller dwelling sizes, privately. A noble non-capitalistic thought maybe, but imaginable only if ameliorated into access and belongingness to an increased size of community spaces, streets, parks, cafes, lounges. Places for social life. My Space; physically.

Ironically, research has shown that across the globe, the greater the wealth of a city, the smaller the preserve of public space, correlating to a detriment of wellbeing.

Gen Y: It’s not what I own in life, but what I have experienced that defines my success, that defines who I am.

Could the city street be re-imagined as a large communal living room, 24/7? A living street without permission for cars, but rather as a place for gathering beneath a dormitory of one person reprieves, that can offer an endless array of informal and casual encounters for the richest of experiences - if designed for the new permissions!

Public space is a social equaliser, it is social equity itself.

Casual social life can gives rise to the informal economy – something that over designed, over efficient, effective utilisation of all urban capital designs out; as all space is designated, labelled, and allocated to efficient movement, ownership or commercially captured before society can take up residence. Period.

Ample parks and pavements that can be used by all, not preserved for private uses like motor vehicles, as symbols of status and past achievements merely for the 60% of Australians that are of a driving and working age, of segregation and separation, can re-enable increased social interactions.

In our travels, we have all found this to be true, as it has been done before.  I look forward to inventing a new living room, street, affair, to ameliorate our growing need to house density.

Trend: The city is being evolved by its new inhabitants. Enjoy.

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