A City of Hope

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: New cities of the 21st century will tend to be technological make-overs of existing cities, encouraging the development of new locations and lifestyles, shaped by partnerships between governments, developers, research institutions, and new media companies. Some 25 specialist cities will be needed to supported populations of 50,000 to 500,000 and soak up projected the population growth. As things stand, most growth is likely to come in Sydney and Melbourne, which will inherit the slums of the future and the problems they involve. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: This proposal is for a new city of 50,000 located on the boundary of the Little Desert National Park in the Wimmera. An initial city profile of 7 hectares would provide land for mixed residential, commercial, retail, government and recreational precincts, and provide boulevards, parks, civic spaces and bicycle / pedestrian systems, all offering a new form of urban praxis. This new City of Hope is not another exercise in naïve communitarian settlement. It should be practically sustainable in all manner of ways. But in the end the issue of identity is more important than the urgencies of the carbon footprint and population growth. The fact that Australian cities hug the ocean has supplied us with a sense of time and place, with an identity. But the exploration of our continental interior was never completed, and a city facing our desert heartland might offer different emotional insights and reassurances. As Paul Scheerbart did with his 'Glass Architecture', this City of Hope is an attempt to tap the world of our dreaming. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The Venice Architecture Biennale is the foremost international exhibition of architecture. 'A City of Hope' was one of 24 proposals short-listed from 129 submissions for the 'Now + When' exhibition, curated by John Gollings and Ivan Rijavec, comparing contemporary Australian urbanism with proposals for 2050+.