Indu was asked to speak on her vision for housing in Ku-ring-gai at the Better Cities Initiative with a call to action for attendees and community “Let’s move from problem to possibility, led by local vision and action” reminding us that housing isn’t just bricks and mortar—it’s “community design at its finest.”
It was great to see the Ku-ring-gai community show up to this forum, to actually work through this together on a very fundamental question – what are we as a community seeking in the design of our spaces and places?
Indu posed 3 key questions:
- Who are we as a community?
- What do we want to be in 10 and 20 years?
- Who decides?
She furthered her ambition by stating that she wants to represent a neighbourhood that dares to dream big and how she plans to handle one of the grand tasks councils have; to develop a local housing strategy. She said “It is the privilege and responsibility of articulating what good looks like and why, and how it reflects the aspirations and needs of the community” knowing full well how it provides certainty through this framing when one stands for council.
Indu finished with a call to action for Ku-ring-gai that’s nothing short of spectacular “fearless, ambitious, beautiful” and she can’t wait to work on this with you on behalf of the Gordon Ward at Ku-ring-gai Council. Read her full speech below.
INDU”S SPEECH TRANSCRIPT
I’ll begin by acknowledging that we are on the lands of Aboriginal peoples – and pay my respects to the elders of these lands. It is a particularly pertinent starting point as we are discussing notions of home and designing our future together, building on the past.
Its great to see our community show up to this forum, to actually work through together on a very fundamental question – what are we as a community seeking in the design of our spaces and places?
Who are we as a community
What do we want to be in 10 and 20 years
Who decides
I have spent a great deal of my career thinking about, designing for and delivering programs that are place-based. I now think a lot about how my local community has been designed. In the Australia of today, this is driven by housing.
WHO ARE WE….this is what I have heard as I have knocked on doors, and spoken to people at our stations and shops.
We are the young couple who moved here from the inner west because the apartment was more affordable and larger, who would love to see more of a vibe here.
We are the older lady whose family has lived in East Killara since it was a market garden, who struggled to make connections to the community after retirement as a teacher, until she joined the gym and the gardening society. Who cannot bear to see heritage reduced.
We are my family, moving from Strathfield for our boys schooling. Bought a run-down heritage home we could afford, without quite knowing what that meant. My parents recently moved to a nearby apartment to be close to their only child in Australia.
We are the quiet older man and his wife in an old home in Gordon who would like some housing options for their children and grandchildren nearby and not 100 kms away.
We are the family who moved here from Newtown 15 years ago looking for quiet suburbia, and trying to find the right words to share her struggle to maintain community connectedness when cultural norms and languages are increasingly different, and wondering what the community will look like in the future.
We are the lady who thinks anyone who has lived in the area for less than 40 years is a blow-in, and wants to know why we think its ok that the aged care mostly migrant workers who look after our elderly people have to travel an hour to get here, early in the morning
We are the Malaysian-Australian family, committed deeply to their local school community, who would love to see high rise with large family apartments, food choices, cafes not going broke along the highway, and a more vibrant community to be part of.
We are the elderly Chinese couple who live with their daughter and look after the grandchildren, who are delighted to have a conversation translated by their grandson.
We are all of these. And we have to find a vision for place, housing and community that binds us, and anchors us in driving our own change, rather than being defined by resisting change.
WHO DECIDES AND HOW
I have observed that people in the community are reticent to share their perspectives, whatever they may be. They are concerned they will be shouted down, or they don’t have the right words, or are in the minority, or that they will cause offence, or they are a little busy with life and haven’t thought about it enough.
I want each of us to, for a moment, reflect on what the story of Ku-ring-gai is. How did this story form? Who formed it? Do we see ourselves in this story and in shaping this story for the next 5 or 10 years?
One of the grand tasks councils have is to develop a local housing strategy. It is the privilege and responsibility of articulating what good looks like and why, and how it reflects the aspirations and needs of the community. It provides certainty through framing.
Isn’t it peculiar then, that most residents I have spoken are very clear about what to be afraid of and what bad looks like, but struggle to articulate what good collective housing design and process could look like. With some prompting, this emerges. Here is the golden place to come together. What do we want our neighbourhood to look and feel like, so that it is a place to proudly call home, deeply connected in a reciprocal relationship to Sydney, Australia and the world.
This coming together in community is a discipline – it requires will, courage, respect, and the right for each of us to belong and speak and be heard. It requires our leaders to share good information, be transparent, be able to make collective sense of what is being said and actually turn it into action.
Housing is community design at its finest and we have in front of us the opportunity to create something spectacular in Ku-ring-gai, that is fearless, ambitious, beautiful and of us. A moment of possibility. If anyone can do it, the smart and thoughtful people of Ku-ring-gai that I have met again and again the last few months, can. So let’s find ways to get on with it.