Regenerating cities: Technological and design innovation for Australian suburbs

Innovations capable of initiating a sustainability transformation of ageing suburbs in high-income Western cities are presented against a backdrop of urban infrastructures (housing, transport, water, energy) that are stressed due to levels of high population growth and consumption, an ageing asset base, changing socio-demographics, a resource- and carbon-constrained world, and an urbanizing world where attempts at urban intensification are confounding the urban planning and design professions. To be sustainable, cities need to be in a position to draw on innovative technologies, products and processes that can be substituted as existing infrastructures show signs of failure. A three-horizon model of urban technology innovation is proposed that is applicable at building, precinct and suburb scale. Cities also need to be innovative in the process of urban planning and design, especially in how they retrofit, redevelop, and regenerate their brownfield and greyfield precincts in the established inner and middle suburbs in order to encourage movement of population and investment inwards rather than outwards. New models of urban property redevelopment are required here to support greyfield precinct regeneration. The prospects for supply-side innovation are explored in the context of alternative urban infill approaches to regeneration in Australia's cities.