Perth is big. The urban footprint of the City and its surroundings is twice that of Tokyo and three times that of Los Angeles.

Some experts suggest that Perth may have as many as 3.8 million people by 2050, more than doubling the current population and increasing the need for more housing.

So why is it that Perth keeps stretching out? Our city already covers over 6,000 square kilometres, how much further will it go?

Residents of Perth are embracing apartment living to access quality amenities in desirable locations.

Stirling Cross

Government policies aimed at increasing residential density and reducing urban sprawl mean that this trend is likely to continue into the future.

Research undertaken by WA Apartment Advocacy highlighted that over 65% of apartment residents are seeking activities that enable them to get to know their neighbours.

Last Thursday evening, Smithwick Strata Services and Creating Communities invited both owners and renters from Stirling Cross to a Welcome Event, providing the perfect opportunity to meet other residents from their apartment.

With engagement boards, a grazing table and a local musician serenading the group, we wanted to find out from the residents what they thought could help turn Stirling Cross into a vibrant vertical community, and who could help contribute.

The night was a great success and a brilliant start to proactively building community connections and trust through a strategic approach.

The Creating Communities Vertical Communities Approach enables people to have choices about how they connect with their neighbours. Our Founding Director Allan Tranter put it this way:

“Many people make the assumption that because we live in close proximity, that we have a relationship with our neighbours. More and more this isn’t the case, our approach centres on choice. To enable choice, information and opportunities are required. We do the research on what people want to do, what’s available in local neighbourhoods and we connect the dots.”

In a time where apartment buildings can often be some of the loneliest places, when isolation exists in a life-filled tower of hundreds, Creating Communities steps in to connect points of isolation, develop identity and cultivate a shared sense of obligation and purpose within a vertical environment.

Last week was the biennial WA Council of Social Service Conference and our very own Angela Vurens Van Es was invited to speak about addressing lag caused by change.

Our Strategy Lead Angela has a passion for understanding the change emerging trends have in our communities and supporting organisations to be at the forefront of human-centred responses.

Angela’s talk focused on the change we experience today, both as individuals and communities, and how we should try to be ‘addressing the lag’ that can arise as a result of that change.

With her in-depth understanding of communities, Angela is in a perfect position to give an insight to the major shifts shaping communities around us and the role of the service sector in empowering community to address unintended impacts.

So what insights did Angela have for the attentive audience?

What emerging trends provide a snapshot of change in our community?

What are the potential impacts?

How can we strengthen our approach to ensure we are building hearty, resilient, and aspiring communities that are more capable of managing change themselves?

We can gather as much information as possible to understand, seek insight and then conceptualise the solution before moving to strategy development and that actions that follow.

In today’s world, it is essential you do nothing alone, hence the importance of partnerships and relationships.

As the social services sector, we depend on understanding demographics and data to recognise emerging needs in our communities. The stats tell us a lot, but we need to be looking to the trends which offer a window into why you might feel tired, stressed, anxious, cash-strapped and lonely.

But they also give us a window into great possibilities for ourselves and for our communities.

The trends Ange spoke about last week are those we see having the greatest relevance to the way our WA community is experiencing life and the way our social sector operates.

We have spoken about artificial intelligence before, but not so much about ‘thick data’, the precious unquantifiable insight from actual people to make the right business decisions and thrive on the unknown.

We have machines that can perform tasks that were once the responsibility of humans, we’re losing jobs because of it, there’s less security in jobs these days.

“Every time we remove a role or responsibility from a person we give them one less reason to exist.”

In an age of technology enabling endless choices, governments are placing more and more responsibility on individuals to direct their care and support needs.

Organisations working in this space are becoming administers of funds, not an organisation which fosters a sense of shared community or care.

Although we are more connected than ever through technology, the quality of our relationships is diminishing. Technology is both helping and hindering, with a steep rise in older people using digital platforms to stay connected to family, but the younger generations citing that social media is making them feel left out.

Quality relationships are essential for trust, and trust is on the decline in Australia.

It’s a human need to be part of a group, and this need has grown in the past 5 to 10 years. There is a new trend to be part of the “Collective Us”

Being part of the “collective us” can be a positive and negative force in our communities. In sociological terms, we call it binding and bonding social capital. We can come together in ways that are good for the greater good or in ways that are bad for the greater good.

The data and trends are showing us that we are entering a new period for communities; one of uncertainty, rapid change, a lack of job and financial security.

BUT it’s also showing us that in an increasingly uncertain world, people care about being part of a community.

We need to build strong people and communities with the skills, attributes and ability to deal with change. This way, when there are changes (be it policy, funding, tech, societal), they can adapt and absorb more before whatever the new is, takes hold.

So how do we build hardy and resilient communities with the ability to adapt to change?

• We need to focus on the whole.
• We need to build social capital, wellness, quality of life and culture.
• We need to focus on all the realms in which people inhabit; supporting individual wellbeing, functional places with the infrastructure and amenity needed, a sense of community and connection and (perhaps most importantly) a sense of endeavour and connection to economic opportunities.

Over the past few months, we’ve been helping the Town of Port Hedland with their Strategic Community Plan 2018-2028. Together we’ve been engaging with the community to hear their stories and collate data on what they want for the years to come.

The review of the Strategic Community Plan is a State Government requirement but is also timely due to a number of unforeseen changes in the economy and resource sector.

Because of the ubiquitous and abundant growth of mining towns around Australia during the boom, many forecasted that the future would hold the same steep trajectory.

In the 2010 report, Port Hedland was expected to grow to “at least 40,000 people” by 2025, but in 2016 the Pilbara region saw a population decline for the first time since the boom with the recent ABS census showing a 3.8% drop in the population of Port Hedland from 2011 to 2016.

Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize laureate who is also an emeritus professor at Stanford, told The Atlantic that ambitious projections of growth are often made from the assumption that economics drive development, which is not always the case.

Economists are now arguing that it makes more sense to focus on measures of more holistic well-being.

The Hedland port exported last year over 500, 000,000 tonnes making it the largest single bulk export port in the world, which has meant the relatively small town of 14,469 has heavily swayed with the needs of industry. Residents are now saying that, while industry is important, that they want to become a diverse and vibrant community that’s less reliant on the resource sector and less vulnerable to the boom-bust cycle.

As part of the Strategic Community Planning process, we partnered with the Town of Port Hedland to launch the ‘Live It Tell It’ campaign, one of the most extensive engagement exercises ever rolled out by the Town. The campaign invited a diverse range of residents, key stakeholders and council staff, as well as the Town’s Elected Members, to participate in a number of surveys and exercises through pop-ups, intensive planning workshops, and meetings, to review the current vision, goals and strategy of the Town and to bring to light the priority areas requiring improvement.

Residents, council and stakeholders have voiced a shared desire to collaborate with each other in an effort to achieve positive outcomes and to build a sustainable and cohesive community that people are proud to call home.  There is also broad agreement that there needs to be more opportunity for small to medium enterprise to increase economic diversity and create a lively town hub.

Generally, the community wants Hedland to be defined by its vibrancy and opportunities in education, arts and culture, lifestyle, sports and recreation. Affordable living costs is also an issue most people believe needs to be addressed.

While Port Hedland has a lot to boast about, many also talked of worries concerning education, environmental preservation, safety and issues affecting youth in the community.

Verinia Binsaad, Participant at the Youth Uprising, has spent her whole life in Port Hedland and says, because of her family heritage in the area, the town will always be home.

“Everyone here is family to me,” she says, “us kids usually feel our ideas don’t matter but this makes it feel like they do.”

The 2018-2018 Strategic Community Plan will reflect all the input received during the Live It Tell It engagement program. Watch this space for news on its release.

The regeneration of Roe 8 is underway, following the controversial clearing works last year, and the spring shoots betoken hope with the rehabilitation project bringing together residents, scientists, government and custodians to work towards a unified vision.

The Rehabilitating Roe 8 Steering Committee is developing a 10-year management plan to rehabilitate the area with elders of the Beeliar Mob consulting on cultural matters and the Perth Urban Restoration Scientific Advisory Committee providing the science behind the restoration.

In line with our Reconciliation Action Plan, we joined a few members of the Beeliar Mob at Bibra Lake last Wednesday for a barbeque and yarn to learn about the area and understand what the project team need to consider to preserve and treasure the cultural significance of the land.

According to the Elders the area is, in modern terms, a cathedral, a university, and a parliament house. The area is also a birthing place, a cemetery and a place not just for the Beeliar people with Mobs from across the Canning River down to Pinjarra and even as far as Kalgoorlie congregating over millennia for ceremony, discussions and celebrations.

At the beginning of the year a team of archaeologists from the centre for rock art research and management at the University of Western Australia and members of the Aboriginal community carried out a series of 1m excavations uncovering quartz crystals, granite and chert — remains of grinding stones or cutting tools—which dated up to 33,000 years old, making the site one of the oldest on the Swan Coastal Plain.

The area also includes a number of interwoven ecosystems spanning over 26 lakes and 3400 hectares of land, providing an ongoing habitat for 220 plant species and 123 bird species, including the endangered Carnaby’s Cockatoo and migratory bird species which convene along the Swan Coastal Plain.

The ideas and visions were varied but the common thread throughout the discussions was that the Beeliar Mob have a sanctity to the land and a repository of knowledge which we believe is key to effectively create a plan with project developers to benefit us all as a community.

This year, several of our consultants have undertaken the IDEO Human-Centered Design course in an effort to extend the way we think and work with communities.

Inspiration, ideation and implementation

The three phases of Human-Centered Design are:

Inspiration – learning needs directly from who you are designing for by immersing yourself in their world.

Ideation – examining the learnings, identifying opportunities and prototyping ideas for suitability.

Implementation – bringing the solution to life, knowing it will work because the people it serves have been at the heart of the process from the very beginning.

The value of design thinking

We asked our consultants, Kim, Lynden, Becca, Bec and Angela, what they learnt during the course:

“For me, ensuring that during the Inspiration phase we talked to lots of different people to understand what the key areas of the challenges and opportunities that we should be taking into account when formulating an idea for a new or improved product or services.”  Kim

“Research at your desk just doesn’t cut it. The development of a design solution – one that really works – required understanding the breadth of the user experience. To get a real picture you need to interview people, visit locations, read the documentation and then reflect on those findings as a group. This experience of being immersed in the process was significant and really helped define the challenge.” Becca

“The forming of ‘how might we’ questions as a way of framing the problem-solving thinking, and making it very specific. This led to thinking about equally specific and concrete possible solutions.” Lynden

“Using one or two words or pictures, and then grouping these into themes to draw out and define some ‘how might we’ questions was fast, high-energy and really flexible. The collaborative approach with post-it notes meant each of us could equally contribute ideas and comments without judgement.” Becca

“Creating a Storyboard to map out the end-user’s experience, from the moment when they first encounter the producer or service through to when they have finished. It enables a design team to really prioritise what aspect of the product or service should be tested further to maximize a successful design outcome.” Kim

“The rigour and thoroughness of the process rather than rushing to quick fixes, no matter how brilliant the idea sounds initially. This enables really good testing of an idea.” Lynden

For more info on how to include Human-Centered Design in your community project, contact us at Creating Communities.