Dr Tony Matthews brings us a new lens for our times: ‘Transformative stressors’ 

Tony is an Irishman from County Cork who now calls Queensland home. At the time of his Masters studies at University College between 2007-2009 his interest in climate change adaptation in cities was “very much a niche topic”.

“Not many people were thinking about it, and even fewer were doing anything about it,” says Tony. An opportunity to work on climate change and sustainability at Griffith, allied to his PhD, lured him to Queensland and has kept him there. 

He has seen interest in confronting the mounting crises alerted by the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wax and wane. 

“On one hand Government and interagency abilities to mobilise for immediate responses to major impacts is way more cohesive, but one of the problems with the kind of emergencies we’re seeing at the moment is the unpredictability - in terms of severity and locations. 

“It’s very hard to prepare for something that’s not that easy to see coming. So then the question becomes about putting related priorities onto the policy radar and funding things like climate change adaptation for example, or coastal zone management techniques and coastal fortification. 

Tony has produced award-winning research on urban greenery and is also a fan of rewilding and planting forests for environmental benefit. 

When UrbanismNZ asked Tony about the types of impacts seen on New Zealand’s East Coast and rural Hawkes Bay this year he observed that rural sectors all over the world are realising that they’re just as exposed as cities to various climate change impacts “albeit in very different ways, but they’re no less exposed overall”. 

“There’s a lot of good environmental sense around the world in doing rewilding work using native species because they are the most suitable to your environment and they’re also the most suitable way to return environments to a natural state. 

“It’s to be expected that there’s a lot of tension in rural areas between those that would like areas rewilded and those that would like them kept for agriculture. There’s a lot of contestation about what should be planted where and achieving a balance with food production, as well as with other social and cultural considerations like stewardship.

“Planting land cover is so important. Where I live in Queensland the amount of land clearing has been beyond all order, and most of the land was in native species. So it’s like you’re clearing away the very things that you should be resituating and safeguarding.”

In Tony’s view we need to do more to understand the vulnerabilities of both urban and rural settings, and the intra-regional interlinkages between them. 

Turning his mind to the challenges that a city like Auckland is facing Tony Matthews has definite recommendations to make. 

First up he believes that doubling down on urban vegetation is vital. “Urban vegetation, including having more street trees and more parks, big or small, provides many, many returns on investment. This is seen in tangible improvements to urban air quality, reducing heat, dealing better with storm water, providing habitat for biodiversity, increasing amenity, liveability, and even reducing crime.”

Second is achieving more activated and more integrated housing density through block ratios that deliver the “same amount of return on the land you’re using”. The point being that “when it’s empirically interrogated” an urban pattern of dispersed high rises and townhouses - quite typical in Australia and New Zealand - isn’t really the best approach for density design strategies.

Third is an imperative to gear your efforts to the most obvious environmental impacts expected in your city. 

Tony: “If heavy rains are a factor then approaches like the sponge city idea, or sustainable urban drainage systems or returning catchments to a more natural state all make sense. If your city is struggling with heatwaves then you have to ask questions about space design, using street trees to shade streets and other shading structures, and insisting on building standards that don’t allow bad things like black rooves and lack of green spaces around small lot housing.” 

Fourth is a need for better, higher quality public spaces around urban neighbourhoods with high-functioning infrastructure to promote safety - day and night. As Tony says “safe cities (and suburbs) are often the ones that have a lot of activity where people are out and about, and so it lowers the opportunity for crime and makes neighbourhoods more socially sustainable”. 

Tony calls his fifth recommendation, a call for more work to be done integrating micro-transport with public transport, “slightly left field”.

“A big question with public transport is how you deal with the last kilometre or so from a train or bus stop to a final destination. I see micro-transport as playing a very important role (in the future) for a lot of users, not all obviously but a lot, to bridge that gap. Which means there needs to be ways of taking things like e-scooters on and off public transport, charging them and storing them in similar ways to the approach for bicycles”.

When it comes to tackling a future likely to be regularly punctuated with transformative stressors, Tony Matthews is confident that tertiary institutions and the Cities Research Institute at Griffith are stepping up to the challenge. 

“Everything you could imagine is needed to increase our knowledge for this change-making century is probably being researched at some university somewhere, or more likely in several universities. A huge amount of innovation and insight is coming from universities, and a lot of that gets commercialised so actually helps in technological change and state of preparation. 

Tony also observes that it can be, surprisingly perhaps, “hard to get students committed to this space”, adding “students have lots of things that they are anxious and genuinely concerned about, like housing affordability for instance. Compared to what’s reported online and in the media I certainly don’t hear a lot of the existential terror about environmental harm and climate change. Students don’t appear so totally spun out about it to the point of it being beyond all salvation yet. It’s not completely hopeless, and that itself is hopeful”. 

After UrbanismNZ, another much anticipated event on Tony’s schedule for 2023 is the State of Australasian Cities conference planned for Wellington in December. 

“New Zealand and Australia have so much in common. We already have a good cross-wash of researchers and professional practitioners going back and forth, and an inter-mixing of consultants. There’s plenty of trans-Tasman collaboration happening, but also plenty of scope for far more”. 

One magic wand that Tony would like to wave would see a wider elevation and acceptance of the role of planners as “conductors of the orchestra”. He believes a stronger positioning of the planning and urban design professions is needed. 

“Bringing all of the players and the agencies and the skills together into something cohesive is a role that’s well suited for planners. It’s a vital role for better coordination of environmental and emergency responses, but stakeholders aren’t showing a strong inclination to work more closely with planners. 

“Unfortunately I would say the planning profession has been quite bad at explaining what it does and why it is so necessary. (They) need to self-represent a lot harder”.