Award-winning architect, urban planner, Forbes 30 under 30 innovator, housing rights leader, TEDxSydney speaker, climate justice advocate HY William Chan is a man who wears many hats. But it is in his role as an Independent Councillor with the Sydney Lord Mayoral team that he really thrives – where he sees himself as an ‘agent of change’ and loves being ‘a bit disruptive’.

Elected to the City of Sydney Council in 2021 – the youngest ever elected representative to serve in the local government, helming critical portfolios including urban planning, transport, heritage, and environment – Chan has leveraged his position as the City’s resident architect-councillor to champion issues close to his heart such as social inclusion, affordable housing, public spaces, and climate action, influencing policy-making to drive impactful change in creating a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive urban environment.

The journey from architect to councillor

Reflecting on his transition into public office, he says his experiences as an architect working on his own projects within urban environments, supporting vulnerable urban communities and sustainable development, made him realise how architects, as agents of change, can really work with people as partners, empowering them to co-design and co-create, and help shape the cities of the future.

“That's a theme across my career as an architect – and it's something that I've brought on to politics,” Chan observes. Therefore, when offered the opportunity by the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, to join her team, Chan agreed, because “all these points started connecting in terms of my experiences, working with urban governance and seeing how infrastructure – good public architecture – in the public interest can actually transform communities, but also livability.”

How Medellin reclaimed its streets

Chan recalls the time he participated in the UN World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia, where he heard the local mayor describe the transformation of the city, which was once run by crime lords and drug lords, to one that was reclaimed by the local community, thanks to the civic leadership using architecture and local emerging architects to “make sure that the streets of Medellin were no longer filled with crime, but were actually owned by the public”.

By having the streets filled with community activation through public infrastructure, transforming crime-prone areas in the city with new libraries and community centres, enabling cheap public transport, and introducing a 24-hour economy that allowed eyes on the streets, people were successful in making public spaces safe for everyone.

“...what makes a city inclusive, what makes a city safe, what makes a city well-designed for everyone to feel that they have public ownership over it, that's something that all global cities are grappling with, including in Sydney,” Chan observes. “And it's what's really inspired me to understand the governance of our cities, how we can actually make the right decisions, make the right policies.”

Taking the community along in the policy-making journey

Unlike state and federal levels, policies made at the local government level don’t get shelved somewhere, he says. “We actually get to manifest it in the built environment in terms of the transformation we're seeing over the past two decades of the city of Sydney, but also more broadly in terms of how other global cities are doing that work and how we can share knowledge, build capacity, and govern in a way that is community-led – that again allows our citizens to really recognise and value good design, good architecture, and the impact it has on people and our local communities.”

Chan is not entirely comfortable being in politics, and taking the community on this journey of change as a civic leader has been challenging. Elaborating on being ‘disruptive’, Chan says dealing with the most hard-to-solve problems of communities requires really progressive solutions that come out of taking the hardest path, which also means meeting with different stakeholders, balancing the needs of the community, and accepting the fact that it’s not possible to make everyone happy.

“But what I can bring to the table is my professional background, my technical expertise in architecture, and to communicate in a sense that it is meaningful for people to understand, not to the point of simplifying the decision-making in terms of good design or what design excellence might mean,” he explains.

The George Street transformation – building on Jan Gehl’s vision

Elaborating on the transformation of high streets across the city, Chan says it is an opportunity to test, prototype, pilot, and be a facilitator, by having people as partners, and being participatory in design. “If we become facilitators, we allow those who are actually experts, those people, whether they're the small business owners of bars, pubs and cafes, to join together and understand that we're going to close down a street over the weekend, but we really want them to be creative and bring that community spirit on board to public space.”

Given that each of these high streets has their own character and place strategies, Chan says that those who have the shopfronts and understand the needs of that neighbourhood the most should really have a say, and be able to take action, create the events, have the performers, do the street stores so that our community has “a sense of being able to play on the streets and see our roads as not only just for cars, but actually a place for people”.

The remarkable George Street project is a successful example of this thought process: Following up on Danish architect Jan Gehl’s recommendations for the city’s transformation in 2007 (which also formed the basis of the Sustainable Sydney 2030 strategy), the City of Sydney put into action their plan to pedestrianise George Street, establishing the light rail from Central to Circular Quay, creating a network of inner-city laneways and public plazas, developing public infrastructure with widened footpaths and street furniture, and essentially transforming Sydney’s ‘central spine’ into a people-friendly, tree-lined boulevard.

While the George Street transformation progresses, Chan says it has been hard bringing the community – the stakeholders – on this journey, given the disruption to businesses, difficulty in getting to work during construction, and the backlash to the removal of on-street car parking spaces. However, he is hopeful that people will understand once they see and experience the positive change.

“...people are eating their lunches on our benches on George Street. Five years ago, it was a traffic sewer. It would have been the worst place to hang out, to have a chat with friends, to go shopping and mingle together or enjoy our city's nightlife. Now people can do so in a way that actually is at a scale that is human centred,” Chan says.

“The beauty of the work we do is we can show people. Sometimes, it is not a huge leap; it is step by step. Like Jan Gehl says, you remove one car parking spot from the streets, one at a time. You do that before you start closing streets so that you can show people why we need to have footpath widening, why it's important to have water-sensitive urban design so that nature can do its work and filter our rainwater, and how we can have more alfresco dining.”

Net zero operational buildings by 2026

Chan, who represented Sydney at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 as the head delegate, also put forward Australia's first planning controls for new commercial developments with a target to achieve net zero operational buildings by 2026. He says it’s another great example of the outcomes that can happen with city-making when stakeholders from across the community including industry, business and residents are included.

One major challenge was resolving the space limitations in a highly dense city like Sydney, especially in commercial projects within the city centre where there just wasn’t enough square metres of site area to accommodate solar panels and produce enough onsite renewable energy to fully operate the entire building. Offsite renewable was the answer. Thanks to agreements with regional councils and operators of wind and solar farms, today, all community centres, libraries, aquatic centres, and even town halls are 100% powered by renewables. Considering that rooftop space is scarce, priority is now being given to rooftop greening to tackle the urban heat island effect, with offsite generators being tapped for renewable energy.

Based on his collaborative work with architects and commercial developers, Chan is confident of meeting the 2026 target for net zero operational buildings.

Planting trees for the future

On the urban forest strategy to mitigate Sydney’s urban heat problem, Chan says it’s important to understand that the trees planted today are for our future generations. “Those trees have to be planted now in order to have the solutions in terms of urban forestry and the right tree canopy within the next 30 years to come.”

Using geospatial technology to map every single tree on every single street across the local government area and combining native species with deciduous plants, the Council is working with local communities to create a diverse and dynamic canopy that will maintain shade in summer while encouraging solar access in winter.

Housing for All

A vocal advocate of affordable housing, Chan spoke about the City of Sydney’s ‘Housing for All’ initiative, revealing that they are exploring innovative strategies to address these challenging, long-term problems through progressive and creative solutions, or ‘levers’ as he describes them.

One of the levers is the affordable housing levy that private developers across new residential or commercial developments have to pay, which is then contributed to community housing providers. The City of Sydney is the only council to do this and it has allowed them to provide more affordable housing than any other council – over 5,000 affordable housing units have resulted from this levy. Additionally, any residual land belonging to the city is sold at a subsidised rate to community housing providers.

Furthermore, affordable housing is also being delivered on site together with market housing, with even the largest developers understanding the need to protect the most vulnerable in our community, tackling the housing crisis by delivering genuine affordable housing that is for-purpose and forever, and realising how social cohesion helps create better communities within their precincts.

Sharing his thoughts on the evolution of Sydney in the next decade, Chan says, “I think it's so critical that all this work that's happening is real. It is a real transformation and it impacts people's lives. I think it's so great, but also for me, now that I am both an architect and a politician, to have those moments where I can see people enjoying the places that we've shaped for them. We need to be reminded that it is actually our goal. We have a public custodianship in terms of the space between our buildings and the public interests and the public life of our cities – we are the shapers of that. I get to do that work on a daily basis. But I'm also reminded, yes, I'm elected and people have voted me in to do this work.”

For the full interview with HY William Chan, go to our podcast: https://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/news/episode-218-city-of-sydney-s-resident-architect

Interview by Branko Miletic

Image: Supplied