The City Whisperer explores the future of smarter healthy cities. It focuses on mental health and the city and how we can build better cities of the future.
Dr Jonathan Drane created the City Whisperer from his doctoral research into dead city areas and how they can be re-activated.
The film called The Horse Whisperer which starred Robert Redford and Kristin Scott-Thomas inspired The City Whisperer.
Dr Jon’s doctoral research (2011-2015) focussed on dead city areas and he watched how they re-morphed into vibrant city areas (and some did not).
However the meaning of City Whisperer has grown since it was introduced soon after Dr Jon’s doctorate in 2015.
As with the movie The Horse Whisperer, which centred around the rehabilitation of a greatly loved but injured horse, the city has become a similar metaphor.
In the case of cities as time goes by, they are greatly loved but are suffering from a malaise also. The health and even mental health of cities is now in question.
The City Whisperer explores Mental Health and the City and looks at cities as if they had their own City Persona and The Mental Health of Cities.
And if it was a person, ‘what is its mental health score’. In fact how mental is your city?
Dr Jonathan Drane
We also acknowledge the work of Charles Landry who was nick named The City Whisperer refer ABC documentary by the same title. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-12/the-city-whisperer/2336616
The City Whisperer was born also from the amazing ‘catalyst research’ undertaken by Dr Drane through his Optimum City Research established in 1993 see opcity.net.
Creating Better Cities through Better Development Processes
Our cities are the product of our city builders; Government Agencies, Local Councils, City Planners, Public and Private Property Developers not to mention community groups , activists and businesses.
We rely on Property Developers more and more for the delivery of our buildings and city planners and builders are sometimes at their mercy not only in the scale of developments but also the quality of outcomes.
Property Developers are often vilified and often deserve to be so. However little time is spent on actually understanding how property developers operate and the land parcels that they harvest in our cities.
There are five key areas that I can contribute to a greater understanding and better process:
– Creating Better Cities through instigation of quality property development processes and systems.
-Delivering quality property development projects.
-How to eliminate the current horrors of dangerous buildings and related defects.
-How a property development fits into the dynamics and fabric of the overall city that it sits within.
-Better understanding of the overall development process across public and private sector realms.
This charter is achieved by us through excellence in research, teaching and advisory activities which all feed on each other to ensure that our knowledge base is always up to date and relevant.
Relevant Links:
www.jondrane.net for research, advisory and publications.
Link to UNSW Library for Published Doctorate
Research Sites – Jonathan Drane