MTalks—Right Angle presents 'The Place Debate'

The suburbs are no place to raise a child. Does it really take a village to raise a child? How about a city, or a suburb? On March 5, Right Angle Studio brought together some of Melbourne’s great minds to flesh these ideas out in front of a live audience. The inaugural Place Debate pits the city against the suburbs as two teams respond to the idea that ‘the suburbs are no place to raise a child’. The evening at MPavilion was moderated by the Strategy and Insights Director at Right Angle Studio, Barrie Barton, but we’ll mostly be listening to the voices of our clients, collaborators and the next generation of great urban thinkers. For over a decade, Right Angle Studio worked tirelessly to understand inner-city audiences and environments. The city was what we knew, and what we strove to improve. When we started getting asked to work on projects in the suburbs we were forced to question our intention as urban strategists. Was our singular focus actually just snobbery? What we decided was that creating the suburbs of the future will require learning lessons from our cities: adopting increased density, building in room for change and growth and creating clusters of culture, commerce and education. We’re also paying attention to what the suburbs do well and making sure that they don’t lose their character. In the last 12 months alone, we’ve worked on projects in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Geelong and the Gold Coast. We haven’t started hosing down our driveways, but we like to think we are having the same impact on life in the ‘burbs as we have in the city.