A vision for a more sustainable city

Stephen Todd from Powerhouse interviewed Jess Miller, Urban Policy & Communication Strategist, ahead of the installation of A New Normal, a suite of four installations that convert the car park of the Harwood Building – the workshop, archive and administration hub of Powerhouse Ultimo – into prototypes that offer proof of concept to better ways of being of in the city.

Jess Miller admits she’s 'slightly obsessed with cities and how we can make them self-sufficient'. For the duration of the Vivid Sydney festival (24 May–15 June 2024) the former City of Sydney councillor has rallied some 50 organisations to orchestrate A New Normal. 'It’s a place people might have walked past a million times and never really taken much notice of,' says Miller. 'So, it’s great to be able to use this place to offer a smorgasbord of solutions to ever more dire problems.'

Stephen Todd Jess, can you give us the elevator pitch for A New Normal?

Jess Miller A New Normal is about identifying the types of projects we need to get going quickly and at scale to transform Sydney from a place that consumes a lot of energy and water and generates lots of waste into a self-sufficient city that creates its own energy, has limitless water and zero waste. It could potentially unlock a $200 billion investment opportunity over 10 years.

ST There are four prototypes: a Solar Pavilion, a Forever Car, a Circular Shop and a Night Garden. Let’s go through each of those, starting with the Solar Pavilion.

JM It’s a simple structure, an open-air pavilion designed by architect Lucy Humphrey, that provides renewable energy from the sun to people who can't, for whatever reason, put solar panels on their roof. It’s a prototype of a bigger idea from Solar Citizens and the local community wanting to put a pavilion down at Wolli Creek on public land, which would give a lot of the people who rent apartments there access to a really nice community space that at the same time gives them lower energy bills.