There it stood in a bookshop window, a lonesome but illuminating presence, displaying new notions and concepts of cities. The Great Cities In History , edited by John Julius Norwich , London 2009 , stood out amongst a competing array of countless other unrelated topics.
Describing it as “nothing less than a portrait of world civilization”, the book’s publishers encouraged me by their words on the dust jacket that from the origins of urbanisation in Mesopotamia, to the global metropolises of today, great cities have marked the development of human civilization.
The sparkling historical accounts of this book’s many writers embellish the appeal of city government. Reports of a Mughal emperor moving his capital from Agra to what became Old Delhi, the rebuilding of nineteenth century Chicago, descriptions of the sixteenth century splendour of Isfahan and Barcelona the Catalan phoenix, all called out for someone to buy the book , clutch it in their hands and take it home to read, which of course I did.
Opening its gleaming crisp pages took me back in time to when I first started in local government. I would travel into Sydney’s glorious State Library of New South Wales, climb the stairs and walk along the narrow balconies surrounding enormously high walls and walls of books. William A. Robson’s Great Cities of the World was always waiting for me, stiff and upright, correctly positioned on the shelf. A large tome, quite stout and fat, this was the book that would create the fervour of my life’s great interest – the government of cities.
The stimulation of those visits laid the foundations of my career. Even at such a young age, consumed by other more common place youthful interests, I sensed something awe-inspiring. It was soon to grab hold of me and never leave.
Things, however, did not get off to a good start.
Looking forward to a promising career in local government and flushed full of youthful enthusiasm, I went around announcing my appointment as a junior council clerk to anyone who would listen. My grandfather laughed. An aunt was circumspect. “If you’re going to be working for the Council you’ll soon discover something very important about getting on in life. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” she said.
Their reaction was almost enough to deter me from my future career.
Wondering why grandfather was so amused, I learnt that his maternal grandfather, Llewellyn Baglin, while mayor of the Sydney municipality of Waverley, once led his fellow councillors in a fist fight against the then Lord Mayor of Sydney, Charles Moore, and councillors of the city of Sydney at Queens Park. It was quite a brawl by all accounts. The fight was over a boundary dispute between the two fledgling local government authorities.
The story was handed down not as the matter of pride reported in published reminiscences of later years (“ … the day we licked Charlie Moore’s mob …”) but as a warning not to have anything to do with such a lowly based activity as local government. The significance of the victory and the fact that great great grandfather’s head was bloodied but unbowed was overlooked.
In the years to come, events sometimes caused me to reflect on those early warnings given to me at the outset of my career. They were the type of events seen as casting a shadow over the industry. By then however, many people through their example inculcated in me a sense of purpose. The idea had already surfaced in my mind that this was a worthy occupation.
Historian Frederick Larcombe instilled in me the concept of local government becoming the strong democratic local institution it should be. My Council went on to win 27 awards in ten years. It pioneered radical change processes to meet new legislative requirements, carrying out continuous organisational reforms and translating strategies into the reality of quality of service. Foundation stones of value emerged.