Hobart: We Grow Small
North of our island, the big cities of the world feel like the same place repeated again and again: expensive, sprawling, exhausting, ordinary.
There’s something different about Hobart, but our city is changing. We aren’t opposed to change, so long as it is the right kind of change.
It would be tempting to follow the global formula, to grow for the sake of growth. To have more of everything even if it means less of what we most love about our city and our island.
In Tasmania we have learned, through our shared mistakes, that we need to protect rare species. Hobart is among them.
Our mountain and our river, our hills and our homes, our uncommon air, our culture and our calm and the lessons of our history remind us every day there is something to preserve in this place, as we grow and change.
It takes the courage to say yes and the confidence to say no.
‘Slowbart’ is no longer an insult. Together, we resist the pressure to become every other city.
In Hobart we start small, with a hint or a lot of audacity, and take our ideas and solutions and products to each other — and then to the rest of the world.
We’re unpretentious, even when we’re outrageous. We encourage our rebels.
In an isolated city we learn to rely on one another, face-to-face. When we succeed, we take others with us. We use the powerful connections between us to create, to invent, and to invite.
We grow small, in a way that preserves and enhances and protects our city and who we are. If we’re careful, if we work together, we can always live south of greed, south of exhaustion, south of pollution, south of ordinary.
well said