Politics & Power Quote by Harry Seidler

Seidler’s complaint lands because it’s not anti-government posturing so much as an architect’s impatience with a state that can say “no” in a thousand ways but struggles to say “yes” with conviction. The line sets up a sharp contrast: “restrictive rules” versus a clear, affirmative picture of what a good city should physically look like. He’s pointing at a bureaucratic comfort zone where compliance replaces imagination, and where planning becomes risk management rather than civic authorship.

The specificity of his wish list matters. “This many apartments” is about density with intent, not just stacking units. “Open space, playgrounds, kindergartens” reads like a miniature manifesto for everyday life: sunlight, children, social mixing, the unglamorous infrastructure of community. By naming these elements, Seidler is arguing that housing is not a product but a system, and that design lives or dies on what surrounds the building as much as the building itself.

Context sharpens the critique. Seidler, a modernist shaped by postwar ambition, worked in an era when governments actually did build big visions: public housing, new towns, transport networks. As that confidence eroded and regulation thickened, the public sector increasingly outsourced outcomes while tightening process. His subtext is that rules without goals produce mediocrity: a city that’s technically “approved” but socially thin. What he wants is not less planning, but better planning - one that treats space as policy and livability as a measurable responsibility.