Episode 07: Good Cartels, Good Cities: The Truth About Power and Collaboration in City Making
In conversation with Sarah Patterson, Strategic Designer, Accredited Partnership Broker and Founder of The Good Cartel
About the episode:
Cities aren’t shaped by plans alone. They’re shaped by relationships: negotiations, partnerships, trust and the way people work together.
In episode 7 of Cities of Tomorrow, we sit down with Sarah Patterson, strategic designer, Accredited Partnership Broker and founder of The Good Cartel. Sarah takes us from her childhood in Townsville, where she first learned to notice power, through her years in government, architecture, management consulting and ThinkPlace, to her research into what cartels can teach us about driving change for good.
We talk about the difference between change done to people and change done with them, why communities are so often handed finished renders to comment on, and what happens when a design team goes to the community before there is pen on paper. Sarah also explains why the strongest kind of power is “power with” rather than “power over”, and why every city-making meeting room should keep a chair for someone who hasn’t been born yet.
Key topics:
- Learning to read power: from a childhood in Townsville to policy work in government, and the difference between change done to people and change done with them.
- Why Sarah left architecture: how developer margins slowly stripped back a solar passive building, and how little say people really have in the built environment.
- Thinking in grey: why billable hours leave little room for relationships, testing and iteration.
- Collective myth-making: looking beneath plans and roadmaps to the shared beliefs that really drive what we do.
- Engaging before the design exists: a Melbourne master plan shaped with the community and Traditional Owners, and why sitting with disagreement beats smoothing it over.
- Partnership brokering: what accreditation involves, and why noticing power in the room means noticing your own.
- What cartels can teach us: long-term thinking, comfort with risk, and relationships that outlast any one leader.
- Being a good ancestor: keeping a seat at the table for future generations.
About the guest:
Sarah Patterson is an award-winning strategic designer and Accredited Partnership Broker based in Naarm/Melbourne, with two decades of experience driving systems change, particularly in climate and energy.
Sarah grew up in Townsville and began her career as a cadet in government. She spent close to a decade on social policy programs, including 18 months in the Northern Territory. She then worked on architecture projects and in management consulting, and in 2017 joined ThinkPlace, rising from strategic designer to General Manager and leading systems change work across climate, energy, family violence reform and international development.
In 2021 she founded The Good Cartel, a consulting and research venture that studies how cartels and monopolies coordinate long-term change, and what their playbook could offer climate, nature and social good. She is accredited with the Partnership Brokers Association, now mentors candidates going through accreditation, and spoke at TEDxCanberra in 2025.
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