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SYDNEY DESIGN 2007 GALA TALK - A TALE OF TWO CITIES
DAVID BORGER MP, LORD MAYOR OF PARRAMATTA
with LM Clover Moore MP, City of Sydney, and Panel
Hosted by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects NSW
6pm Thursday, 9 August 2007
Sydney Town Hall
Good evening. It’s a pleasure to be here – and part of the future!
I’m very confident that Parramatta will rise to all the challenges we’ll face in 2030. All the challenges are just opportunities to make the city … more sustainable, greener, more prosperous, more distinctive and creative.
Let me start though with a darker image. When I was first Lord Mayor – for a year at the end of last century – I spoke about how Parramatta was in danger of becoming “Dallas on the Cheap”. In my sights were those who assumed a city would just grow without proper urban design, without proper cultural and social planning, without controls and without civic imagination.
Dallas on the Cheap has been largely avoided – by pursuing measures which I will explain. But there are still dangers.
In 2030 there is still the danger that winds may howl down the empty streets of Parramatta, that ugly high rises may crowd out all public space and sunshine, that the historic Georgian grid of our city with its small laneways will be completely overpowered. Yes, residential living would have moved into the city – but in 20 years these could have become poverty traps, high-rise ghettos.
In 2030 safety has become the No.1 issue; everyone is in their cars; few people walk because of security fears. There is no investment in cultural expression or exploration, no community bonding, no investment in the arts.
The retail giant of Westfield has expanded still further, making it in 2030 still one of the largest shopping centres in the southern hemisphere. Like back in 2007 … 45% of people enter and never leave, or rather they never go outside during a shopping visit! The city’s lively small retail sector has dried up.
And now big business could also be leaving. After the Parramatta boom of the early 21st Century, business is now being completely lured to the huge campus-style business parks in Ryde, NW and at Sydney Olympic Park. These parks may be plastic paradises with no life … but they’re crime free and they come with car parking!
In the suburbs elite gated communities have sprung up, free from planning controls, and illegal waterfront development has privatised the foreshore.
Outside the windy city – so dead at night – the neighbourhood centres are also decaying ….as they desperately jostle for limited funds to maintain infrastructure.
As for the tourists, they no longer come to Parramatta to admire the birthplace of the nation. Those heritage sites which have survived … have been crowded out by badly designed overbuilding. All historical context is lost.
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