The Fate of Regions.

On a recent trip to Australia, I spent some time in Newcastle. 

The town has taken a hiding after BHP moved out and de-industrialisation took firm hold. There are still a lot of vacant store fronts in the city as a consequence of that, and a city council CBD redevelopment that drove many people out of the habit of coming in to the heart of the city. It's notable that some of the suburban retail and dining areas like Derby Street, Hamilton and the outlying big-box retail are busy, as they have been left unmolested by planner's and politicians ideas about what a city should look like - which seems to be sterile and over-controlled.

There are also large apartment blocks on the close-to-town waterfront that appear to be largely unoccupied, and the ground floor office/retail/hospitality spaces are only part tenanted and quiet. It seems the developers over-estimated demand for uniform waterfront apartments: it certainly feels sterile, too uniform and uninviting - particularly when the population forecasts are that the city is going to lose population to surrounding areas like Lake McQuarrie and the monster that is Sydney. 

On talking to a couple of well-placed locals, it also turns out that several of the blocks have build issues and are likely to be demolished - once Lawers have been exchanged to exhaustion. It may explain the reluctance of people to buy in to the other blocks and gives credence to a Civil Engineer friend's comment: "never ever, buy off the plans".

Newcastle is also the world's biggest coal port and I wonder what is going to happen when the coal goes away, despite their best effort to diversity. That said, the local attempt to create a container port on the old BHP site was squelched at state government level, becasue Botany Bay is favoured, despite access, depth of draft and space issues.

I look at where I live in Dunedin, and it has similar issues. The absolutely vital CBD infrastructure re-development has taken years, with no compensation to local businesses. The businesses who could decamped, and the last time I counted there were over 20 vacant shops in a 5 block walk. The associated 28 Million Dollar main street pedestrian redevelopment to one-way has resulted in an over-controlled, sterile, monochrome piece of committee aesthetics that is now trying to be spun and justified. The argument that dropped my jaw was: "it's to help visually impaired people", which is nonsense. Visual impairment is helped by strong contrasts, clear edges and creating good affordances, not oceans of (grey) pavers with unexpectedly asymmetric (grey) street furniture, and poor delineations between the (grey) pedestrian area and the (grey) roadway. It's about as inviting as a rates demand - but less human and colourful.  

The changes to traffic flow have made the city so hard to access by car that, anecdotally, people are limiting their trips to town. Notably these same transport planners had to have it pointed out to them by a city councillor, who had run a transport business for years, that a previous design for a bus exchange hadn't created  adequate turning circles for the busses. Luckily he picked it on the plans, but it doesn't inspire public confidence in the planners. And the busses are run by the Otago Regional Council (ORC), while the route infrastructure is the responsibility of the City Council (DCC). The two don't seem to talk to each other.

We also suffer from being in the same region as Queenstown Lakes: it's where the money and people are going, and that's been acknowledged by the ORC by having one of the council seats for Dunedin removed and added to the Queenstown area. It was unanimous and is a reflection of the reality the Dunedin is quietly withering becasue of poor management: it's just that it's particularly visible in the CBD.

Is the common denominator that public spaces in transition are developed under central control in ways that don't acknowledge reality and are fixated on retaining  control, rather than creating places people actually want to use, not just tolerate? It can't be an accident that the most desirable city spaces pre-date central planning and therefore have: the human, the vernacular, the populist, the engaging and the utilitarian baked in?

Heavy-handed pedestrianisation creates wastelands becasue we still use cars, as our cities are not dense enough to support good public transport at the levels of funding provided. The endless "people have to cycle and walk" mantra doesn't gel with steep hills, challenging climate, an aging population, and sparse service locations created by (wait for it) planning interventions that require car use to participate in society. Repetition doesn't make it so, and it sounds like a symptom of both magical thinking and organisational OCD. 

There is the desire for control tied to committee aesthetics that creates twee, sterile environments becasue nothing vernacular and spontaneous gets included, as design is the province of the experts.  

Planning also seems to be at war with itself, as there is the desire to densify cites, but strong controls continue to enforce low density on the city fringe developments, and the creating mixed-use areas is frowned upon. Coupled to restrictive land planning of hard city boundaries, the bureaucratic hostility to creative solutions and the rabid preservationism around city green space, the cost of property has gone through the roof and is stifling the redevelopment the planners desire.