Beauty, it turns out, is relative for urbanites. A well-designed urban environment matters much more than the amount of trash on the sidewalk.
Check out this groundbreaking project underway in the remote town of Warburton in Western Australia, led by AECOM, the University of Western Australia and the Shire Council of Ngaanyatjarraku.
Gallery 2166 - please help to make this gallery in Western Sydney a reality
Gallery 2166 at Cabramatta High by Gallery 2166 on Pozible
Place making meets art out west
I am a supporter of this great new concept led by my artistic partner Saha Jones. Basically, the concept is bringing an art gallery to underprivileged kids in Western Sydney. Gallery 2166 is to be built in a demountable at Cabramatta High School. Basically, this is one of the concepts that has come out of my collaboration with Saha last year – connecting art to place. Gallery 2166 responds to the local community, their needs and fosters their aspirations. Imagine if every school had a gallery? Please give if you can we are half way to $20,000. Thanks for your support.
Nicole Dennis, urban planner from the Academy of Emergency Art disagreed.
“It may be affordable to be an artist, but what type of artist and is that the kind of artist our society needs, of course there is a market for a range of things, but are we pricing out those artists that challenge us conceptually and produce the kind of art which doesn’t have a market.”
Ms Dennis criticised the government and the private sector for neglecting creativity in their planning.
“This is really a planning issue, planners have not planned for creativity in Sydney really at all, the new Sydney metropolitan plan 2036 doesn’t map or analyse cultural or creative capital.”I just got sent this article, it is from a few months ago - but this debate is still relevant. I spent the October long weekend at Sound Summit debating this issue again. People are moving, if you are an artist that is unsatisfied with the way art is valued in Sydney (and Australia) please send me an email contact@thecitymouse.org
Whilst participating in The Global Contemporary Exhibition at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany I was fascinated by design of the town. The same population as Canberra but designed with a density that resulted in great street life, a diversity of activities, frequent trams and a permeable street network for walking and cycling. I had a great day wandering the streets, sitting in the parks and discovering some beautiful buildings, plazas and parks. A nice break from the heat of Oman and the intensity of the exhibition conference. I will post soon about my experience at the art exhibition - just still catching up with so much work from being away!
If you want to protect wilderness, live in a dense urban centre. Same if you want to avert climate change. Same if you want cheaper housing, better transport, decent coffee or a choice of walk-to tapas.
As Richard Rogers told the House of Lords last week, Britain’s urban renaissance over the past decade has been driven by tight controls on out-of-town development. Put more simply, opposing high-density development on inner-city sites such as Barangaroo or Broadway (as ”greens” and NIMBYs still archaically do) drives sprawl.
Australia needs four more Sydneys (or 16 more Adelaides) within four decades. If it doesn’t go here, it goes somewhere else.
Work it out. Grow it up.
Some snaps from some work I have been doing in Muscat, Oman. Enduring over 40 degree heat (I’m too pale for it) was worth the wonderful experience of learning about the Omani culture and working out how to create some great public domain and places that are not only unqiue to Oman, but attractive, comfortable and exciting for Omanis and visitors.
In booming cities, old industrial sites, railyards, shipyards and decommissioned military bases are frequently among the last large empty spaces ripe for infill. The communities near these sites are often low-income. Like Bayview, many have weathered the economic and environmental blows of declining industries and their toxic legacies. Now, they find themselves caught between hope for much-needed investment and fear of the change it might bring. “One of the complaints about the (smart growth) movement has been, ‘It’s always upscale, it’s expensive, it drives people out,’ ” says John Frece, the director of the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities. To prevent displacement, federal funding for smart-growth projects through the Partnership includes requirements for affordable housing, job-training programs and community engagement in the planning process. The administration’s goal, Frece says, is to make sure communities aren’t “penalized just because their environmental problems get cleaned up.” Accomplishing that, though, isn’t easy. Says Malo Hutson, assistant professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley: “You would get the Nobel Prize in Economics — or Peace — if you could figure out a way to keep the community that existed before the redevelopment project came along.
(via Push on for pedal pleasure)
Bike paths in Sydney
GreenWay Day of Action
Over 200 people cycled the GreenWay to petition the Government to not back down from funding the construction of the GreenWay in tandem with the Light Rail Extension.
Do something good for transport in Sydney Gladys Berejiklian!
Photo: Mike Harris
The former Labor government approved the light rail extension and GreenWay plan in February but the new Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, is refusing to quash rumours she will scrap the GreenWay part to save money and to speed construction.
Gilbert Grace, the president of ARTcycle, the group that organised the rally, said the GreenWay would take only a fraction of the cost of the light rail but would bring vast benefits, including improving people’s health and decreasing road budgets.
(via GreenWay might be scrapped without govt funding - Council - News - Inner West Courier)
Show your support for the GreenWay this Sunday 28th of August at a public ride - 1pm
