Not surprisingly, the symptom is most marked in those who
cocoon themselves with legions of head-patters, back-scratchers and toe rags.
This makes Macquarie Street
a hot spot. And sure, there are medics on hand. But they need your support,
too. Not just your votes and taxes; they need your sympathy and understanding.
Which may be why they’ve bothered to mount the microscopic
exhibition on the development formerly known as East Darling
Harbour. You can visit or
read the propaganda on the net.
But to fix your eyes on the substance of the 400-odd page
document, since there’s no takeout copy, it’s back to the 54 slow-loading PDF
files lined up like Daleks on the departmental website.
East
Darling Harbour,
or Barangaroo if you want its new moniker, is one of more than 70 projects in
the metropolitan area – with as many again in the rest of the state – to be
called in to the minister in the new planning legislation’s first year.
Officially, some are “state significant” or
“critical infrastructure”. Others are merely “major
projects”. Colloquially, however, they’re all known as “3A
projects”, after the part of the act under which they are arraigned; the
part that gives the minister unprecedented discretion.
Because the economy’s problem, as you know, is not that we
spent two euphoric weeks peeing a gazillion up against the Olympics wall and
are now in the decade of paying for it. The problem is that councils have
consulted too wide and long with their constituents, impeding important
development projects, starving the coffers and shrinking the economy.
So the Government was forced to add part 3A to the Planning
Act “to facilitate infrastructure and other planning reform; and for other
purposes”.
At the time, no one took much notice. Since then, though, as
developers crawl on broken glass to have projects 3A-listed and community after
community has been stonewalled or sidelined, the rumblings have grown.
Quite properly, 3A projects include coalmines and
wind-farms, road tunnels and rail terminals, hospitals and power stations. They
also include cash oozing behemoths such as the Foster’s site on Broadway and East Darling
Harbour.
As well, hidden among 3A’s smoke and mirrors are a number of
lesser projects whose statewide significance isn’t immediately obvious: the
low-rise residential Pemulwuy Project on The Block in Redfern, which the
minister has vocally opposed; the Government’s development of the old Redfern
school, which he presumably supports; a two-storey, six-unit building by Rose
Corp at Canada Bay; a huge development, also by Rose Corp and refused by both
council and court, on ecologically sensitive land at the coastal mining town of
Catherine Hill Bay; the reviled Coca-Cola warehouse in Northmead; the 11-storey
St Vinnie’s Caritas residential development in Darlinghurst; the new law
building at Sydney University; the Global Switch building in Ultimo; the
Australian Film TV and Radio School building at Fox Studios; and the proposed lime
and cement terminal at White Bay.
Less “infrastructure and planning reform”, more
“other purposes”.
Which, of course, is where the arrogance comes in.
Fast-tracking in NSW has left a trail of white-elephant skeletons, such as Darling Harbour and the airport rail link, but
does the Government learn? No way.
The act gives the minister immense discretion about not just
content, but publishing his criteria, or even his decision. At the same time it
suspends, for the occasion, virtually all other planning legislation –
conservation, heritage, bushfire, fisheries, coastal management and threatened
species – and leaves the public with severely curtailed rights of appeal.
No wonder this is a club every developer in town wants to be
in.
Less apparent, but no less significant, is the new 3A Alliance, a collection of
disaffected and disenfranchised community groups. It’s the first sign that
planning in NSW may get muscular yet.
High on the 3A projects list is, of course, East Darling
Harbour – renamed Barangaroo
with the same cynicism that saw Harry Triguboff deliver his anti-tree rant with
an Aboriginal painting as backdrop. After announcing the winning Hill Thalis
Berkmeier competition scheme in March, the Government commissioned the Sydney
Harbour Foreshore Authority to prepare a new East Darling Harbour Concept Plan.
It was always a gentle, polite kind of scheme. Now, with
every soupcon of panache or personality (and virtually every mention of the
architects) surgically removed, it recalls two sobering facts: that
“concept plan” now means what you have when there is no concept; and
that we still, as a culture, have huge difficulty shedding the suburban
house-and-lawn mindset.
There’s no commitment to any further consultation. Zero.
So while the blurb wishfully cites Bilbao,
London’s Southbank and Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz as exemplars, it
forgets that city-changing architecture needs flair, content and intense local
flavour – plus, ideally, a Pritzker-winning architect.
A bit of warmed-over North Ryde
office park, grown to 60 storeys, probably won’t do it.
Elizabeth Farrelly writes on planning, architecture and
aesthetics for the Herald.