someone post the opinion piece from paul murray from the Worst up here.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=9&ContentID=152439
A mini-Darling Harbour could finally become a reality
2nd July 2009, 15:00 WST
It seems like we’ve gone from The Jetsons to The Way We Were with Premier Colin Barnett’s new plan for Perth’s river frontage.
While the Carpenter government’s futuristic, Dubai-on-Swan concept got many older Sandgropers hot and bothered with its glass spires and the kitsch cygnet-shaped island, Colin’s Puddle may put everybody back to sleep.
I should say at the outset that I’m loath to criticise this latest idea for the foreshore because there have been about a dozen blueprints over the past 20 years with very little progress. Anything might well be better than nothing.
The best part of this proposal is that it is timed to start within this term of government, which creates a sense of political certainty, and it could serve as the seeds of something much bigger as development eventually winds its way towards the Narrows. A mini-Darling Harbour at the foot of The Esplanade could create a lively precinct hard up against the CBD.
There is a certain simplicity in the proposal to return the river to its old shoreline that is immediately attractive. On first blush it seems to address the problem of the physical barrier between the river and the city, but at what cost and how effectively?
The Premier says it is a modest plan. That immediately sets alarm bells ringing.
We should remember that the initial ill-fated plans for the Belltower had it as a much grander edifice set within the river and with the water filling part of the space now under consideration. It suffered the fate of many Perth plans in being ground down by fear to something that lacks impact and that became a wasted opportunity.
While the new outline — you can hardly call it a plan — is sketchy, it is clear that a substantial part of Perth’s grassy frontage will become water. I’ve been a critic of the front lawn and its suburban metaphor for decades, and maybe drowning is a fitting end.
But the loss of so much potentially exploitable premium CBD land must be taken into any accounting of the cost of the new approach.
Existing landowners to the north of the site have lobbied hard to stop their towers being built out by any foreshore plan, but such a fate is suffered by many in developing cities around the world. While their complaints are understandable, the greater good is for the city to get this important development right, not just to protect their views.
The biggest problem with the proposal is the one which has dogged this debate for generations. What to do with Riverside Drive and its traffic? The flow is less than it used to be, thanks to the Northbridge tunnel, but it remains a significant east-west conduit.
Mr Barnett’s proposal seems to draw much from the CityVision lobby group’s waterfront principles document showing Riverside Drive becoming a bridge over the river inlet that goes halfway up the existing grass towards The Esplanade, between the projections of Sherwood Court and Howard Street.
It’s likely that this bridge will become the sticking point for many people when they start to envisage what Mr Barnett’s proposal will look like in reality.
I once obtained an undertaking of sorts from Richard Court on radio in the early part of this decade that Riverside Drive would eventually be put underground, at least in part, to reconnect the city with the river.
However, cost killed that proposal back then and it’s hard to see any government committing to an expensive tunnel in the foreseeable future, given our Budget projections. Public money remains a major problem that Mr Barnett conceded in a speech to the Urban Development Institute last week.
“We do need to connect our city to its waterfront and we need to change the orientation of the city itself so it is not simply an east-west alignment, with the wind tunnel effect, but you also start to get a north-south alignment from the waterfront, through the heart of the city, through the Northbridge Link and to Northbridge,” he said.
“We do not have a definitive plan, we do not have a grand vision that is about to be imposed upon the city and its people.
“But what I would like to assure you is that the planning of that will start as of today and the objective is that within 18 months we will see physical construction starting to take place on that site.”
Mr Barnett made it clear that the Government and the Perth City Council would set the broad concepts, but the rest, principally the cash, would come from the private sector.
The Premier then went to the issue of Riverside Drive, calling it “a critical factor”.
“It’s a beautiful drive, people like to drive along the river and see the city on one side, with water on the other side,” he said.
“But to bring the water in, logically, Riverside Drive either has to go over the water, or under the water, or around the water.”
It seems to me that if you’re going to start building in 18 months, the decision to go over or under — around isn’t a sensible option, putting cars into a pedestrian precinct — must be pretty well settled, given the technical difficulties facing tunnels and bridges.
And my bet would be that a lack of money will push the decision in favour of CityVision’s bridge — high enough for substantial boats to pass under — which just seems to reinstitute the physical barrier that has plagued this part of the city for so long.
With the rest of Riverside Drive from the Causeway to the Narrows still acting as a hostile, car-dominant environment, the bridge over Colin’s Puddle seems to offer limited benefits.
And so we return to The Way We Were.
paul.murray@wanews.com.au
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PAUL MURRAY