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Renewable Sydney
On Mon night we’re talking about how to make Sydney 100% renewable http://t.co/7chIqHT5Qd (tix free, but need to register) #sydcityconv
— Clover Moore (@CloverMoore) July 31, 2013
A great initiative for Sydney. Be sure to book early, this one is bound to run out of places.
THE recurring debate on the future of Hunter Street is on the boil again.
This is my response to this article. I feel it is better for me to express my opinion here where I am unedited.
____________________
Yes, thank you and YES!
What I don't understand is why the word integrated gets thrown about while people then fixate on Hunter Street. This approach of clinging to Hunter Street is anything but integrated. I'm tired of this effort to make a line a hub. It goes against the very nature of the word. Think about a hub cap. It's the centre, not some disconnected spoke jutting our sideways. If Brad Hazard and the HDC can't get basic concepts like what a hub is down pat, what hope does Newcastle have other than being made more congested and less accessible? That's the agenda they seem to be pushing. It's like opposites world reading their articles. What they say they want (community access, connectivity, reduced congestion) is the exact opposite of what a Wickham interchange and street cars on Hunter Street will give. The suggestion to make the interchange at Woodville Junction with light rail running along the existing rail corridor is a better future direction. There would be room to later connect the Northern suburbs and airport and it would also free up Hamilton's gates. We certainly should not be encouraging cars at all in any future based planning. We are facing complete artic ice-cap melt in the next 4 years killing thousands of species and NCC is so backwards it still can't see the forest for the cars. Come on Newcastle haul your butts out of the dark ages. Global warming is happening and the excessive western lifestyle is a huge part of the why. Stop pushing forward ideas in a hope of clinging to cars. Now we have the mayor bandying about the dream of turning the corridor into a car park. This absolute bald faced denial will have several of our suburbs under water. Is he still going to say "nothing to see here" as people fish inside their living rooms? Are Novocastrians so unaware that this car driven mentality is fundamentally sponsored by the oil and car industries? Get out of your cars and onto the damn train.
We are also guilty of not developing our own new technologies. Year after year I see the Newcastle Herald lording research advances for this, and technology advances for that, at the university; and then what happens? Nothing. We tick the aren't we clever box and send the ideas overseas and across county lines for everyone but ourselves to develop. Still wondering why we have high unemployment? We don't back ourselves and carry through our innovations. This long tradition has led to us not even having the ability to, as we haven't built up a photovoltaic industry here to make our advances, and we don't have medical production facilities to make our innovations and discoveries a reality. We are very clever but not business smart.
As for our housing developments - we just let ourselves be robbed. Not once have I seen a new estate built with a community focus providing new schools or local shops. I was brought up in an area where many new estates went in and the pressure on services in the surrounding suburbs was immense. 2000 kids is just too big for a school as teachers are stretched to crowd control measures, demountable classrooms are there for 20years, and children are lost in a system that can only hope to count them not recognise them. Meanwhile our estate makers are running to the banks rubbing their hands in glee at a quick cash grab for very little effort and no responsibility. Ensuring adequate services and community centres is something the people building these manufactured suburbs need to be made responsible for. We let organisations come in and get masses of land cheaply, which they divide up, pave, power and plumb, and then they sit back and make a motza with no requirement for it to be a functional community. This unnaturally large and sudden growth should be planned for, not just slapped on the back of some underfunded rural township whose own services can't keep up. How about a medical centre and corner store with milk and bread or a post office/newsagent? How about anything that puts a few services and jobs in the community and stops people burning 60kms worth of petrol just to pick up some bread and milk and get the kids from school? Invariably they put up tennis courts and some kind of swamp they call a park, and that is supposed to be evidence of a sense of community. Sorry if I laugh. Something low maintenance that generates them more revenue and I'm supposed to believe it's an actual community initiative.
We don't have to be this way. We don't have to be so idealistic we think drinking coffee and doing street art everywhere is going to be enough to save us either. We really do need integration and not just on transport, but also our housing developments and in our industries. We need to back Newcastle, as at the moment all we are doing is perpetuating an old set of problems but giving them a new look. I feel that change is possible and slowly coming. I hope Newcastle is changing in the right direction. I hope the people in charge are able to step back and view these problems from a distance rather than the isolated incidences of planning strategy that seem to occur which prevent a broader solution. I hope they realise soon that they are making this transport and future infrastructure development all about one corridor, and it is clogging up the whole vision of a complete and integrated city of the future. I think they are starting to see past Hunter Streets history and look towards it's future as a civic centre... I hope.
If you have a suggestion for how Sydney can be improved in the future, share it with us on: Our forum - http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/metrostrategy OR Facebo...
The draft MET strategy for Sydney strives for 'liveable neighbourhoods',
HEALTHY PLANNING????
