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June 8, 2003
One of the most entrenched ways of looking at cities is through the suburban/urban divide. From the upper middle suburban perspective, the urban commercial environment in which I now live is seen to be ugly, dirty and immoral whilst suburbia is deemed to be wholesome, clean and beautiful. The urban is a garish, neon nightmare----a graffitied environment associated with juvenile gangs, homelessness, urban poverty, alienation, crime and lawlessness and racial minorities.
On the other hand, from the perspective of those living in an urban environment, the urban is associated with art and culture (galleries, music bookshops etc). The suburbs are cultural deserts peopled by narrow-minded bigots who drive imported European cars and are imprisoned by their fear and anxiety at rapid economic and cultural change.
By and large the city is still seen as a place to work but not live. The urban is the ugly real whilst the garden suburban is the ideal. We do not have an ideal urban form in Australia. The European high culture ideal of urban life (Classic, Renaissance, Baroque) has no impact in Australia. The North Terrace precinct ---gallery, musem, university)---between the commercial and the parkland has been killed by the car.
The city is choked by the car driven by people from the suburbs. This is a city ruled by the car. It has little conception of what it means to be a sustainable city.
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