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March 07, 2007
Elizabeth Farrelly informs us in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Sydney City Council has appointed Jan Gehl, the Danish architect, to tell the city what it already knows: that there is an overwhelming preferment of car over pedestrian in the city centre, and that every pedestrian-unfriendly gesture - from traffic lights to street furniture to noise to fumes to the fact that the only civilised toilet in coo-ee is David Jones's third-floor powder room - probably hurts the city economy. She comments:
It's all stuff we know. We know that more street trees would be good. That scramble crossings at major intersections help dignify pedestrians; that people sit, talk and eat more happily away from the fume and roar of traffic; that shared zones work better than full pedestrianisation. We know that more, cleaner public transport is required and that chewing gum becomes devil's spawn when it lands on bluestone.
She says that:
We know all this partly because Gehl has been here before, and told us, just like he's told Melbourne, and Adelaide, and London and Copenhagen and New York. We know because we have strategised precisely these things ourselves, in every pedestrian strategy since George Clarke and Don Gazzard's original in 1971.
Geyl was in Adelaide in the 1990s arguing for ways to enhance public life in public spaces, and he pushed the boundaries beyond common uses of the public realm.
Nothing has been done in Adeliade to roll back the car and make the city more people friendly. The opposite has happened. The car's dominance has has been protected by a conservative Adelaide City Council, despite a policy of encouraging people to live in the city.
The car is supreme in Sydney. As it is in Melbourne and Brisbane. None of Australia's cities are learning from Copenhagen.
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