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September 8, 2008
The recent Community Ideas Competition for Victoria Square in Adelaide drew 115 entries from sources as diverse as local school children to architects and urban planners with the schemes divided into two categories, one that incorporated the existing features of the square and one that allowed competitors free rein. The designs were independently assessed by a team of professionals ranging from architects and urban planners to transport and major projects representatives.
Amanda Ward in The Adelaide Review says that:
The result is somewhat academic since guidelines of the competition clearly state there is no intention to put any of the plans into action. The whole process will form part of the ideas gathering process for the Adelaide City Council which is now working on a master plan for the precinct. The competition was not about finding a solution for Victoria Square but about gathering ideas and a sense of how the public felt about the space, such a pivotal part of Colonel William Light’s plan for our city and yet such a thorn in the side of modern administrators.
The assumption is that Light envisaged an open Italian style piazza when planning Victoria square. Ward says that it is the car which has caused most of the grief.
She says:
The corners of the square have been shaved off, creating useless triangles of earth surrounded on every side by traffic. Cars, buses and trams have right of passage through the heart of the space, relegating pedestrians to patches of grass in each of the four corners or the relatively narrow paved paths that skirt the carriageways.
She quotes Kirsty Kelly from the Planning Institute Australia was one of the judges on the shortlisting panel. She said that:
the competition certainly highlighted what some people saw as important in a city environment but she was surprised that the majority of the entrants still kept the focus on cars rather than people. Motorised transport was king in the debate, despite some elaborate schemes to include everything from community gardens to playgrounds and even soccer pitches.
Cars still have precedence over people.
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Meanwhile, in Brooklyn community groups want to close Prospect Park to traffic. And they might do it, because they know they have to work for the outcomes they want. Even youth groups aren't waiting for someone else to do something, instead they collect 10,000 letters and hand deliver them to Mayor Bloomberg - http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/09/16/youth-advocates-deliver-10000-letters-calling-for-car-free-prospect-park/
There is an organisation called the Project for Public Spaces (http://www.pps.org/) that was formed to promote urban designs that really help their communities. They do this with a design process that puts serious community engagement at the beginning, rather than the after the fact lip-service that we are usually handed. These are the kind of people we want involved.
The council are happy to stick to the business as usual deal making with the trader's associations. I urge anyone that cares about Victoria Square to write to council, write to the papers, talk to people, and get the message out that getting Victoria Square right is going to take the whole community.
It's to important to leave it up to someone else.