Page 2824 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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Yet, why is it that today with a population of nearly 200,000, Canberra still has less of a sense of urbanity and vitality than the main street of a country town of … only 10,000 people—Why is it that the new pedestrian mall in Civic, one of the best-designed street conversions of its kind in the world, and Canberra’s most lively and active area by daytime, in the evening falls dead and soulless?
I am afraid that, nearly 40 years on, we are perhaps no better placed. Sure, the mall has activity during the multicultural festival, lunch hour and the odd other event, but that is probably only one or two per cent of the year. For the other 98 per cent, the pedestrian mall is not operating as well as it could or should.
Some people have said that the problem is the Canberra Centre taking activity away from the rest of the city. Regardless of whether that is the case or not, the Canberra Centre is there and it is not going anywhere. We need to work with what we have got.
Earlier this year, Catherine Carter said:
The truth is, a city without a vibrant centre is a city without a heart—and large parts of our city centre are in need of urgent CPR.
Hamish Sinclair from the Planning Institute noted that City Walk and Garema Place have been left out of the urban renewal projects the government has funded. He agrees that the centre of the city has been neglected whilst other areas have received significant investment. Speaking before the government decided to abandon many of its major projects, he said:
You have a multitude of projects—you have the Convention Centre, the swimming pool, the sports stadium and West Basin, you have all these activities happening and they are not pulling together; they are actually pulling things apart.
The centre of Civic has become an empty part of our city. People regularly complain that there is nowhere to eat in Civic after 5.30 on a weeknight. Whilst that is not necessarily always the case, the fact is that Garema Place and City Walk, if they were functioning well, would actually be a very attractive place for people to set up businesses. However, at present it obviously is not. Sometimes the city is so deserted that people have told me it feels unsafe to walk through it. People make an effort to avoid going through the city at night because it is deserted and uninviting.
During the day things are not much better. The area around City Walk and Garema Place is often dirty and sometimes unpleasant. The merry-go-round is regularly boarded up and there are many empty stores. Those people who do venture into the area are likely to be accosted by people asking for money for charities, in effect begging. It is rare to see City Walk and Garema Place busy. Even at lunchtime, when you expect it to be bustling, there are often not many people there at all. This is unacceptable and not best practice.
The centre of the nation’s capital should not be somewhere that people are afraid to go or choose not to go because it is unpleasant. Instead, it should be a place where people
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