NAKED CITY – THE UNCHANGING FACE OF SYDNEY
Everyday we are assailed with the latest images of the ‘changing face of Sydney’, from the towering monoliths of Barangaroo to the glitzy new structures in Darling Harbour. It seems the rampant internationalisation of Sydney knows no boundaries, but amidst the drive to build even bigger and better, some things in the Harbour City remain sadly the same – stagnant to the point where they are clearly an embarrassment.
Want to come on a tour and check out those pockets of the city which haven’t changed in twenty or thirty years and are desperately in need of some kind of rejuvenation? What more wretched place to start than Tom Uren Place in downtown Woolloomooloo, once part of the great Labor minister’s plan to unite the community with a common meeting place. For decades it’s been home to up to sixty homeless men sleeping rough each night, and in recent years has deteriorated to its lowest ebb – grubby, graffiti daubed and hosed down by the Council each day to rid the stink of urine. Successive State Governments and City Councils have failed to do anything about the area and the plight of the homeless men who sleep there.
Meanwhile down in Eddy Avenue, Sydney’s so called interstate and regional bus “terminal” has become a haven for the city’s most aggressive panhandlers, preying on backpackers and other budget travellers as they wait for their coaches. Most so called international cities, and many lesser ones as well, have a proper indoor bus terminal where passengers can wait in relative comfort and safety. In Sydney passengers assemble in a dingy concourse combating regular demands for “any spare change” and the vagaries of the weather.
Not far away, Belmore Park has long been regarded as somewhere not to linger after dark. Apart from the regular elderly Chinese men and women who practice their morning Tai Chi, the Park has always had an anti-social, down and out kind of vibe, highlighted recently by the tent city for the homeless. These days it remains little more than a walkway between Central Railway and the CBD. Please – put a café in it, encourage some regular activities – give the old bugger some meaningful life!
William Street has long been envisioned as a potential grand boulevard sweeping majestically from the CBD to the bright lights of the Cross. Numerous plans have been vaunted but very little has been done and today it remains very much a mixed bag of bland office buildings, car rentals, backpackers and convenience stores. The area above the Eastern distributor is a shabby concrete wasteland. At night a few old school transsexual hookers still ply their trade as the odd gutter crawler drives by. By day it’s just another clogged traffic artery in desperate need of a triple bypass.
The tour could go on forever, but let’s kill all this despair with a comment on the brutalist UTS Tower on Broadway. For years it’s dominated the landscape, and despite the emergence of more attractive surrounding structures, it still bears a bleak and foreboding appearance, reminiscent of the worst of neo-Stalinist, Soviet style architecture. Suggestions have been made as to what could be done to lessen the tower’s concrete overkill, like painting it white or even tearing it down altogether. Perhaps the best idea would be to follow the example of the nearby Central Park complex, with its abundant vegetation and a building recently voted the greenest in the world.
Think of the UTS Tower as a giant Chia pet, consumed by a vertical jungle of vines, creepers and other assorted greenage and home to all manner of native fauna. Knock out those pokey windows and allow the plant life to infiltrate the building. Imagine being able to reach out and pick passionfruit on the 27th Floor. That would brighten up any tutorial!
