Horizontal Monumentalism & Sydney’s Big Town Hall Square Plans (Naked City)

Horizontal Monumentalism & Sydney’s Big Town Hall Square Plans is the latest edition (June 2, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – exclusive to City Hub.

Many of our civic mothers and fathers and long serving politicians love to embrace ‘monumentalism’ as part of their long enduring legacy. It takes many shapes and sizes but the most common could be described as ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’.

Statues and towering sculptures are a popular choice when it comes to the vertical and take many different forms. In the city of Sydney you’ll find the 20 metre high Dobell Memorial sculpture on the corner of Pitt and Spring with its glistening stainless steel cubes. Meanwhile down in Goulburn, looking slightly the worse for wear, Rambo’ the giant concrete merino takes pride of place as a true Australian icon.

Horizontally speaking it’s the large public squares and promenades that are often seen as essential to the modern city, especially harbour cities like Sydney with so much to show off. Unlike Melbourne and Adelaide, Sydney was never really a planned city when it came to roads and public spaces. It’s no secret some of the streets were originally designated as cattle tracks and throughout the 1900s, hotch potch, band-aid style planning was endemic.

In 1994, for example, PM Paul Keating offered federal funding of around $150 million to demolish the elevated section of the Cahill Expressway that passes over Circular Quay. Few would deny its inherent ugliness and the way it divided the waterfront from the rest of the city. Keating’s vision also called for a later rerouting of the rail line underground, opening up the entire area of Circular Quay as an impressive public square – adjoining the Domain and the Botanic Gardens.

Unfortunately the total costs involved and the disruption to public transport and traffic were seen as massive obstacles and the plan never got off the drawing board. If there’s one consolation the view across the harbour from the elevated Circular Quay railway station is one of the best in Sydney, winning accolades like ‘most beautiful railway station in the world’.

It wasn’t the first time a somewhat grandiose piece of urban enhancement was promised for the City of Sydney. Back in 2014 Lord Mayor Clover Moore revealed plans for a huge, wiggly, wobbly arch, towering above George Street opposite the Sydney Town Hall. Its outline vaguely resembled Casper the Friendly Ghost and yes it would have been a huge hit during Vivid with international acrobats, clad in illuminated LED sequins, dangling precariously from its twisting curves. Once again the cost, which blew out to a staggering $20 million plus, drew the biggest criticism and the acrobats never got to dangle.

We don’t get a ghostly arch but it appears we will soon have a major public space to rival Melbourne’s Federation Square and Adelaide’s enviable set of five public squares. It’s all part of the transformation of central Sydney, eventually turning George Street into a complete pedestrian boulevard and central spine for the city.

The Council has been furiously acquiring buildings to demolish and provide us with a large civic square framed by Pitt, George and Park Streets – smack dab in front of the Sydney Town Hall which is also getting a multi-million dollar spruce-up.

Let’s hope the Square and all that it hosts will be well considered and become a much loved area of public relaxation and social interaction. There is a tendency worldwide for these big public spaces to become dead after 10.00pm and revert to windswept concrete wastelands.

There’s a school of thought these days that refers to ‘hostile architecture’, recently exemplified by an installation (albeit an artistic piss take), supposedly in a Chinese park. The ‘Pay And Sit’ bench comes equipped with a coin receiver that allows patrons to pay a fee and sit for a specified period of time. Once your time is up a series of protruding spikes make it impossible for a freeloading sitter unless they cough up the required payment. It’s a kind of parking meter for bottoms — and please Sydney Council, don’t even consider it!

Sydney has never been well served when it comes to large public political gatherings, apart from the Domain which often seems distant from the beating heart of the central city. It would be great to see the new Sydney Square become ‘Democracy Square’, hosting all manner of peaceful political and social protests.

Construction of the Square is not due to start until 2028 so it gives the Council plenty of time to realise such a space’s true value to the city. Like most costs these days the $150 million budget is bound to explode, but horizontal monumentalism does not come cheap.

In the meantime, the Council might consider a much cheaper revamp of spaces such as Tom Uren Square and Walla Mulla Park in Woolloomooloo, two of this city’s most neglected and rundown public spaces – both deserving of some urgent revitalisation.