Urban Design in Central Sydney 1945–2002: Laissez-Faire and Discretionary Traditions in the Accidental City John Punter
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Progress in Planning 63 (2005) 11–160 www.elsevier.com/locate/pplann Urban design in central Sydney 1945–2002: Laissez-Faire and discretionary traditions in the accidental city John Punter School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3WA, UK Abstract This paper explores the laissez faire and discretionary traditions adopted for development control in Central Sydney over the last half century. It focuses upon the design dimension of control, and the transition from a largely design agnostic system up until 1988, to the serious pursuit of design excellence by 2000. Six eras of design/development control are identified, consistent with particular market conditions of boom and bust, and with particular political regimes at State and City levels. The constant tensions between State Government and City Council, and the interventions of state advisory committees and development agencies, Tribunals and Courts are explored as the pursuit of design quality moved from being a perceived barrier to economic growth to a pre-requisite for global competitiveness in the pursuit of international investment and tourism. These tensions have given rise to the description of Central Sydney as ‘the Accidental City’. By contrast, the objective of current policy is to consistently achieve ‘the well-mannered and iconic’ in architecture and urban design. Beginning with the regulation of building height by the State in 1912, the Council’s development approval powers have been severely curtailed by State committees and development agencies, by two suspensions of the Council, and more recently (1989) by the establishment of a joint State- Council committee to assess major development applications. The creation of a ‘negotiation syndrome’ in control is explained along with the ‘forum shopping’ by developers as they sought to maximise their floor space allowances, and pursue the floor space bonuses introduced in 1971. The city vacillated between administrative and discretionary control systems, but the latter consistently prevailed, even through to the present. The resultant patterns of development have done much to destroy the City’s fine 19th Century architectural heritage and the quality of its public realm, and are a denial of the city’s spectacular setting. Ironically it was the State Government that first recognised the need for better quality design in the Darling Harbour redevelopment and other Bicentenary projects, and who first established design principles that could operate city wide in the 1988 Strategy. But the joint State-City planning committee found it difficult to develop the necessary statutory plan to create an effective planning framework until 1993, though its scrutiny of major applications improved significantly. 0305-9006/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.progress.2004.06.007 12 J. Punter / Progress in Planning 63 (2005) 11–160 From 1991 onwards a new Independent Mayor, working under significant State imposed constraints, drove the pre 2000 Olympics planning agenda, placing an increasing emphasis on urban design. Major policy developments in a revised Statutory Local Environment Plan, backed by Heritage and Development Control (guidance) plans, set a more design informed agenda. Visions of the ‘Living City’ were driven by over-generous residential and hotel bonuses that undermined design quality but revitalised city life. An ‘Accessible City’ vision was driven forward by a major capital programme of civic space and street improvements. The final piece of the jigsaw was the Mayor’s invention of a design excellence process that introduces design competitions into all major development projects, and seems to be consistently improving design quality in the City. Questions are raised as to whether this policy transformation is evidence of a ‘design fetish’ perceived to be characteristic of neo-liberal planning regimes in Australia and Anglo America. A more generous interpretation of recent events is presented, and a positive assessment made of the recent achievements. Even if Sydney’s design review system, when tested against internationally derived criteria, is found wanting in many areas, there has been progress away from the ‘Accidental City’ to a much more sophisticated approach to design in a city whose setting, and new economy, demands it. q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. J. Punter / Progress in Planning 63 (2005) 11–160 13 CHAPTER 1 Introduction In the story of the so-called Rum Rebellion it is always Bligh who is the bad guy, and while we would never want another Captain Bligh we might at least allow that there is no one else in our history who had the balls to stand up against the opportunism and cronyism of the Rum Corps or those spiritual descendants who the libel laws forbid us to name. The modern CBD is their living monument, a tribute to an e´lite which places very little value on the public good. If there were not that opera house and that harbour just down the road you might accept that you were somewhere provincial and uninspired, but Sydney is not uninspired and on the edges of the CBD, on the rocks at Bennelong Point, you get some glimpse not only of what we were, but what we might yet become. (Carey, 2000: 116–117) 1.1. Sydney’s image Sydney, Australia, is generally regarded as one of the world’s most attractive and liveable cities. Much of this is attributed to its setting on one of the world’s finest and largest natural harbours, but Metropolitan Sydney also has 20 km of Pacific beaches, and its urban sprawl terminates north, south and west in a series of national parks that have preserved much natural bush, and unspoiled coast and mountains (Fig. 1). Its generally temperate climate, especially its warm sunny winters, contribute to its appeal and help make it an especially sought-after destination for tourists and multinational corporations looking for Australasian or Asian-Pacific regional offices. While it repeatedly won the World’s Best City tourist award in the 1990s, it has also come close to the top of world rankings for its quality of life (for multinational expatriate workers: the Mercer index) based on its safety, public services, cost of living, lack of pollution, and environmental quality (see CoS, 1999: 24–25). The City of Sydney proper is a tiny part of the metropolitan area (0.4%), and increasingly off-centre as the suburbs continue to spread westwards. At the beginning of the 1990s it had less than one per cent of the metropolitan population of three million. Since 1988 the City’s boundaries have embraced only the Central Business District (CBD), its mature parklands to the east, and the Pyrmont peninsula to the west, a total land area of only 6.18 km2. But that small area contains seven of Australia’s top ten tourist attractions and its three greatest urban icons—the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932), the Sydney Opera House (1973) and the CBD skyline, all grouped around Sydney Cove, the heart of the harbour. These icons have featured in three of the world’s great spectacles of the last 5 years—the Australian 1998 Bicentennial, the closing of the 2000 Olympics, and the 2000/1 Millennium celebrations—reinforcing Sydney’s appeal as a global destination. 14 J. Punter / Progress in Planning 63 (2005) 11–160 Fig. 1. Central Sydney: changing boundaries and jurisdictions 1948–2003. The new 2004 boundaries return the city to something approximating the 1948 boundaries (Source: Cos, 2000; Ashton, 1993). The larger map identifies planning jurisdictions still operated by the State government. J. Punter / Progress in Planning 63 (2005) 11–160 15 Behind Sydney Cove and beneath the city skyline lurks a very different Sydney that comes as a massive disappointment to tourists and urbanists alike. The city’s biographers and critical travel writers warn the unsuspecting tourist that away from the glamour of the harbour, and the splendour of its downtown parks, there is a city that is overbuilt, dark, and heavily trafficked, where speculative developers have built generations of mediocre, progressively taller office and now residential buildings. These have obliterated much of the city’s superb Georgian and Victorian architectural heritage, and blocked many of the city’s great public vistas and prospects. Peter Carey warns of a ‘vulgar, crooked convict town’ (Carey, 2001: 117) while John Birmingham (1999: 235–6) rails against the aesthetically worthless rent slabs for stacking human capital.a series of profoundly antihuman, brutal and vaguely Orwellian schemes such as the Masonic Centre (of course,) the knitted concrete face of the Hilton Hotel, and the giant brooding architectural bunker of Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills. Both hint at significant corruption in planning, property and police matters over the years (see Spearritt, 2000: 266). Thus the essence of this paper is a paradox. Sydney has a reputation as a city with fine aesthetic and environmental qualities, and a consistent production of iconic buildings. Yet it is a city where design regulation has palpably failed. These design failings are often excused by the city’s dynamism and vitality, and the sharp but stimulating contrasts of building styles that have resulted, but the evidence of laissez-faire development and squandered civic design opportunities is everywhere for everyone to see. How could this have come to pass? How was it allowed to persist? And how real is the shift from a design agnostic to design committed city in the last decade? 1.2. Key research sources These research questions were first encountered in three key texts. The first is a travel book, the novelist Peter Carey’s 30 Days in Sydney: a wildly distorted account, brilliantly conceived as a study in Sydney ‘mateship’ as he uses his old friends to tell a set of stories about the city’s character.