Newcastle: She’ll be right

The post-industrial city of Newcastle in New South Wales is currently undergoing rapid gentrification. But is the city’s laid-back attitude denying its potential?

Nowhere is it more important for landscape and architecture to raise the bar than in the public domain. As populations continue to grow, and cities both expand and become denser, housing and landscapes will need to work harder to meet the needs of the people. There will still be a need for houses to provide dwelling space but landscapes will become more and more important for day-to-day activities. We can see the reliance on and diverse uses of the public domain especially in our denser cities, where people tend to use public space as an extension of home – that is, an extension of private activities into the public sphere.

The adage “she’ll be right” (a “near enough is close enough” attitude) is linked to the Australian psyche and has a history throughout the construction industry, which built and developed the Australia we know today. A place where this attitude obviously manifests itself is Newcastle, Australia’s second oldest city. The city started life as a destination for convicts and then prospered as a major Australian industrial town, later suffering in the decline of industry and now finding its feet again as one of Australia’s “creative cities.”

Newcastle’s charm comes from its low-rise centre, unadulterated coastline and pedestrian accessibility. There are many constructed landscapes in Newcastle that sit with the existing landscape beautifully. The ocean baths at Merewether and Newcastle Beaches are not small works of infrastructure or engineering but add incredible amenity and richness to the cultural life of the city in many ways. The baths not only offer a venue for socializing and exercise, they also provide a focus for identity and allow ownership to be shown by Novocastrians. Also along the coast is King Edward Park, within which exercise, events, parties and fundraisers can take place in a beautiful setting – a beauty that is, by its nature, public. Another of Newcastle’s great public spaces is the Bogey Hole. Subtle and poetic, the swimming spot has long been part of Newcastle’s identity.

The Bogey Hole, also known as the Commandant’s Baths, is a heritage-listed sea bath in Newcastle, New South Wales.

The Bogey Hole, also known as the Commandant’s Baths, is a heritage-listed sea bath in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Image: Giles Martin

Newcastle is increasingly important on the tourist map and therefore also on the redevelopment map. The city, oxymoronically, owes some of its preservation to neglect. It is a city whose edges are still fairly wild and open. The suburbs are not lined with trendy bars and new eateries; well, not all of them, just yet. As Newcastle’s reputation as a creative hub grows, the beach amenities are getting a major upgrade, with some sensitive and sensible landscaping along a pedestrian and bike path that will link its five main beaches. A lot of this work has been designed by local firm Moir Landscape Architecture, which has provided functional details for the heavily used public areas.

At its core, Newcastle is still a big country town and the “she’ll be right” approach can be seen in many of its current developments. But growing populations and increasing demand on the environment cannot be ignored. In the Anthropocene period, this mentality is no longer an option if we want a prosperous future.

“She’ll be right” has provided Newcastle with an impressive portfolio of mediocrity in the public domain, for example the Hunter Stadium, which looks like a pixelated and poorly resolved KFC colour scheme. The latest addition to this portfolio is the Anzac Memorial Bridge at the top of the aptly named suburb The Hill. This memorial tiara, placed with a heavy hand atop the highest point in the city, provides a strangely straight skyline. The bridge stretches over what was one of Newcastle’s quasi-secret cliff walks with very little grace or delicacy. It seems absurd that a bridge that was built on a cliff for the purpose of making the most of the natural views ignores the ground plane entirely. It is one of the most walked sections of the city (up to five hundred people an hour), but the level of detail is more appropriate for people travelling at one hundred kilometres per hour. This failure to consider the human and topographical aspects required by the design is disappointing – imagine if the designers had considered the landscape with the subtlety and tact shown in the wild coastal restoration in Punta Pite, Chile.

Punta Pite by Teresa Moller Asociados (2005). This project introduced a 1.5 km stone pathway along the rocky coastline between Zapallar and Papudo in central Chile.

Punta Pite by Teresa Moller Asociados (2005). This project introduced a 1.5 km stone pathway along the rocky coastline between Zapallar and Papudo in central Chile.

Image: Chloe June Brown

Not only is the design of Anzac Memorial Bridge unresolved, but the bridge is also a poor memorial. There are some pinned-up cut-outs of apparent ANZAC soldiers – and we are told that by the letters A, N, Z, A, C, spaced out over the supporting columns (as is a sneaky BHP Billiton). This bridge seems to forget that there is a plethora of existing memorials to reference and a cultural dialogue that has been developed over centuries. The shiny skirt that wails along the edge of this bridge detracts from the austerity and reverence often associated with a memorial. One saving grace is the names of the soldiers etched into the steel – fitting text onto odd shapes is rarely easy but the informality of the layout lets you discover the names that matter to you, not just see a number on a list.

Newcastle has spent years in decay but in recent years has been rejuvenated by grassroots and micro-scale developments, helped by government and non-government initiates such as Renew Newcastle. The outcomes of these programs and participants taking pride in a shopfront have done more for the recent vibrancy and restoration of the city than any of the major developments.

If small-scale changes by people lead to big changes in a city, are developments like the over- formalization of Newcastle’s big drawcard, the coast, with a bridge and a pinned-up memorial, really necessary? It seems that the message embodied in this is that to progress we must build endlessly in order to show how sophisticated we are. Do we have to build just because it is a city? And what are the corollaries for new public landscapes – the necessities that should bring them into being?

In the twenty-first century, discussions around green cities and renewable energy are ever present. Even Australia has a renewable energy target to have at least 20 percent of our electricity provided from renewable resources by 2020. It isn’t clear how this will affect future landscapes. Is it just another justification for continuing to building with the ethos of “bigger is better”? A far greener idea (although more radical) is to build less. Truly sustainable construction is not off-grid but rather has no grid. As a profession that creates the built environment we need to lead the charge on building less, covering less land, using less power, less water, less money, lower maintenance. What could a future city look like if we built less?

Which ethos is allowed to dominate in public works is important, because it provides public precedence for what is acceptable and fashionable (I know, a dirty word). Newcastle’s Anzac Memorial Bridge is an example of development where the “she’ll be right” mentality has had the deciding say on the major design, engineering and construction decisions. If we allow public works to dominate over nature, our ideas for home design or future developments end up on a quick path to self-destruction. If we continue on this trajectory she will, in fact, not be right.

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Published online: 30 Sep 2015
Words: Owen Kelly, Sam Trembath
Images: Chloe June Brown, Giles Martin, Owen Kelly

Issue

Landscape Architecture Australia, August 2015

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