AdelaideNow Adelaide bashing.

[iTouch]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/sout ... 6032283353

THE Oscar-winning producer of The King's Speech decided to make his latest movie in Adelaide because it remains mostly unchanged since the 1980s.

The acclaimed new film, Oranges & Sunshine, starring Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham, opened in the United Kingdom yesterday and is slated for a June release here.

It's about the forced deportation of orphans from the UK to Western Australia and much of it is set in Perth from 1986-87 when the scandal was uncovered.

But producer Emile Sherman said the WA city now looked too modern and had too many skyscrapers to be credible.

The 1980s Perth scenes were instead filmed in Adelaide early last year. A shot of the city taken from the Central Market with Westpac House poking above older buildings is labelled "Perth".

"I felt SA was the best place because the film is set in the '80s so we couldn't just go to Perth now," Sherman said in the film's press notes.

"Adelaide felt like the best environment to be able to capture the time - there are probably fewer absolutely new buildings or skyscrapers there but it's still a significantly-sized city."

Part of the reason for the city's ageing skyline is Adelaide imposes more restrictive height limits than other capital cities and development was hit hard by the recession of the 1990s. But the comments reignited debate about Adelaide's willingness to embrace change.

"For too long we've looked at the reasons not to build something, whereas other cities have tried to encourage people to build and develop and create opportunities," said Terry Walsh, executive director of SA's Urban Development Institute of Australia.

With a population of about 1.2 million, Adelaide has six buildings higher than 80 metres - the minimum for a skyscraper. All but one was built before 1991. Perth, with 1.65 million people, has 21 skyscrapers, nine constructed in the past decade and eight on the way.

Property developer Theo Maras said there wasn't enough demand to support tall office buildings in the Adelaide CBD.

Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood said Perth's development was mostly due to the mining boom and visitors to Adelaide had expressed surprise at changes the city had undergone, with more coming.

Three new skyscrapers have been approved, due to be constructed by 2014.

Adelaidenow's a fucking joke.

[rev]

Who cares its tabloid trash.

[Will]

The saddest thing about this, is that the Advertiser is supporting this stereotype. As our only newspaper the Advertiser should help defend the dignity of our city, but I guess that is too much to expect from a trashy tabloid. Instead the Advertiser has put in a dodgy photo showing a very small part of our skyline to support the stereotype.

[ghs]

Another weak article by the Advertiser in my opinion.

Perth has a CBD which is very small in terms of area.
Here in Adelaide our CBD is probably 3 times bigger than Perth's. As a
result Perth has to build up because they don't have that much room.

[Splashmo]

I actually see where the Advertiser is coming with this one. If you have a look in today's physical copy of the newspaper, the comparison pictures show largely the same skyline looking over past the cathedral towards the city after thirty years. What's wrong with pointing that out? This is not about an argument between whether Perth or Adelaide are better, just stating that the majority of Perth's tallest buildings have been built at a time we were languishing behind for the reasons stated in the article, and not building anything substantial.

You've also got quotes here from the Urban Development Institute and a prominent property developer putting in their reasons why it's like this. The article ends on a positive note with Stephen Yarwood too.

So don't bash the Advertiser - criticise the statements the film director and these people have made, and maybe examine why Adelaide is like this. It's not the paper's job to defend the city's dignity but report the facts (though a few pages later there's some very positive reflections on growing up in Adelaide).

It's too easy to blame the Advertiser and AdelaideNow for all of the city's problems.

[iTouch]

^^^
In Year 12 English Comms, we learnt the way the Newspapers influence the readers by using positive/negative words subtely to state their matter of opinion. Even in Imagery, they do this.
We learnt that cities like NYC, Melbourne, London and Auckland have at least two types of newspapers.
One for reporting and elaborating on the facts to people, and the other reporting and entertaining the facts to people. Sadly in Adelaide, we have only one which chooses to be the latter of these 2 types. Because they have no competition, they have a lot of influence on the people of Adelaide .

[Vee]

The saddest thing about this, is that the Advertiser is supporting this stereotype. As our only newspaper the Advertiser should help defend the dignity of our city, but I guess that is too much to expect from a trashy tabloid.

My thoughts too!

The value of State Pride should not be underestimated, especially for our younger people. That's why examples such as the Adelaide Oval and Riverbank precinct redevelopment, new Swimming Centre and various highly rated and well organised events are so important. Adelaide has the opportunity to not make the big mistakes of the other large cities by sensible planning.

Too often it appears that The Advertiser/A-N features articles that show Adelaide in a bad light when there are lots of international or interstate visitors in the city for a special event eg today's Rugby Sevens tournament. The Advertiser/A-N could foster greater pride in our city with more positive features and less rehashing of sensationalised .... that masquerades as journalism. What a golden opportunity to highlight some good news stories and achievements to spread the word.
(On a positive note, their "Silent Achiever'" weekly article in the Saturday Business section highlights the world class achievements of some fantastic South Australians and their businesses/products/services.)

[spiller]

...Perth has a CBD which is very small in terms of area.
Here in Adelaide our CBD is probably 3 times bigger than Perth's...

slight off topic, but the relatively large size of Adelaide's CBD in comparison to other Australian cities is something that comes up quite often on this forum. I understand it is in-fact quite a large area but i'd be VERY interested to see some actual numbers (km2) of Adealide's CBD compared to the other capital cities. If anyone has access to this info, please share.

As for the height thing, it is frustrating after all of these years growing up in Adelaide, that Westpac House is still the tallest. But, facts are facts, as someone quoted in that article, there simply isnt the demand for such buildings in Adelaide's current economic climate. The way I see things (positively) is that all of the little density fillers going up now will eventually do just that, fill the gaps. And this will make the skyline look much more attractive overall once the taller buildings go up (which they will, in time). Not to create an ADL v PER argument, but I personally think the Perth CBD is one of the ugliest of the 5 big cities. It has a few impressive buildings but the overall density is very lacking, with lots of large gaps in the skyline. It looks like a disorganised ramble. If you look past the 3 or 4 talls, a lot of the smaller buildings are brutalist, outdated examples.

[AtD]

Also Adelaide has a lot more heritage buildings, which have rightly been preserved. There's a lot of streets, like Rundle Street for example, where there may never be a significant change of the street-scape. Perth on the other hand had fewer to begin with and has knocked down a lot more of theirs.

[jk1237]

interesting stat considering the boom in construction and pop growth Perth has had. From Emporis (up to date) which considers tall buildings over 35 mtrs

Perth 142
Adelaide 138

Compared to Brisbane that has 250.
Perth maybe the "in" city at the moment, with shiny new stuff everywhere, and Adelaide way uncool, but you only have to visit its CBD to realise that we would never want to swap our city with theirs. No way

[rev]

I actually see where the Advertiser is coming with this one. If you have a look in today's physical copy of the newspaper, the comparison pictures show largely the same skyline looking over past the cathedral towards the city after thirty years. What's wrong with pointing that out? This is not about an argument between whether Perth or Adelaide are better, just stating that the majority of Perth's tallest buildings have been built at a time we were languishing behind for the reasons stated in the article, and not building anything substantial.

You've also got quotes here from the Urban Development Institute and a prominent property developer putting in their reasons why it's like this. The article ends on a positive note with Stephen Yarwood too.

So don't bash the Advertiser - criticise the statements the film director and these people have made, and maybe examine why Adelaide is like this. It's not the paper's job to defend the city's dignity but report the facts (though a few pages later there's some very positive reflections on growing up in Adelaide).

It's too easy to blame the Advertiser and AdelaideNow for all of the city's problems.

Heres the title of the article, again in case you skipped it.

Unchanged Adelaide fits the cinematic bill for Perth - circa 1986

Bashing the Advertiser is spot on. They chose to make the film makers comments the center piece of their article, and basically ridicule their own city.
They could have gone with an article which questions why there hasn't been more development in Adelaide and calling for more development.
But of course that wont sell papers will it, nor will it attract peoples mouse clicks on AdelaideNow as much as an article stating Adelaide is comparable to Perth of the mid-80's.

I find it more distressing that News Corp is our only source of newspapers in this state, rather then what our skyline looks like.

[dsriggs]

slight off topic, but the relatively large size of Adelaide's CBD in comparison to other Australian cities is something that comes up quite often on this forum. I understand it is in-fact quite a large area but i'd be VERY interested to see some actual numbers (km2) of Adealide's CBD compared to the other capital cities. If anyone has access to this info, please share.

I don't have any exact info, but I decided to use nearmap to draw a comparison between the respective CBDs. Because I haven't been to Perth or Brisbane, and some CBD's are difficult to map, I chose to use well defined road/river boundaries & chose not to include parks, university campuses, railyards or government buildings.
Note: While the sizes of the images may change, the scale does not, as referenced by the nearmap scale in the bottom-right corner.

First, Adelaide.

Because of the parklands, Adelaide is a very easy city to draw out a template for. In the following photos, Adelaide will be represented by a solid red line.


Next, Perth:

What I consider to be Perth's CBD is marked with a dashed green line. I included the area North of the raillines due to the density of the blocks in contrast to the blocks outside the area. Note that while Perth's CBD is as long as Adelaide's, ours is twice in 'height'.

Brisbane:

You can fit nearly 2 Brisbanes into 1 Adelaide.

Sydney:

I chose not to include Cirular Quay & Darling Harbour because the expressways act as barriers, splitting the city into pieces. I also didn't include the area East of Hyde Park for a similar reason.

Lastly, Melbourne:

Almost as easy as Adelaide to determine. I'm only unsure on the North-West corner.

Hope I've been helpful.

[spiller]

fantastic work dsriggs! Has painted a very clear picture, our CBD is huge. If you include the area south of the Yarra in melb (which you left out) which has quite a few talls such as Eureka tower and Crown complex amongst others, their CBD is almost as big as ours.

[crawf]

There is some sad truth in that article, but meh Perth is more like an overdeveloped Delfin estate anyway

[Splashmo]

I don't have any exact info, but I decided to use nearmap to draw a comparison between the respective CBDs. Because I haven't been to Perth or Brisbane, and some CBD's are difficult to map, I chose to use well defined road/river boundaries & chose not to include parks, university campuses, railyards or government buildings.
...
Hope I've been helpful.

You're not exactly being accurate or fair here. Large swathes of Adelaide's square mile is residential. Most of what's south of Gouger and Angas Streets is low-rise housing. And then a lot of what you've cut out of your borders of Perth and Brisbane's CBDs is actually what we have in the east and west of our "CBD" - that is, showrooms and other businesses. The actual area you might consider the CBD in comparison to the other cities, with taller buildings, is much smaller - maybe roughly the area within North Tce, Morphett, Pulteney and Wakefield Streets.