Adelaide - City of Talk?

[Shuz]

So, I'm back from my little fact finding mission.

The Advertiser, we can forget about. They're talking $1,000+ figures. Fuck them.
Adelaide City Council, require you to apply and gain a permit for being able to survey people and/or provide informative brochures. Conditions are maximum 2 hours per person per day. Price was quoted between $28-38.

[shaun]

That is true, though some cities have more potential than other cities. Adelaide is one of them, you only need to walk around the city and suburbs too see the potential.

Adelaide's close promixty to regions such as the Adelaide Hills, South Coast, Outback etc... increases Adelaide's potential of being a vibrant exciting destination.

The Advertiser, we can forget about. They're talking $1,000+ figures. Fuck them.
Adelaide City Council, require you to apply and gain a permit for being able to survey people and/or provide informative brochures. Conditions are maximum 2 hours per person per day. Price was quoted between $28-38.

What about Adelaide Review?, Independent Weekly?, or the youth mags like Rip It Up?. Maybe even Fresh FM?

[Professor]

Why don't they just start the renewal of Rundle Street East.

No talk. No hype. No crap about how good the ACC is.

For Christ sake - stop talking and pontificating. Just fucking do it!

[rogue]

have you ever actually been to Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Munich?

they are far bigger cities than Adelaide....they're also at the center of Europe

seriously some perspective is needed here to move forward. part of the problem i find with a lot of South Australians is the simply lack of perspective they have...through lack of travel or simple naivety or whatever it is i dont know...far too much is expected from what really is a very small provincial city.

I have and they are very comparable to Adelaide in terms of population.
Adelaide = 1.158m people
Amsterdam = 1.364m people
Copenhagen = 1.153m people
Munich = 1.356m people

The difference is population density.
Adelaide = 1295 / km²
Amsterdam = 4459 / km²
Copenhagen = 5876 / km²
Munich = 4370 / km²

So I think it is very reasonable to compare Adelaide to these cities over the likes of London, Paris, New York etc.

Unfortunately the Australian dream of owning a home on the traditional quarter acre block is finally proving unsustainable and also affecting the vibrancy of cities as excessive urban sprawl takes its toll.

I appluad the government for the introduction of TOD's as this will assist in increasing the density in Adelaide, but it will take time to happen. And in this uncertain global economy, it could take even longer. Pressure also needs to be applied to councils to encourage higher density.

[peachy]

have you ever actually been to Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Munich?

they are far bigger cities than Adelaide....they're also at the center of Europe

seriously some perspective is needed here to move forward. part of the problem i find with a lot of South Australians is the simply lack of perspective they have...through lack of travel or simple naivety or whatever it is i dont know...far too much is expected from what really is a very small provincial city.

the frame of reference you measure it by may paint a different picture as to how successful Adelaide is at what it is.

i hear a lot of people on this site banging on about 'potential'. what potential? you can say anywhere has potential...it really is a pointless argument to make.
perhaps Adelaide has already truly realized its potential. Given its complete isolation in relative terms, its lack of water, arable land etc..it probably does pretty well for what it is.

Yes i have been to Amsterdam and Munich plus countless other European cities. Have you?

and as Rogue showed the total populations are quite comparable. True the density difference is significant but aren't all the plans produced by the gov and council focusing on increasing this? Plus i said these cities were more appropriate models for comparison with Adelaide than say London etc, not that they are exactly the same as us.

i have perspective from real life travel and on my travels i kept thinking how the ideas i saw could easily be implemented in Adelaide. Bike friendly Amsterdam, we could be bike friendly with our wide lane roads; hold month long world class events like Munich's Oktoberfest, we already do this; and the fantastic parks ive seen, we have a city surrounded by parklands. There is our potential! A city surrounded by parks sounds like a place i would want to go (potential), now all we need to do is make the parklands somewhere you would actually go (realization). Lack of water etc are obstacles to be overcome like all cities must do before they enter their golden era.

[ricecrackers]

Yes i have been to Amsterdam and Munich plus countless other European cities. Have you?

and as Rogue showed the total populations are quite comparable. True the density difference is significant but aren't all the plans produced by the gov and council focusing on increasing this? Plus i said these cities were more appropriate models for comparison with Adelaide than say London etc, not that they are exactly the same as us.

i have perspective from real life travel and on my travels i kept thinking how the ideas i saw could easily be implemented in Adelaide. Bike friendly Amsterdam, we could be bike friendly with our wide lane roads; hold month long world class events like Munich's Oktoberfest, we already do this; and the fantastic parks ive seen, we have a city surrounded by parklands. There is our potential! A city surrounded by parks sounds like a place i would want to go (potential), now all we need to do is make the parklands somewhere you would actually go (realization). Lack of water etc are obstacles to be overcome like all cities must do before they enter their golden era.

yes i have as a matter of fact.

there is no comparison.

i can also tell you the greater metro conurbation populations of Amsterdam and Munich are around 6 million people. More comparable with Sydney.

Copenhagen is around 3 or 4 million.

Adelaide simply doesnt have the throughput or human resources to implement the scale of urban development these cities are capable of.

We need to be realistic.

[Howie]

I'm currently overseas at the moment, but when I saw this thread I thought i'd have to throw my two cents in.

For the past few years, i've been following SE asian cities and i've noticed a few things. Cities which are about half our size in terms of population, are on par with cities like Melbourne or Sydney in terms of activity or 'buzz' if you will. One of the cities I'd strongly suggest the politicians of our State visit is that of Kuching (Capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak). With a population of around 500,000 people, through good urban planning, a stable political environment, and a very liberal model for medium/small business owners the place is absolutely packed at near all hours of the day. And it's not just in the downtown area, each suburb has a central hub for dining, transport, activities, and each of the central hubs house high-density developments where it's not uncommon to see 12 level towers in the middle of the suburbs. Similar to the Labor envisaged TOD's vision. Perhaps Cr Yarwood can comment more on this style of development, as he's studied future cities in asian before. But what they prove is that you don't need a huge population to make a city more livable and lively. Once again, let me suggest our politicians go there to see for themselves... Adelaide could be such an awesome place if only we adopted some of the policies we've already seen work elsewhere.

[Omicron]

Who are all these people sitting by the wayside as the Clipsal, Fringe, Tour Down Under, Food and Wine Festivals, Royal Show, Classic Adelaide and the like all speed by? Who on earth is standing in the middle of Victoria Square prattling on about inaction and the like when the marvellous Central Markets are nearby, calling you to walk its aisles, breathe in its wonderful smells, drinks its coffee, sample its meats? Who is sitting at home writing angry posts on their computer when they could be sipping coffee on the foreshore overlooking the fabulously glassy and hauntingly foggy Gulf St Vincent? Who is, as jk2357346794 points out, lazing about their quarter-acre block in the suburbs tut-tutting about the boredom of quarter-acre blocks in the suburbs when the inner-city and all its quaint little idiosyncracies is a short bus-ride away?

The simple fact of a market economy is this - support the businesses you want to see, and more of them will come. Fill Jetty Road, and new traders will want to open more restaurants to satisfy demand. Spend at trendy boutiques, and budding entrepreneurs will open more. If the population cannot afford to patronise developments that already exist (or it chooses not to), how can you expect private enterprise to develop taller, better-looking, more expensively-trimmed buildings without a market to support them? Believe you me - if it was financially beneficial for a developer to construct a 300m Eureka-style tower in Adelaide's CBD, then you'd have seen them publicly fighting tooth and nail for the right to do so. Private enterprise will not construct a Guggenheim musuem, Crown Casino or Q1 in this day and age unless it has the financial support of investors and the dollar votes of the population - and I do not mean the Government subsidising a venture that the market is unwilling and unable to support of its own accord.

[ricecrackers]

the nearest comparison you'll find to a city like Adelaide, in terms of layout and population are the smaller North American cities.

eg Tulsa, Omaha, Winnipeg.

what i keep trying to convince so many here on this forum is the way population is measured across the world and how its published is quite misleading.

a better method to use is to look at the population of the state, county..whatever to get a truer picture of the size of a city contained within its boundaries.

'Buzz' is created by having a large population, not by adjusting building height limits. its as simple as that.

even Perth which is 50% larger than Adelaide and has no such issue with height restrictions, still lacks the buzz.

[ynotsfables]

I think what you fail to realize ricecrackers is that Australia is such a vast country with plenty of space that we just don't have to live like sardines as they do in some European and Asian cities. The buzz is created by bringing the populous back to the centre and not the fringes, as Howie mentioned in the above post, Asian cities with less population than ours have a similar vibrancy to that of Sydney and Melbourne. Thats because they build high density close to their city centers it makes a lot of sense.
Thats why I think several TOD's around our city will have a similar impact regardless to a certain degree of our population and economy.

[ricecrackers]

I think what you fail to realize ricecrackers is that Australia is such a vast country with plenty of space that we just don't have to live like sardines as they do in some European and Asian cities. The buzz is created by bringing the populous back to the centre and not the fringes, as Howie mentioned in the above post, Asian cities with less population than ours have a similar vibrancy to that of Sydney and Melbourne. Thats because they build high density close to their city centers it makes a lot of sense.
Thats why I think several TOD's around our city will have a similar impact regardless to a certain degree of our population and economy.

i fail to realize Australia is a vast country? you're having a larf surely

those Asian cities dont have less population than ours in reality. they have suburban and outlying populations that arent included in city population statistics. i've been to Malaysia, i know. the inner city is built up and dense simply because the critical mass of surrounding population forces them to become that way.

my point in this thread, if you go back and read it...is that the expectations placed on Adelaide by its populace far outweigh its capability, simply because it really is a very small place population wise.

a lot of the problem comes from this disproportionate expectation that because Wikipedia or the like says Adelaide has 1 million people, that it should be as lively as other world cities that report the same population. thats just ludicrous.

a more intelligent debate would be comparing apples with apples. that is comparing it with similar sized and similarly isolated North American cities.

[ynotsfables]

Yeah I was only kidding.
Lifes a bitch though aint it.

[ricecrackers]

Yeah I was only kidding.
Lifes a bitch though aint it.

only if you believe it to be

[shaun]

I have no idea to put this, so...

The more I read about Australian History, the more I think Adelaide's downfall has got alot to do with the famous 'tall poppy syndrome'. Could even say karma

Decades ago, when WA and Queensland were rural backwaters and Melbourne was a joke, Australia's 3rd largest city 'Adelaide' was seen as a progressive and creative city. Even for many years South Australia outperformed the rest of Australia in economic and population growth.

Though as we all now know WA and Queensland are now the economic powerhouses and Melbourne has been transformed into a vibrant and progressive city. While lil ol Adelaide has pretty much sat back and fallen behind the other cities in just about nearly everything and become a national joke, State Bank Collapse didn't help. Once proud South Aussies (young and old) have had enough and moving interstate due to lack of jobs, though the main one is they are sick of the 'lack of change' in SA.

However the next two decades will be the rebirth of South Australia. In the 2010s we will see a major expansion in mineral deposits (incl Olympic Dam), on-going construction of the $35bn+ defence projects (incl the $25bn submarine contract), major road projects (incl South Rd & Northern Connector), major government projects including the RAH, new prisons and the desalination plant. We will see many developments including the Lecornu site development, Clipsal site and the completion of the Port Adelaide Redevelopment. Though the biggest change next decade will the transformation of our aging public transport system, biggest railway development in SA's history and the TOD plan.

All these projects plus a stack load of more will change this city and state for the better, though we need to make sure we have a open-minded and progressive State Government and ACC that ignores minority groups which want Adelaide to slowly die.

But really Adelaide is already changing, from building a important public transport link that has opened up the southern CBD too the growing number of people living, working and visiting the city. Also I'm sure 3-5 years ago we would of laughed at the current serious discussion of building a premier riverbank precinct (including a stadium) or spending $100m on our train network, let alone $2bn. Remember the days of debating of having a toilet in Victoria Square!

Though there is still alot of work that needs to be done, the State Government should get some ideas from Melbourne and Brisbane.

[Howie]

Totally agree with what Crawf wrote. To quote what one person from Melbourne wrote on a local newspaper's website when the Riverside precinct was announced...

... Finally, the penny has dropped for Adelaide.

To me that summed it up succinctly. We're reaching the tipping point to becoming a modernized city, we just need more progressive people to take us forward.