18 August 2009 – Your article on Baranga Who? highlights the need for mixed use development at Barangaroo as a fundamental requirement that needs to be incorporated on this currently barren harbour side shelf of desolate tarmac. Otherwise there is a danger of recreating the less than lively northern CBD that is not exactly quivering with life after 7 pm. Last year I heard Philip Thalis [winner of the original Barangaroo competition] speaking at Tusculum about the last century of Design Competitions in Sydney which was a fascinating evening highlighting a litany of design competitions that had somehow or other owing to misguided government interventions gone wrong or had failed to be built as per the original design concept.
What is required is a Summer Party and Forum at Baranga Who? like the one organised by WC Wentworth when Governor Darling was banished in the 1830s including a Fete and Illuminations with an ox and half a dozen sheep and an abundance of beer, rum and other refreshments to raise some passion among the citizens of Sydney about the future of the site that includes as it did then “roaring, bawling, licking, trickling, reeling” and what not.
David WilsonSenior Transport and City Planner