Readers of The Fifth Estate will share an understanding of the need for change in Australian cities. Both of buildings and urban form. And while better individual buildings can be achieved relatively easily, change across our urban spaces is difficult.
There are many reasons for this, but they include the low expectations, and least worst outcomes of community consultation, suspicion of higher densities, fractured land ownership, inflexible planning schemes, and indifferent governments.
New, more sustainable and higher density places, tend to be greenfield or brownfield sites, or along busy arterial strips no-one cares about. And they are mostly developer driven, or with an initial government planning process, and then sold off.
At The BlackwoodTown Project we are trying to find new ways of creating change in urban form by using art to tell a story about a place. And trying to do it independently of the constraints of government, or capital, through crowd funding and the creative web.
A despised roundabout and car parks at the centre of beautiful suburban valleys
Blackwood is a suburban service centre, grown out of a village on a crossroads at the top of a hill, surrounded by the beautiful suburban valleys and ridges of the Adelaide Hills, and with a 150 year old train line to the city.
But its centre is dominated by a much despised roundabout and arterial traffic, and Blackwood’s amorphous form of open lot carparks and single storey shops does nothing to create a sense of place, or to shelter and nurture its community.
And the previous state government recently spent millions making a more efficient roundabout – reinvesting in the cancer at the heart of the place. A sunk cost fallacy, and a waste of precious resources.
Meanwhile, some of the surrounding low density leafy blocks are being subdivided for big footprint, single storey houses. No urban centre, and the loss of the Adelaide Hills neighbourhood character. A lose-lose result.
I grew up around Blackwood, and still love this part of the Adelaide Hills, but Blackwood centre really hasn’t changed for the better in 40 years. Fractured land ownership, an ageing population and a declining local economy has stifled investment.
In response is The BlackwoodTown Project: an act of imaginative place making, where we will use stories, art, manga and video to imagine a fantasy Blackwood. An imaginary past, future, or alternative reality, in which Blackwood is a thriving, liveable place of residents and businesses.
Our hope is that fantasy can allow people to understand and accept change by sharing in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “suspension of disbelief”. We do this with books, movies and television all the time, can we do it with real places?
Humans have the great ability to hold two ideas in their heads at once, even conflicting ideas, and so the fantasy could be made real, by working through the barriers to change, what we call the “impossible”. And educating the community about urban form, architecture and sustainability along the way.
Persuasion not consultation
BlackwoodTown is persuasion, not consultation. This will unfortunately distress some of the local community. But one of the constant constraints on urban change are existing residents, who may have a fixed idea of what their patch is, and struggle to understand or accept change. This is a perfectly natural and understandable response, and we sympathise.
But Adelaide is keen to attract young people, and future Blackwood residents and future generations, may have different ideas about their urban places. We are hoping that fantasy, art, and a story about a place, will help existing residents imagine the lives of their grandchildren, and embrace change.
Both the fantastic and practical streams of the project will be publicly published on The BlackwoodTown Project website, incrementally evolving, and building the story as we go. The website is also an experiment in professional practice. Can we use the skills of our built environment professionals unencumbered by the constraints of town planning, land ownership, the timidity of government, or the singular needs of private clients?
Help needed
Good design takes time, as does art, and so the emerging “creative web” may be a way to fund both. Our aim is to be free and bold and see what happens, but the project needs crowdfunding to make it work. And that means the support of built environment professionals and industry members like yourselves, as well as locals and future residents and businesses.
Can an independent urban design process, advocating massive change, bring community, government and private capital together to support it? That remains to be seen, but we see this as a five year project, so subscribe now and watch what happens!
This is an independent, experimental and ambitious project and it needs your support. You can help from just $5/month.
