Hurrah! More grey granite for the Cross!

Surprise surprise! Another of Sydney's unique and historical precincts is to lose its individuality in favour of homogenous city branding.

Council has announced Springfield Avenue is to get grey granite paving in the 'Gateway' style identical to the Darlinghurst Road footpaths. This is another triumph of Council priorities over clearly expressed community wishes.

The decision ignores a clear community vote at a 300-strong public meeting for different style of paving in the Cross; it ignores a smaller Springfield Avenue meeting with Council in which four different people called for terracotta paving, and others favoured the Llankelly Place style; and it ignores several written submissions opposing the granite.

It ignores the fact that Springfield Avenue is a residential precinct that needs to be visually differentiated from the neighbouring Kings Cross strip (now continuous grey granite will connect the two vastly different precincts via Springfield Plaza). And it ignores the prevalence of Art Deco brick buildings in the street, which most people think calls for sympathetic terracotta paving.

Council's announcement follows:

"We are pleased to advise that Granite Austral Verde has been approved as the pavement finish the works, which will now proceed on this basis from mid-January. As a special threshold to Springfield Plaza and the Darlinghurst Road Precinct, the continuation of granite through Springfield Avenue was considered appropriate in this instance.

"For your information, a range of responses were received from the community. The final selection meets the broad community support for a high quality finish, whilst keeping some consistency with the City palette, and ensuring a superior performance pavement that will endure in the long term."

It's a classic piece of bureauspeak. As a public service, we offer translations of some of the key phrases into plain English:-

1. "considered appropriate in this instance" means "That's what we want in every instance, so bad luck folks."

2. "a range of responses were received from the community" means "the submissions ran against what we wanted so we ignored them." (This is precisely the same phrase used by the Boundaries Commission when they recommended the forced council amalgamations -- even though OVER 90% of submissions were passionately against it).

3. "broad community support for a high quality finish" means "there was no support for council's first proposal: tearing up the terracotta paving and laying bitumen."

4. "keeping some consistency with the City palette" means 1. "council loves bland homogeneity and hates diversity," or 2. "neo-modernism is the one true church of planning. "The City Palette" means "grey".

We urge readers to speak up about this rubbish -- email councillors about it. Ask for an accurate report on community submissions. Expose these dull despots for the petty bullies they are.

The works are scheduled to commence from mid January 2005 and completed by early April 2005.