Don’t go scraping the sky
How high is too tall for Hobart?
HOBART’S City Hall was packed to its historic rafters this week with hundreds of citizens crammed in to express concern about Tasmania’s capital.
The message from the meeting, the third wellattended event of its kind in recent years, was that the people of Hobart want a human-scale city without skyscrapers.
In an orderly, civilised gathering, and after lengthy debate, the citizens overwhelmingly agreed that maximum building heights in the city should be set at 45m, or 15 storeys, and that Hobart City Council should have no discretion whatsoever on this limit.
The group was worried that council building height standards, as they stand, are meaningless because aldermen have the discretion to tick off on any height they desire.
The council last year commissioned architect and urban design consultant Leigh Woolley to review these standards. His report suggested different city zones with different height limits for different places. It recommended a maximum 60m limit in some restricted areas.
The Woolley Report was broadly accepted at the City Hall meeting, with one major objection — that 45m is the highest allowable in those specific restricted areas, not 60m.
There was concern that Woolley’s recommendations had been shelved for “two or three years” while council and the State Government worked on a new overarching “precinct plan” for Hobart.
The precinct plan was hailed a good idea in principle, but the meeting expressed
concern that developers waiting in the wings could take advantage of the current situation where there were virtually no limits on height due to the council having unlimited discretion.
There also were concerns the State Government would work with council for developers and against citizens. And therein lies the rub.
There was a widespread feeling that some in local and state government were working against the grassroots. One speaker described this as “the people versus power” and received rapturous applause.
As the Mercury’s livestream video scanned faces in the crowd, it was clear these were real, ordinary, everyday Tasmanians motivated by real, ordinary, everyday concerns.
They had dragged themselves from the TV and their screens to express their opinions. It was community and democracy in action, the distilled essence of what holds us together.
Most at the gathering spoke of a deep connection with their home. They told stories of how they came to be here in Hobart, how much they cared, and how the city was different and beautiful.
They all spoke reasonably and calmly but with passion.
Nearly all said they understood the need for Hobart to grow and change, and that they were not opposed to development. They just wanted to retain the city they loved.
These people were fighting not just for Hobart but for themselves, for their way of life and, whether they knew it or not, for democracy and rational debate.
Abuse, anger and cheap shots — from the leader of the free world to the cowardly troll and pimply, pale-faced racist in his bedroom — dominate social media nowadays.
Rational voices are drowned out by aggressive snipes, unfair distortions and ugly name-calling. This behaviour is condoned and adopted by those meant to represent us.
It can be heard in Premier Will Hodgman’s recent dismissal of those opposed to the cable car as “the antieverything brigade”.
It can be heard in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s increasing failure to debate Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s policies, dismissing them simply as “lies”.
It can be heard with the derogatory use of terms such as “naysayers”, “bleeding hearts”, “Leftie”, “Rightwinger”, “rednecks” and “NIMBYs”.
This type of abuse stymies rational engagement and demonises the other.
The City Hall meeting represented the very best of Hobart — a commitment to rational debate, to community and to place that warrants as much protection as Salamanca’s sandstone, the mountain wilds and this city’s wonderful lifestyle.
That so many citizens stood up rationally and peacefully is rare in an age of violence and extremes.
That acclaimed writer Richard Flanagan today joins the chorus of letter-writers and Talking Point writers who over the past few months have questioned the university’s move into the CBD is wonderful for democracy. That this newspaper livestreamed the City Hall meeting for all to see is even more commendable.
The community debate about Hobart’s future in this paper’s letters pages is phenomenal.
There is something precious in Hobart — it is hard to define because it is a feeling, a sensation, but it was in City Hall and it should be infused into the mortar of this city and welded into its design.
We don’t want to be packed like sardines into cell blocks in mammoth towers, alienated from the city and surrounds, and we don’t want our visitors to be treated that way.
Our streetscapes must reflect the spirit that was in City Hall and should be mindful of why this amazing sense of community arose in the first place at the natural confluence of a vast harbourlike river where people have lived for millennia in sheltered coves and bays under an ancient mountain.
Any future vision of our city should embody this spirit.