Remember Dunedin’s forgotten stakeholders
The DCC is doing a disservice to the city’s children, writes Julie Howard.
THE place to ‘‘bee’’ is not Otepoti for our tamariki, pepi, mokopuna and whanau who are kuware. Our children are low on the social scale, held in no esteem by the Dunedin City Council, which more than 10 years ago agreed to build an urban innercity play space for our city’s children.
In 2018, still no space exists, yet in yesterday’s Otago Daily
Times [31.10.18] the council and the University of Otago agreed on a new beethemed ‘‘pocket’’ park with beefriendly native plants and a honeycomb painted surface to celebrate nature and biodiversity for students. Right next to State Highway 1 and right outside the boozer, no less. That same day, and on the front page, the DCC continued to roll out its narrative on Architecture Van Brandenburg’s proposal for development of the Steamer Basin area. Council community and planning group manager Nicola Pinfold said the feasibility studies, titled ‘‘Changes to waterfront master plan’’, showed the waterfront vision ‘‘can be constructed subject to funding and consenting’’. But who is going to pay for it Nicola?
I suggest our children will. These projects, like the stadium, continue to marginalise our children who are the forgotten stakeholders here.
Right now, Oamaru, Christchurch and Wellington put Dunedin to shame by their childfocused plan of their innercity urban environments where everything from bike parks, slides, swings, free indoor playspaces, and even a flying fox are right in the heart of their town square.
In Amsterdam, youth skateboard right outside their Rijksmuseum Museum. Where are Dunedin youth skateboarding? Out of sight at an uglylooking old skateboard park next to the railway tracks.
The only playground in the inner city is at Dunedin Hospital, and it has a lock on the gate. The former Early Settlers Museum housed a roomful of childled resources during the July school holidays, a space to escape the southerly, that was free and filled with dressups, painting, puppets, a puppet show theatre, to art tables. It vanished when ‘‘Toitu Otago Settlers Museum’’, was developed. Where are all these resources now? Who made that decision? Certainly not our children, nor parents who badly want this back.
Our children are entitled to agency and a voice.
Build our children the innercity space they are entitled to, and which council agreed to do. An urgent meeting, a timeline, a nice fat budget and an investigation led by council’s principal urban designer Kathryn Ward is called for.
This council needs to apologise — and start shelling out for our kids.
It needs to recognise children’s rights under international law, under the Treaty of Waitangi, the Bill of Rights, and Human Rights Act, and place children at the centre of all planning of our urban environment. Dunedin has the expertise in play and urban environments at the University of Otago and in the community.
Otepoti is not a business. It is our children’s place — a place they call home, too.