Architecture & Design

CLOVER MOORE INTERVIEW

- WORDS HAMISH MCDONALD

A walkabout with Sydney’s lord mayor Clover Moore is not without interrupti­ons. When I spent three hours with her traversing the city’s Green Square project there was a lady worried about a Give Way sign needed on a cycling track, and a gentleman objecting to neighbours sunbathing in their undies, all complaints carefully noted.

Green Square meanwhile is visibly taking shape: a $13 billion urban renewal across 278 hectares of derelict factory sites on flood-prone former wetlands, halfway between Sydney’s CBD and its airport. Handsome apartment blocks are going up, aesthetics and standards enhanced by the Design Excellence strategy adopted under Moore’s 16 years in office, whereby developers go through a competitiv­e evaluation of designs, rewarded by up to 10 per cent extra floor space. Establishe­d architects like Peter Stutchbury have pitched in to retask heritage buildings. New faces emerged like Stewart and Hollenstei­n with their Green Square Library. The country’s most lavish aquatic and fitness centre opens in the new year. With 30,000 residents already, the centre is halfway to the target of 62,000. New roads, a trunk water drain, a recycling plant harvesting run-off for non-potable water for toilets, laundries and gardens, and sustainabl­e buildings make it a model. Corridors await new transport links, and a site a new school, pending NSW state government decision.

HAMISH MCDONALD: This must feel tremendous­ly rewarding to see all this coming together at last?

CLOVER MOORE: This was huge. When I became mayor in 2004, as well as dealing with a re-amalgamate­d council [the former South

Sydney merged back into the City of Sydney] we had to take on Green Square. We were given the numbers by the government. If you look back to that time, there wasn’t anything like this. So we really wanted to create an area where people want to live as well as work. And the City Council’s policy of design excellence, where developers have to go through a competitio­n process and they do get various things like more floor space, ensured that this developmen­t was going to design beautifull­y. So we embarked on this, and it’s been huge. It’s very exciting now seeing it come to fruition. We’ve done other huge things right across the city: renewed Prince Alfred Park, Hyde Park and created Harmony Park and Pirrama Park. At Harold Park [the disused trotting drome] the local community wanted only parkland, but we said we had to fulfill the targets that given to us by government. But all the private open space had to become public space, which it did, and that’s all beautifull­y landscaped now. And we worked with developers to get excellent design there too, as well as affordable housing, just as we have here. We’ve got a fantastic team in the city, and I think it’s a testament to vision and longevity that you can get things done. They’ve been seven premiers while I’ve been doing this work.

HM: Tell us about the sustainabi­lity aspects you are trying to build into schemes like this?

CM: When I became mayor, not only did I inherit these big renewal sites, we also joined the C40 Cities group, started by

Ken Livingston­e in London and Michael Bloomberg in New York, and supported by the Clinton Foundation, bringing together mayors who would work together to reduce emission across the globe. That was because 70 percent of our emissions are in our cities, and so we could make a major contributi­on to addressing climate change. So that’s our over-arching policy: sustainabl­e city by 2030, getting our emissions down by 70 percent by 2030, being inspired and inspiring other cities too. The emissions are coming mainly from buildings. So if we can get sustainabl­e buildings, emissions down in building we are making a great contributi­on. I got together with the CEOS of the major building owners in the CBD, in about 2008. By 2011 they had all undertaken to commit to our goals of 70 percent reduction by 2030 – we called it the “better buildings partnershi­p” – and they’ve already got their emissions down by 56 percent and we’re on track by 2030 to reduce them by about 80 percent. They can see the sense. They are not short-termers, like politician­s and political parties who think about the next three or four year term, they’re thinking about the next 30 or 40 years. They know that climate change is a reality.

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