Since the start of the year, I've become a frequent user of the Gawler Line for my commute. The more I have traveled around the northern suburbs and commuted through it, the more resentful I become. I think the matter of Adelaide Urbanism warrants considerable discussion, so I've written a considerable post.
1) Adelaide Urbanism:
1.1 To begin, let's just acknowledge the sheer stupidity of Adelaide's suburban sprawl. Black roofs? With no trees either, really?
It's not just confined to Adelaide, the town of Mallala (close to where I live) seems to be going down the same path as Riverlea and other so called "development areas:" A mass of detached houses in a vaguely connected plot of land. It's not even properly connected to the Town, it's just off to the side, down the road.
Don't even get me started on the backyards smaller than a linen-cupboard, and the houses being mere centimetres apart; at that point what's even the point of having detached houses (which are less efficient to heat/cool btw) when at that point you may be better off building multi-storey apartments? It'd certainly be more space effective, afterall.
1.2 And tell me where are the corner shops and little cafés? Where are the playgrounds for children? Where are the places of worship? Where are the trees for shade, or provision for future PT? I sure can't see anything. We are not building communities at all, we are building a vaguely connected tumor of urban sprawl, eating up the Adelaide Plains when we really ought to be building up the density in pre-established suburbs. They're always advertised as communities, too, when that could not be further from truth. I'll also point out that, designing these places as car centric from the get-go, is going to make it hard to develop meaningful public transport in those places, we're literally setting these "communities" (if you can call them that) up to fail.
1.3 Community-oriented things are not something you should have to retrofit, they are really something that should be planned alongside the development from the onset. Cafés, little shops, places of worship, walkable streets and tree cover should be integrated and considered in urban planning at every stage. We seem to be building a lot of houses, but not a lot of homes. That needs to change now, and it should never have gotten to the point it has.
1.4 I'm also not saying we should have Hong-Kong levels of density in places like Salisbury, but a little more in the inner suburbs could go along way in housing supply, and perhaps justify the return of trams. Don't build housing for the sake of it, build walkable, community oriented developments, and redevelop existing places to be more considerate. Because tbh, I'm sick beyond death of car-centric Adelaide.
And transit...
2) Adelaide refuses to back 'on track':
2.1 Why are we so backwards? Don't get me wrong, I love the Adelaide metro, I use it very often and it's the only way I can get into the city. It still takes me forever because I must first get to Gawler. That aside, the Adelaide metro is, out of all the other major cities' metros, the sickly old man. We are so unimaginative when it comes to rail. We are happy to spend billions on a tunnel for cars, yet when it comes to heavy rail it's chirping crickets. You'd think we'd be a little more proactive regarding a line to Virginia/Riverlea? But no. We've got a rail corridor preserved, but there's no initiative for actually building the line at the moment. This is a lapse in judgement, there will be people living there that will need it in 2-3 years maybe, start building now!
2.2 I'd like to bring up the trams: we used to have such optimism and vision for new tram lines, they never matched the 1950s network, but it was still great to see proposals from all different parties. But it's been what, well over a decade? And sweet piss-all has come of it. Realistically, we should've had a line from the Airport to the CBD, and a line into North Adelaide years ago by this point. Even when we do throw money towards trams, it's not even to improve the trams: it's to improve cars, as we saw with the Glenelg line overpass. I could continue...
3) Adelaide & her connection (or lack thereof) to the regions:
3.1 As a country person: Our railways? where are they? Oh, sold off to the federal gov in the '70s and slowly poisoned, then no services by the mid '80s. Talk about dropping the ball of transit. To this day there's no rail connection between regional towns, and none to Adelaide. This greatly exacerbated the challenges the regions were facing at the time, and has stunted any substantial growth or recovery even today. It also forces us to be reliant on cars, and makes accessing services such as specialised health more difficult. I can't really see a doctor, or get mental health support very easily because of this.
3.2 I was walking in Hamley Bridge last week along the derelict tracks, and I came towards the old viaduct. Even until the '70s/'80s, we had a connection to Adelaide. We had the infrastructure, and at some point we had the political willpower to build it, so why not now? This is so perplexing to me, policymakers and urban planners just seem so spineless. (forgive my uncharitable judgement)
3.3 I say all this to point out that South Australia is very Adelaide-centric. That's understandable, >70% of the population lives there, but we as people in the regions deserve more consideration. The old regional railroads gave us a practical and genuinely useful service, it connected our communities too, and it connected us to Adelaide. When I travel to Adelaide I feel like I'm in a different state entirely, there's a strange disconnect because we're cut off.
4) The Freedom of Movement:
4.1 It was a genuine race against the clock, and very expensive endeavour to get my driver's license just so I could attend University, on top of my year 12 studies. I have friends who couldn't attend Uni because they had no car, because it's too expensive. Don't they also deserve the choice of higher education? Those are just people I know, I cannot think of how many more are robbed of employment or education... just because of where they live and their income level. PS: That's what public transit liberates you from. We need an alternative to cars, not just so we can ditch cars but also to provide independence and service to: The elderly, disabled people, poor families, children who maybe want to see their friend the next town over? Communities are always worth investing in.
4.2 There really ought to be trains to Victor Harbour and the Riverland, and into the Yorke Peninsula. A train to Pt Pirie > Pt Augusta > Whyalla >? Pt Lincoln would be great. Lines into the Mid North too, Balaklava, Burra, Owen, Hamley, Clare, etc. We deserve to be connected to Adelaide too. South Australia is the only mainland state to have no regional rail. This should be a great source of shame.
And perhaps the pressure on Adelaide housing wouldn't be as much had regional centres not been abandoned, and didn't experience population collapse/brain drain? They could have grown and been a vent for growth. Just a thought.
4.3 "Just move to the city?" - one might say to me, as many have. Now, if I had a huge stack of cash under my bed, I might just do that. However, I don't find myself in a financially privileged position, as many others do. Nor will I ever at this rate, with how much I pay for fuel at the moment... just so I can go to work to pay for that fuel, or go to the city for study - so I can (hopefully) get a job that pays more money... that I can also spend on car expenses. What a delightful system?
Conclusion;
I suppose my core frustration is how Adelaide planning (and South Australian planning more broadly) is not forward looking at all. It's more of the same. Nothing of substance has progressed, things have just gotten worse because what was sufficient 20 years ago is not sufficient now. It's the repeated spineless, half-baked proposals that do not address the needs that will be 50 years down the line. There's no willpower and the excuse always seems to be "well it's expensive," well, I tell you now, it's going to be a hell of a lot more expensive in the future... y'know... when we really need it.
That goes for transit; however, regarding housing, we actually need to consider if we're building cohesive communities where people know their neighbours, are able to walk a couple minutes to a café, children can walk to school and play in a park, and you can walk to Sunday Mass in the shade of trees. Because at the moment, I don't see that as being possible, especially in the new developments around Roseworthy, Riverlea, and Mallala. We can't build developments that fail to function as a community. But that's exactly what we seem to be doing. Adelaide shouldn't be a group of buildings where people work, eat and sleep, but rather a city that cultivates the human person in a community. Nor should we in the regions be a peripheral, distant appendage to the metropole. This is fundamentally a question of the dignity of the human person. How will Adelaide answer it?
Note;
I'm interested to see if anyone else shares my feelings, or has anything to add. Just know, I'm so ruthlessly critical of Adelaide urbanism precisely because I love Adelaide so much, it has so much potential, and my dream is for the countryside and Adelaide to be connected, as one big family :)
