What the people said
Audience members at first Saturday’s Shape Your City Heart Forum were as articulate and passionate as the speakers in expressing their views. Here is a sample of some of their views, and some comments from our speakers in reply:
Bill has lived in Brisbane since the 1930s. He says Brisbane is the subtropical capital of Australia. He says we need to claim that title and nail it up and bend over backwards to live up to it. Bill expressed concern that Yungaba (under the Story Bridge) was about to be developed, saying that Brisbane needed to learn to restore and recapture its history.
In reply:
Kathleen Noonan —”Under the Bjelke-Petersen government, we lost buildings, while under the Beattie and Bligh governments, we are losing public spaces”.
Matthew Condon — “We can give an old fibre glass pineapple a heritage tag but we go blank in the city”.
- Audience member Susan applauded the restoration of St John’s Cathedral, all done through community action.
- Roth asked about the place of agriculture in the city Kathleen Noonan suggested that the city needed a city farm, like at Northey St at Windsor
- Elizabeth said she’s been to too many consultation events and seen nothing change … she said it was important to maintain the character of Brisbane by not replacing Queenslander homes with 20-storey buildings. She also said a ‘curtain’ of buildings built in front of Roma St Parklands had cut the public space off from its public. Leah Cotterell replied with the question: I wonder how long the shadow is going to be from the 15-storey building being built 20 metres from my house in West End.
- One young man called for more Jacaranda trees to be planted and for Brisbane’s laneways to be more “edgy and eclectic” like in Melbourne.
- David said people should not accept the assumptions of the SEQ Regional Plan concerning population increases. He said assumptions made in the plan were ‘pie in the sky’ and ‘ridiculous’. Matt Condon said what was ‘ridiculous’ was that the Lord Mayor had to charge $15 per person to raise money to save City Hall.
